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Literacy Skills in All Content Areas
Literacy is inherent in all content areas, but sometimes we feel most comfortable relegating it to the domain of language arts classes. After all, there are so many standards to...
Leading with Empathy in the Classroom
They were right where I’d expected to see them. For several workshop periods, they’d set themselves up on the rug. At a glance, they were set up for success. They...
I’m an Everything Person!
“Mrs. Parks, look what I did last night!” Finley said before she even got to the classroom door. I looked at the scratch piece of paper that she presented. The...
Love Poetry: Take It or Leave It, but Tell Me Why
If you work with adolescents, you know that they are prone to quick, extreme judgments, throwing out proclamations of love and hate left and right. At the beginning of the...
Supporting Perseverance in Our Students: Before You Say ‘Keep Going,’ Pause to Consider
"Just keep swimming." This popular quote, which Dory chants in the movie Finding Nemo, is often used to remind students to keep going with something that gets difficult, to push...
Considerations for AI in the Classroom
In a PLC meeting this spring, a principal suggested showing seniors how to use AI for help with their senior portfolios, which immediately sparked a debate among all the teachers...
Unleashing Writers
Writing workshop had a hamster wheel feel for me, and I’m sure it did for my students too. We had been working through narrative writing standards and goals and then...
Reframing Writers
“You can’t read his handwriting, and he misspells so many words,” his teacher said. “He doesn’t use punctuation correctly, and his writing is all over the page. He ignores the...
Using Metaphors and Analogies to Help Educators Shift Their Thinking and Change Their Practices
Any assessment can be used both formatively and summatively, but usually one function interferes with the other, so it is generally best to decide at the outset about the purpose...
Literary Salons: Book Clubs, Elevated
I usually do a round of book clubs with my students, but this year so many of them were in a good groove with their independent reading that I was...
Transforming Our Own Professional Learning
If you want to thrive as a Transformational Coach, you need to be prepared to engage in a lot of practice and refining of your skills. I’ve also learned that...
How to Promote Civil Discourse in Your Classroom
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. —Audre Lorde, quoted in Civil Discourse: Classroom Conversations for Stronger Communities...
Navigating the Election Season Booklist
I am someone who does little talking about politics. There have been years of teaching when I’ve been surprised by things my students know and talk about related to an...
Putting Political Talk into Perspective
I recently had an online interaction with an acquaintance that turned ugly. On the Fourth of July, I shared a post on social media with a quote from Frederick Douglass’s...
Ways to Support Colleagues Part 2
Statistics show that teachers are one of the most stressed groups of people. According to a 2022 study by the American Educational Research Association, teachers in the U.S. experienced significantly...
It’s All in the Delivery: Inviting Joy to (Mandatory) Professional Learning” by Mary Brower
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. —William James Ms. Joy, a veteran teacher with two decades of classroom experience, closed her eyes for a...
Patterns of Prompting
pattern - noun. a repeated decorative design Designing our classroom spaces is important. We want to create spaces that feel warm, welcoming, and appealing to the eye. Designing the way...
Vertical Whiteboards
I first read about using vertical whiteboards in Peter Liljedahl's book Building Thinking Classrooms (2020). Although this book is all about how vertical whiteboards can build mathematical thinking, I immediately...
Ways to Support Colleagues, Part 1
It didn’t take long for Ruth to want to avoid her daughter’s Sunday school teacher. When our daughter arrived in our home at age four, she had a difficult time...
Capturing Meeting Notes to Boost Accountability
You leave a teacher meeting with an extra pep in your step. The conversation flowed, you both seemed energized, the teacher’s goal was determined, next steps were established, and you're...
Indoor Walks
“True or false, capybaras eat their own poop?” reads a first grader. “That’s true!” shouts another as they both break out in fits of giggles in the hallway. Suddenly they...
