Content Category: Lead Literacy
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Creating a Master Schedule
As August approached each year, I was the teacher who began to think and plan for the coming school year. I watched the weekend ads for the latest sales and...
Coaching Minute: Back Pocket Questions
In this Coaching Minute video, Heather Rader shares the power of back-pocket questions in building rapport with teachers and administrators. A transcript is available below the player. In the book...
Picture It: Pinterest for Professional Development
This fall we are trying a new way to organize how we share professional readings and videos for our professional development sessions. We are creating text sets of professional readings/videos/blog...
Days of Magic and Wonder: Generating Research Topics with First Graders
mag·ic (noun) -- Encarta Dictionary conjuring tricks -- conjuring tricks and illusions that make apparently impossible things seem to happen, usually performed as entertainment inexplicable things -- a special, mysterious,...
Coaching Minute: Wait for the “In”
In this brief video, Heather Rader shares her strategies for getting into classrooms of teachers who may be hesitant about inviting visits from coaches. A transcript is available below the...
Assessing Students: Many Hands for a Lighter Load
Many of our informative assessments are administered individually. The benefit of these assessments is the opportunity they provide to notice which reading strategies each student uses, what the child comprehends,...
Phasing in New Initiatives: Keep the Baby!
Laura, a literacy coach, came to the first coaches' meeting of the year with a glum look on her face. With just a little prodding, she told her story. The...
10 Steps to a Literacy Vision
Being forward-looking—envisioning exciting possibilities and enlisting others in a shared view of the future—is the attribute that most distinguishes leaders from non-leaders. ...
Alignment and Community: Planning a Year of Professional Development Opportunities
The role of the leader is to enable, facilitate, and cause peers to interact in a focused manner. Peer interaction is the social glue of focus and cohesion. Michael Fullan...
Turning “Unfortunate” into Good Fortune
Recently I sent an email to an administrator that went to everyone in the school. It was an email regarding the strengths and needs of teachers. Although I scrutinize every...
Picture It: A Soothing Workspace
This year I want to be more mindful about my workspace -- to use the space to help my work instead of hinder it. In my job as a principal,...
Coaching Minute: Writing Objectives
Heather Rader explains why it is important to write an objective before any professional development meeting, and shares a succinct example. While I’m comfortable writing objectives for the classrooms...
Reading to Students
Three times a year, I offer to be a guest reader in each of the 25 classrooms in our K-5 elementary school where I am the principal. I am quite...
Speaking to Adults Through Books
When I had a child who worried about being different from her playmates, I curled up and read The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. Maya summed up the story...
Coaching Minute: The Power of Rehearsal
Heather Rader guides a novice coach by sharing the power of rehearsal before leading professional development sessions. A transcript is provided below the player. My colleague Samantha Munnecke and I...
Improvement Plan
Maria taught sixth-grade language arts in the middle school where I was an assistant principal. When I first came to the building, my principal warned me about Maria. “She’s struggling,”...
Coaching the Coach
I believe “Every teacher deserves a coach.” I believe that every teacher deserves to work in warm collaboration with a trusted colleague, looking closely at her practice or thinking deeply...
Introducing the Writing Common Core Standards: Planning for Professional Development
When I began to plan for how introducing the Common Core State Standards in Writing with a key group of leaders in our district, I kept these words of wisdom...
Opinion Exchange: A Workshop Activity for Study Groups
What do new teachers need to keep them going that difficult first year? In our first session with new teachers in October, our room was filled with the stories of...
Personal Conferring Notebooks
How do you effectively and efficiently share formative assessment data between the teachers providing different types of instructional support when the population of students receiving extra instructional support exceeds more...
Introducing the Common Core Standards in Writing (Part 2)
Facilitating big-picture professional development in writing for teacher leaders takes careful time and planning to make the best use of everyone’s time. We began our morning with this objective: “We...
