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The Other Foundational Reading Skills
Cognition is but one factor in reading achievement, and test scores are but one indicator of how student readers develop. — Peter Afflerbach I didn’t truly become a reader until...
Tips for Hosting a Student Teacher
Watching my youngest daughter work on her undergraduate degree in education reminded me how important it is to open my classroom door. Hearing her talk about the students and teachers...
Five Picture Books to Spark Teacher Wellness
How are you…really? Lately, I’ve been asking this question, coined from Jenna Kutcher’s new book, of myself and of the teachers I work with. While we might be tempted to...
Library Choices for All: Providing Activities for Every Student
It’s a typical day in my library, and the students have finished checking out books. Today we read Unplugged by Steve Antony. The book is about a robot who gets...
Rethinking Flow in the ELA Classroom
My superpower in junior high school was reading. I couldn’t keep track of my assignments. Homework was a nightly battle. But if you gave me a book I wanted to...
Design for the Edges: Strategies for Supporting Unique Readers and Writers
One of the symptoms of my ADHD could be described as “promiscuous reading”: jumping around from one half-read book to the next. For example, I started the novella Mapping the...
Professional Math Resources for Right Now
My student teacher from last year sent a text this summer asking me, “Do you have any good recommendations for math professional development books that I should put on my...
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...
Fixer of Everything
Fixer of Everything. This is what the nameplate reads on the cabinet behind my small-group desk. I placed it there after a colleague gifted it to me on a random...
When They’re Hard to Teach
Nathan sits down at the table and begins to read from his collection of familiar texts. He’s strategic. He grabs the easiest books he can from his pile. As we...
Back-to-School Coaching Reflection Survey
We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. —John Dewey I vividly remember the last day of school during my first year of teaching. I had...
The Joy of Learning Something New (or How Trying Something New I Totally Stank at Helped Increase My Understanding of the Learning Process)
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment I decided I wanted to play roller derby. It could have been while growing up in the '80s and seeing the over-the-top derby...
Shopping in Your Own House: Searching Our Own Teaching Practice for New Ideas
Sometimes when you’re looking for an answer, you search everywhere else before you take a look at what’s right in front of you. —Dean Hughes While I was eating in...
Changing Positions? How to Rethink Your Community (Download)
“How are you?” I asked the teacher as I walked into the hallway where she was looking at art on the wall. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m switching to...
Five Books to End the Year Coaching Strong
Instructional coaches have many tools in their coaching toolboxes to support teacher learning and reflection: sticky notes, chart paper, anchor charts, conversational protocols, templates, and more. But my favorite coaching...
Coaching for All
I am part of an online principals’ forum with tens of thousands of members. Not long ago, someone posed the following question. I’ve removed all identifying details but kept the...
They Don’t Know High-Frequency Words
The team gathers around the table with their stacks of writing, and teachers sort their stacks into three piles. The middle stack is the writing that seems to be right...
Flipping Negative Stressors
One summer, in a frigid conference room in suburban Florida, I stood in front of a room full of educators to discuss how to manage the stresses of being an...
How Do Literacy Leaders Supervise and Support Online Instruction?
In our district, we have been talking about reentry in the fall for months now. How many kids can we physically have in the school? Will students need to wear...
Developing Literacy Traditions and Rituals
On Saturdays during the spring, summer, and fall, my family and I like to go to the farmers’ market. It’s just down the street at the city park, one block...
Second Chances
In professional conversations, we have a finite amount of time to say what we want to say. Our turn lasts only so long, right? Meetings, conferences, and presentations require back-and-forth...
