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Leadership 101: Knowing When to Step Back
My school literacy team met last week. The literacy team includes specialists and grade-level team leaders. The agenda was a typical one: Our media specialist shared new books available in...
Learning from Students
I have long known that a teacher can render, ruin, or restore a child’s love of reading and writing. On the “ruin” side of things, I think of my brother,...
Reflection and Growth with New Teachers
As a teacher leader with the Teacher Mentor Program in my district, I shared Charlotte Danielson’s P-T-R-A cycle with new teachers and their mentors. P-T-R-A stands for Plan, Teach, Reflect,...
Creating a Healthy Classroom Culture the First Week of School
Teachers are lucky: we get two New Year’s Days when we get to celebrate and make resolutions for a fresh start. The most important one, of course, is the unofficial...
Preparing to Model Writing Workshop
Of all the work I do as a coach, I continue to believe modeling makes the biggest difference in transforming instructional practices. I used to spend hours secluded in my...
Finding Purpose in Coaching with Organized Notes
The first two years of my coaching career were fun, and a lot of time was spent on building relationships, but I am not sure we accomplished as much as...
Literacy Learning and Parent Teacher Organizations
Soon after I began my work as an elementary principal, I had a conversation with a group of parents that seemed baffling at the time. It was during our monthly...
Compass Points and Collaboration
Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success. ...
Repurposing a Classroom Library for Coaching and Intervention: Hooking Reluctant Readers in Grades 3-5
When I found out that I’d be moving into the new position of literacy coach and third-grade intervention teacher next year, my first thought was What am I going to...
Collaborative Conferring
Earlier in the year I was asked by a group of kindergarten teachers how they might be able to streamline the process of organizing the notes from their student conferences...
A Secret to Successful Teacher-Coach Relationships
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. Thomas Jefferson When...
Guess Who’s Coming? Planning an Author Visit
I was following a trail of students to the cafeteria. A smile formed when I noticed heads turning to glance at a countdown calendar. Excitement had been building day by...
Rubrics and Muggles: Common Frameworks and Instructional Coaching
My son is obsessed with Harry Potter. It started with an introduction by his older cousins to the first movie and has snowballed from there. He has taken to putting...
Climbing Gordon’s Ladder with New Teachers
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. Maya Angelou As a teacher leader for the Teacher Mentor Program, I worked...
Planning for a Year of Study Groups
Sustainable improvement can never be done to or even for teachers. It can only ever be achieved by and with them. Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan As a literacy...
Teacher Blogs in the Digital World
All the teachers in our Introduction to Digital Writing class agreed that being digital writers themselves would help them incorporate technology into their classrooms. Some were even interested in creating...
Coaching Boundaries: Do You Have Any?
Time is the resource on which we’ve relied to get more accomplished. When there’s more to do, we invest more hours. But time is finite, and many of us feel...
Planning Classroom Visits: Organizing Purposefully
For instructional coaches and principals, opportunities to visit classrooms and observe learning and teaching are critical. As a principal, I knew I needed a plan so I could make the...
The Writing Process Revisited
Melanie is one of those super-organized teachers. Her classroom has labeled, color-coded book bins arranged in alphabetical order on the bookshelves (fiction: red, informational: blue, poetry: yellow). Her students all...
Taking a Fresh Look at PLCs
These days, the initialism PLC is so common in teaching vernacular that it is almost to the point of being cliche. But what does it really mean? What does a...
You Are Not My Mentor
Sociologists and psychologists have long observed our deep desire to participate in reciprocal behavior. The fact that humans feel obligated to return favors has been documented in virtually all societies...
