Lead Lit Topic: Getting Organized
Getting Organized
Results
Coaching Minute: Principals and the Change Process
Principal Lee Snider talks about the change process with teachers.
The Power of a Confession: What Readers Really Do
Wait time can totally be the worst. Or maybe I should revise that sentence to say that 24 years into teaching, I am still impatient with silence. Two weeks ago,...
Teacher to Literacy Coach Transition
Literacy coaches Cathy Mere and Kelly Hoenie talk about the transition from being a teacher to becoming a coach.
Virtual Icebreakers: Maintaining Human Connection (Part 2)
In a world of algorithms, hashtags and followers, know the importance of human connection. —Mama Tribe Marketplace If you are looking for ways to inspire teachers to think outside the...
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...
Plan It, Don’t Wing It
Plan it. Don’t wing it. I drive by this message daily, posted in big, bold print across a billboard. This message is brought to us by a local bank with...
Defining Through Experience
The topic for our professional development: providing feedback to our students to help them persevere through any complex task. Up to this point in the year, our staff had experienced...
How Teacher Evaluation Can Support School-Wide Change
Can we leverage teacher evaluation systems to support school-wide change? For example, if our goal is an effective and engaging ELA curriculum, in what ways might formal observations help implementation?...
Listening and Learning from Literature
As a child, I lived in a world where everyone shared the same skin color, and I never questioned my place in the world. I lived in a world where...
From a Coaching Vision to a Coaching Menu
I first heard the whispering of literacy coaching back in my very first year of teaching. The gifted and talented teacher worked with a few of my students each week,...
Measure for Measure
Measure in love. —Jonathan Larson (from the musical Rent) I remember the first time we took Liam to the pediatrician. After the waiting and the weighing and measuring and prodding...
Saying No
Before leaving work, I sat down to review the various meetings I'd attended and the tasks I'd done that day, jotting a few notes and follow-up emails I needed to...
Maintenance as Leadership
Every August, a calendar event reminds me to check for hornets' nests on the playground. I go outside and investigate each slide, swing set, and jungle gym, sometimes kicking equipment...
Coaching in a Time of Crisis
The other day I got online to see a post from an educational leader in which he shared 10 learning practices to avoid in remote teaching. The list was 10...
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...
Have Coach, Will Travel
I have a confession to make: I secretly pine for the beautiful literacy coaches' spaces that I see on social media and wish that I could re-create them for the...
Coaching in PLCs
In our last fourth-grade PLC meeting we had tackled the first two questions, “What do we want students to learn?” and “How will we know they learned it?” Standards had...
Coaching Minute: New Coaches and Principals
Principal Lee Snider talks about the importance of being intentional in integrating new coaches into the school community.
Student Moves
Students move in and out of our schools all the time. Families are transient, and their kids go with them—down the street, across town, across the state, across the country....
Coaching Minute: Good Communication Between Coaches and Principals
Principal Lee Snider talks with literacy coach Lora Bieghler about developing a rapport when a coach is new to the building.
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...
