Lead Lit Topic: Professional Development Tools
Whether you’re looking for something as simple as the perfect icebreaker, or a plan for a full-day in-service session for 100 teachers at many grade levels, this is where we share our tried and trusted tips for successful professional development sessions.
Results
Coaching Minute: The Importance of Norms
In this first installment about norms for professional learning, Ruth Ayres shares the reason why norms are important.
Bite-Sized PD
As an instructional coach, I sometimes worry how I’m going to continue to meaningfully share the aspects of new resources to support our frameworks. Recently we've been learning to add...
Three Books that Changed How I Teach and Think About Reading
My school is going through a renovation. Although most of my supplies were boxed up and moved to storage in the building, one set of items I brought home from...
One Powerful Way to Improve Your Strategic Plan
What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence. —Daniel Kahneman, psychologist, Nobel Laureate, and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow Strategic plans are as common in schools...
Five Business Books Every Leader Should Read
My reading life consists of an eclectic mix of books, and I have found that business books often provide valuable guidance for my school leadership. These lessons have been applicable to...
Resisting the Scripted Curriculum
During my classroom visits, one of the 4K teachers wanted to share some of her students’ writing with me. “Check out what Brooklyn can do.” She pulled a paper from...
Three Expectations Regarding Grammar Instruction
Anyone who has ever sat at a desk with an open grammar book and 10 sentences to perform a rote task like identifying the subject, the subordinate clause, or the...
Summer Work: Absorb the World
“I feel so much pressure to revamp the curriculum this summer,” one teacher leader said. “I know. I want to throw out what we’ve always been doing and think about...
Welcome Slides Set Professional Learning in Motion
The beginning of staff meetings was normally a flurry of activity, getting set up, checking in with colleagues, and passing out any materials while the hubbub of catching up and...
Wrapping Up the School Year: Start, Stop, Keep
In no year—a year testing our limits with challenges, grief, and loss—has it been more important to reflect on our time with students and determine next steps for how we...
Soft Starts to Meetings That Build Empathy
The most meaningful professional development opportunities we’ve had have been ones where we’ve learned effective practices to use with kids by doing the work of a reader or writer ourselves....
Virtual Icebreakers: Part 1
In a world of algorithms, hashtags and followers, know the importance of human connection. —Mama Tribe Marketplace I hit the Leave button on the screen, feeling incomplete about the meeting...
Insight Before PD
Our students are not going to outgrow us. We have to become better if we want them to be better. Cornelius Minor In my role as an English language...
Harnessing the Power of Change
Camping, real camping, the kind with tents and sleeping bags and stiff backs . . . I don’t really know why I subject myself and my two young sons, Ben and...
Trending Hashtags: Finding Priorities in a Unit of Study
Outside of trust, getting to a goal that matters is arguably the most critical element for any coaching relationship. The goal has to be powerful and student focused, and it...
Hidden Gems: Five Ways to Keep Your Positive Vibes
Use your smile to change the world. Don’t let the world change your smile.—Unknown How do you keep yourself so positive in your coaching role? This question has been posed...
Creating Savory Professional Development
Ralph Fletcher shares in Joy Write, “Play in writing is not just a nice idea—it’s essential.” Amy Krouse Rosenthal imagined that the perfect fiction writer has a “penchant for collaboration...
There You Are
If you live near deciduous trees, you've probably seen, when the leaves fall, squirrels’ nests lodged high in a V formed where a large branch meets a tree’s trunk. Every...
Classroom Library Reflection
I once read an article where the author proclaimed that everyone should read 50 pages of a novel before abandoning it. However, after you turn 50, the writer insisted, you...
Jump Right In and Other Lessons Learned from Remote Coaching
Sit side by side. Read the room. Choose a meeting spot that works best for the teacher. All of these practical coaching tips, gathered over the years and put into...
Forces of Nature
Image from Force of Nature the earth spinning in orbit With precision, speed, and grace Mother Nature has her grip upon it un-balancing the forces in the vast open...
