What is your vision of the graduate you hope to shape? What is your vision of the professional you will become? Envision your students at the very top of their game. Envision retiring at the very top of yours. What will this look like? How will you know when you’ve arrived? How can you maximize every learning opportunity that you are given in service to this vision? And what will happen if you begin the…
It depends on your perspective, I guess. We can treat Race to the Top as a mandate. We can make it our holy grail. We can bend dramatically under the weight of an agenda we don’t understand and break ourselves and the vision that we had of the teacher we would be–of the difference we would make—against this invisible wall. We can qualify the steps we take in pursuit of this vision with hot-headed criticisms…
What makes this powerful? And this? And this? For that matter, what makes most persuasive writing powerful? Story does. No one is saying that narrative writing has jumped the shark. Not even this guy. More importantly, I don’t think we have the right to take narrative writing away from kids. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for expository writing and engaging kids in the development of argumentative pieces. I agree with David Coleman: we don’t…
So, a few weeks ago, Paul Thompson from Shmoop approached me, interested in sharing a sample of what they have to offer right here on my blog. Shmoop is a great place to begin exploring new topics and pieces of literature. Recently, fellows of the WNY Young Writers’ Studio took Shmoop to Shakespeare in Delaware Park via their iPads, where they could access summaries of each of act of the Merchant of Venice, revisit character…
The WNY Young Writers’ Studio opens it’s fourth season in just two weeks at the Kenan Center in Lockport. Sessions are also held at Union East Elementary School in Cheektowaga, New York. Last night, our crew of mentors and tech intern Andrew Toney spent the evening reviewing our curricula, evaluating iPad apps, and learning how to provide high quality feedback to elementary writers. Next week, I’ll be meeting with the teachers who will be joining…
On Tuesday of this week, I was invited to attend a Board of Education meeting at Wellsville Central School to share a bit about the professional learning opportunities I’ve begun to facilitate there. As my description of the year’s events drew to a close, members of the Board opened a thoughtful conversation about sustainability, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciated this. It wasn’t the fact that members of a BOE were…
June is my favorite month on the calendar. I get to spend these weeks bringing closure to the work that was done during the school year, working with teams to evaluate our progress and set new goals, and most importantly, celebrating all that has been accomplished and all that I have learned from the incredible (truly they are) teachers and coaches and administrators and students I get to work with throughout the year. It’s been…
This is the sixth and final post in a series about research and writing in Heather Bitka’s kindergarten classroom. To learn more about this project’s purpose and outcomes, you might want to read the first post. If you are interested in understanding how this project enabled the teachers and coaches involved to position themselves as learners, you can click through to the second post. The third post demonstrates the beginning of instruction, where researchers applied…
This post is the fifth in a series about research and writing in Heather Bitka’s kindergarten classroom. To learn more about this project’s purpose and outcomes, you might want to read the first post. If you are interested in understanding how this project enabled the teachers and coaches involved to position themselves as learners, you can click through to the second post. This post demonstrates the beginning of instruction, where researchers applied strategies that helped…
This post is the fourth in a series about research and writing in Heather Bitka’s kindergarten classroom. To learn more about this project’s purpose and outcomes, you might want to read the first post. If you are interested in understanding how this project enabled the teachers and coaches involved to position themselves as learners, you can click through to the second post. This post demonstrates the beginning of instruction, where researchers applied strategies that helped…