Listen. You don’t get to teach the kids you prefer to teach. You don’t get to pick the ones who meet your ideal. That isn’t who you were hired to serve. You were hired to serve the kids who walk through your door each day. Want to help them? Watch them. Listen to them. Think about them. Create for them. Let them create for you and for others. Teach them, and quit comparing them to…
…..is happening over here today. Join us!
“…simply treating formative assessment as a series of more frequent mini-assessments misses the point about its value to learning – a value that is rooted in theory and research. At a time of unprecedented opportunity, it is regrettable that roles of the teacher and the student in enabling learning are not at the center of current thinking about formative assessment within the proposed next-generation assessment systems. This may well result in a lost opportunity to…
This year, WNY Young Writers’ Studio writers and teachers have taken a deeper interest in blogging for personal or educational purposes. A handful of us have been blogging for a while, and others are eager to begin. In an effort to supplement what we do face-to-face and enable others who may not be a part of Studio to connect with our community a bit, I’ve decided to host a blogging boot camp right here on…
It’s been interesting, what I’ve learned about the schools and the kids and the teachers that I’ve worked with since I’ve made walk-throughs a fundamental part of planning professional learning experiences and assessing the impact that the work might be having. Might is an important word. I began asking to walk through buildings and visit classrooms prior to beginning staff development a couple of years ago, when I realized that I needed more information before…
One of my friends retired recently, and while we were out celebrating her new future, she got to thinking about the number of kids she taught during her thirty year career. Her estimated total hovered somewhere around 3500, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she still remembered every student’s name, where they went on to work or learn or play later in life, and what their favorite books were. She was this kind of teacher,…
A few weeks ago, I was invited to share the progress of a curriculum design and mapping initiative I am facilitating in a local district with the members of the Western New York Middle School Principals’ group at their monthly luncheon. As I began planning for this conversation, I was tempted to focus on the driving forces behind this work, the processes that we’re using, and the core map that we’ve recently drafted. This isn’t…
When I was in the classroom, I had the hardest time facing the end of the year. There was so much more I wanted to be able to learn with my students and there were so many things left to create and so many questions left unanswered. Don’t get me wrong: the days moved slowly at times for sure, but the years always flew right by us. I often found myself chasing after the loose…
Here’s a quick shout-out to the fellows of the WNY Young Writers’ Studio who are participating in NaNoWriMo this year and posting updates in our ning each day! We’re at 13, 542 words as a group and on track to hit our target word counts for this month. What’s NaNoWriMo? How can you or your students participate? Drop by their home page for young writers and check it out. There are some great resources available…
….the domain of the National Writing Project and under investigation at their new website, which offers news, resources, and spaces for conversations to unfold. Go see!