What does it mean to Race to the Top? Ensuring that students leave schools prepared for college and career is the ultimate goal of course, and as a Network Equivalent Team member in an urban school district, it was tempting to get the race to that top underway as quickly and painlessly as possible. It seems there is a lot of work to do over the next four years. The same is true in other…
This: And what conditions create people who act like this? These videos punctuated early conversations I had with teachers and leaders relevant to Race to the Top.They prompted the articulation of some important beliefs: RTTT will be translated differently inside of every system it lives in. We believe that all teachers have a vision of the difference they want to make and distinct expertise that must be mined in service to kids. We can choose…
Pythagoras suggested that the beginning is the half of everything. Anyone who has been facilitating ELA work around the Common Core Learning Standards this fall knows this, because David Coleman makes reference to it here as he focuses on powerful ways to begin the act of reading. Pythagoras was clearly on to something, and I can’t help but think that the way we begin the work of Race to the Top will be worth half…
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…
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…
Today’s post is the second in a series relevant to the learning that has transpired in Lockport teacher Heather Bitka’s kindergarten classroom this spring. I introduced Heather in this post. The prologue to this learning experience, which explains our work as co-learners with greater depth, can be found here. This post speaks to the common questions that began provoking us right from the start and what the adults involved hoped the kindergarteners would know and…
When I first became a professional development provider, much of what I was capable of doing was limited to speaking engagements, short-term projects, and workshops. I worked on a team that served over 25 different school districts, each comprised of multiple buildings. I was one of two literacy specialists in my department. Resources were tight. Time was tighter. I knew I had a lot to learn, and I knew that if I were ever going…
Reflective Journaling Enables Learners to Assess Their Needs As a teacher, when I began my own search for self-advocacy protocols, strategies, and processes, my efforts led me to countless books, articles, and experts whose focus was largely on the field of special education and on what parents and teachers could do to help classified learners speak to their needs and protect their rights. I know that this is important work, and in fact, as I’ve…