Since last spring, I’ve had the opportunity to ask well over 1000 educators what their vision is for the graduate they hope to produce. I’ve asked them what their vision is of the professional they hope to become as well. The answers I’ve received have been varied of course, but these are some of the things I’ve heard over and over and over again: We want our students to be inquisitive about the world and…
I think this is a critical guiding question for every educator in New York State right now, particularly those who are facilitating work with the Common Core Learning Standards, APPR, inquiry teams, and assessment design. If ever there were a time when mindfulness would take a back seat to panic and job satisfaction would be sacrificed to perceptions about imposed mandates, that time would be now. We run the risk of losing some incredibly talented…
In addition to sharing as much as I can about my work with the CCLS inside of schools this year, I’m also taking more time to reveal the workings of the WNY Young Writers’ Studio over here. Studio is a writing community comprised of teachers and writers of grades 1-12. We also identify mentors within our program who are interested in becoming teachers themselves one day, and we provide them opportunities to learn and apply…
This week, I’m sharing out some of the processes I’ve used to help teachers build a fluency with the Common Core Learning Standards. First, I returned to the importance of vision and the call for strategic plans that support the work of Race to the Top while remaining aligned to it. Then, I shared a creative strategy for assessing what teachers may already know about the standards and where their needs might be prior to…
In order to mine a standard’s true meaning, you typically have to unwrap it a bit. The purpose of this work is to distinguish the standard’s explicit and implicit meaning. Implicit meaning? Aren’t standards supposed to be articulated with precision? Well, that’s the hope, but even the best standards require skillful interpretation. This is informed by the professional conversations that we have with others and the expertise we are all willing to share. For instance,…
At first glance it might seem like we are doing this already, but teaching confidently with the CCLS challenges us to understand them with depth. Glancing at the standards is what we do when we say we are reviewing the standards….exposing ourselves to the standards….. or introducing the standards to teachers. Developing a fluency with the standards? Well, that’s a whole other ball game. This week, I’ll try to share as much as I can…
Last week, I began sharing some of the thinking and work that I’m doing relevant to Race to the Top. As I began facilitating sessions with teachers and administrators last spring, my entry point wasn’t curriculum, instruction, or assessment. It was mind-set. First, we defined our vision of the graduate that we hoped to shape and our vision of the teachers we hoped to become as well. Then, we tried to imagine what could happen…
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…
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…