Research reinforces that teachers providing feedback to students that demonstrates the teacher’s belief in the students’ abilities (high expectations) can generate student learning behaviors that positively impact student’s success. Additional teacher actions such as active listening, knowing them individually, celebrating, and being accessible are additional teacher actions that support high expectations. In many ways those […]

Dr. Mark Wilson, a past national principal of the year and a current coach to school leaders, shares insights and strategies from his new book, “What They Didn’t Teach You in Fancy Leadership School.” Mark addresses team building, communication, and expectations. He highlights the many similarities among the roles of teachers, instructional coaches, and principals. Leaders […]

In the last week I had the opportunity to provide an introduction to peer coaching to secondary teachers in North Dakota and Istanbul, Turkey. The sessions included defining peer coaching, identifying the costs and payoffs to teachers, modeling pre-conferences, having participants conduct pre-conferences with a colleague and modeling an entire coaching cycle with a teacher’s […]