Jennifer D. Klein, the author of, “Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership: Doing Right by Learners Without Losing Your Job,” shares the need for leaders to support teachers who frequently struggle with false dichotomies like knowledge vs skills or play vs academics. Teachers and leaders often feel isolated and threatened in their efforts to prioritize […]

The author of “Purposeful Educator Connections,” Marcela Andrés, explores strategies to deepen relationships with students, stay connected to your educator purpose, and improve classroom culture. She provides 5 Key Principles that empower teachers to build trust, inspire learning, and transform classroom environments. Find Marcela’s book, “Purposeful Educator Connection” here. Visit the designEDegagement website here. Subscribe […]

“Phrasing and posing a good question can be just as complex and difficult as the process of answering. It involves critical, creative, and reflective thinking from both students and educators.” (Erik Francis) As the author of Inquiring Minds Want to Learn: Posing Good Questions to Promote Student Inquiry, Erik Francis explores strategies for how questions […]

Classrooms with less monologue and more dialogue are key to increasing student thinking and student learning. Peter Liljedahl recommends teachers using a strategy that publicly, randomly groups students. The students visually seeing the groups form is an important element.  When having these random groups work at easy erase vertical boards, engagement and thinking increases. Students […]

Mastery-oriented learners are motivated by building competency. They are intrinsically motivated rather than driven by extrinsic rewards or by fear of punishment. Mastery-oriented learners want to learn for the sake of learning rather than for grades or teacher or parent approval and believe that ability is changeable. Mastery-oriented learners believe that failure is part of […]

Heather Kenny, an experienced teacher and teacher educator of literacy, shares purposes and strategies for building student skills in phonemic awareness. She examines the mental process that leads to storing words for immediate and effortless retrieval. Heather explores her experience with students who had word recognition problems that connected to deficits in phonemic awareness skills. […]