Parent, educator, and author Heather Lyon shares her learning and personal experiences in generating needed compliant responses at home and encouraging deeper engagement in learning at home and beyond.  You are certain to connect with her parent/child scenarios. Visit Heather’s website here. Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit […]

While researching for a professional development session that I am facilitating on relational pedagogy, I found this diagram titled, “Who do I want to be during COVID 19.” I thought that it is a valuable reference for reflecting on one’s personal status and identifying how your colleagues, students and parents are responding. The Fear Zone […]

In a recent zoom conversation, around the topic of peer coaching, the common concern about the need for trust emerged. It is frequently stated as, “We don’t have the trust among the staff that is needed for people to engage in ‘real’ peer coaching.” A similar concern often emerges when exploring professional learning communities, “Teachers […]

This post initially appeared on Jim Knight’s Instructional Coaching site in August 2020. Throughout my career I have always been frustrated by school, district, or state requirements that are supposedly designed for progress or improvement but in actuality are a paper chase. Frequently on the list of such policies are Professional Growth Plans (PGPs). In […]

As the new school year begins, one of the usual requests that administrators will make of teachers is to submit a professional growth plan. While this process occurs differently from system to system this should be a year where teachers have so many possibilities to consider that they may need coaching guidance in selecting a […]

I recently produced the short video below to initiate conversations among teachers, coaches and administrators regarding ways for teachers to work in co-teaching settings. Sean Cassel in How to Choose a Co-Teaching Model: Knowing the pros and cons of the six models of co-teaching can help teachers determine which one is best for a given […]