Several of the districts I am working with have a policy that requires teachers to set yearly professional growth goals. I have spent time with building and district leaders examining how to maximize the return on investment in these plans. How can administrators support teacher learning and change as a payoff leading to increased student […]

I had the opportunity to have three podcast conversations with Tom Hoerr, the author of The Formative Five. In my first podcast, Student Success Skills Part 1, and second podcast, Part 2, Tom identified the importance of five critical success skills and how engaging students in understanding and developing these skills can change mindsets and […]

Many school leadership teams will be meeting during the summer or just before the start of the next school year to create plans for educator learning that can impact student learning. Many teachers and administrators will spend some time this summer attending professional learning workshops.  A report from the Learning Policy Institute (June 2017) by […]

This is the third of three blogs illustrating how coaches can apply the backwards process of connecting the desired student learning production behaviors to the teacher behaviors/practices/strategies that can generate those behaviors. This post focuses on the coach working with an entire school staff. The previous blogs considered coaches working with individual teachers and PLCs, […]

Planning backwards from student desired outcomes eventually leads to identifying teachers’ needs for understanding or learning. I suggest that as teachers study student work and assessments in a PLC, the question, “What do students need us to learn?” emerges. I believe that as teachers we are doing everything we can to have students reach mastery […]

My learning and teaching experiences have influenced me to favor opportunities for mixing age and learning levels in classrooms. Let’s go way, way back in my learning history. In 1956, I entered first grade (no kindergarten was offered) at the same one room school that my mother had attended. While she completed grades 1-8 there, […]