Being a leader is not easy. Leaders must be steadfast during the storm and be able to remain standing through thick and thin. I was lucky enough to spend some time this summer on a beach building sandcastles with my children. As we built our castle, I was reflected upon my own work as an … More 5 Ways Leadership is Like Building a Sandcastle
Leadership teams spend hours and hours each school year looking at assessment data. Data will help teachers and administrators target individual students and standards for intervention. However, assessment data is only part of the picture. There is a wide variety of data out there that needs to be analyzed in order to truly transform schools … More 5 Pieces of Data Your Leadership Team Should Be Analyzing
Edtech is a multi-billion dollar business. Edtech purchases have increased 5 times over the past five years. However, are these purchases actually doing students any good where it counts? Are they actually benefitting students in the classroom? As a technology in schools advocate, I urge all educators to carefully research and purchase devices and programs … More 5 Ways To Smartly Purchase Educational Technology
IEP meetings are some of the most important facets of an educator’s job. Ensuring that appropriate placement and services are being provided for some our most at-risk students should always be a top priority. It is vital that these meetings are productive, collaborative, and student focused. Sadly, too often these meetings get derailed by emotions, … More Five Ways To Ensure Your Next IEP Meeting Runs Smoothly
Conducting classroom walk-throughs (CWTs) is not a new concept. Educators have been walking through classrooms, gauging instructional practices for years. Unfortunately, CWTs are often conducted due to mandates from downtown and not from the internal desire to improve educational practices. Administrators go through the motions of walking through without the school getting the benefits of … More 5 Ways to Make Classroom Walk-Throughs More Powerful
As we come to the end of another year, it is time once again to think about the changes we will make in the next 12 months. The world of education is changing rapidly. However, there are still many areas that need to be addressed. Here are five educational practices we need to say goodbye … More 5 Educational Concepts We Need To Eliminate In 2017
Schools across the country are creating intervention plans for students. However, most of these plans fall short and are just mere shells of what they could and should be. Schools are spending thousands of dollars and wasting precious time implementing plans that simply do not work, further frustrating students, teachers and parents. Students are still … More 5 Ways to Create a Powerful Response to Intervention Plan
We often talk about the need to differentiate instruction to meet the diverse needs of students. Rarely, do we speak of differentiating teacher professional development to meet the diverse needs of teachers. Teachers, like their students, are in different places in their careers. They have different skills sets as well as different areas of strength … More 5 Ways to Differentiate Professional Development for Teachers
Assessments are useless unless you do something with the data. It is not enough to administer assessments to students and then create colorful graphs and charts that display the data. Data must be filtered down in order to see trends, outliers, areas of opportunity, and areas of strength. Overall all percentage numbers are just a … More Five Ways to Filter Assessment Data
A 2015 National Center of Education Statistics survey on teacher attrition found that about 15% of all teachers leave the profession within five years. A 2015 NPR article states that nearly half of all teachers will leave the school they are currently at, with rates being higher in high-poverty schools. This rate of attrition is … More 5 Ways To Improve Teacher Retention
