One of my greatest challenges as a building administrator is balancing my passion for instructional coaching with my role as evaluator. Our teacher evaluation model, while weighted down with cumbersome mathematics and documentation, offers a valuable opportunity to interact with teachers on authentic work impacting their classrooms. Below are the four factors present in the most successful interactions:

I am very excited to share the following guest blog post by art teacher, Anne Kukitz. As a classroom teacher, I often wondered, “What would an art teacher think about the artistic advice I am giving my students?” Below is Anne’s answer to that very question. Fact: Visuals are processed by the human brain 60,000 times faster than text. Therefore, visuals can be a super effective form of communication.  Since tribal times, people have used visuals to communicate with one another when spoken language was a barrier. Today’s world is heavily reliant on visual culture and knowing how to communicate a message or idea, visually, is an asset to 21st…

We spend a lot of time in meetings. Not just scheduled meetings, but encounters – drop ins, hallway conversations, even e-mail exchanges. While these moments themselves become commonplace due to quantity, we cannot underestimate their impact on our work. This month, I was part of some extremely productive meetings. I realize that statement itself sounds like an oxymoron, but I speak the truth. Each meeting had the potential to become contentious. I recognized the rarity of each of these situations and found myself tuned in to the dynamics of the encounter. Thus, I present 3 steps to winning a meeting:

As with many teachers, my only experience with assessments came from my experience taking them as a student. Upon reflection, I can say with confidence, that my personal assessment experience is not rooted in best practice. However, with little else to go on, why not stick with the most comfortable and readily available resources? Over the last two years, I was forced to think critically about my beliefs related to assessment. I assisted with the revision of elementary common assessments and soon after began working in a middle school with a principal passionate about reforming assessment and grading practices. While calling assessment one of my passions would be a stretch,…

When teachers prepare for a research project, the first step in the process is often, “pick a topic.” Early in my teaching career, that is exactly how I would begin. I would assign a topic or let students choose one out of a hat. Then, I would carefully design an elaborate step by step process for students to follow and lead them to a well intentioned, but ultimately trivial, final product.  Essentially, I was asking students to move rocks. They would look up their topic in books or online, write their facts on a poster, website, slide, etc. and then I would grade their work. Where was the thinking? So,…