Duality of Reason

So, it’s been about one year since my last post.  There are always a good reason for doing things, but in the end, they all come up as excuses.  For the past year, I have been teaching in the classroom again after being an instructional technology coach for six years.  It was daunting. I was …

Productive Student Struggle

So, I’m about four weeks into the new year after being out of the classroom for six years.  I can tell the honeymoon is over. As an Instructional Designer, I had noticed for years the Teacher aversion to including productive struggle into their lessons.  It wasn’t until now, that I understand why. Sir Ken Robinson …

Shifting to Situated Learning

In education, we are constantly being bombarded with the idea of Innovation; of shifting the paradigm from traditional classrooms to the new.  We've seen George Couros constantly write in his blog about shifting from a Fixed-mindset through a Growth-mindset to an Innovator Mindset.   One of his contemporaries, Katie Martin, writes about developing that mindset by …

Student Created Questions

Something that I have latched onto in my time in education (20+ years), is that students struggle with asking questions.  Everyone thinks they can ask a question, until they are put on the spot and required to produce a deeply thinking, open-ended, complex question.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of the questions asked by students are …

Building Trust with Students

So, it's the beginning of the school year.  How do we build trust with our students?  With peers, you talk chit-chat to get to know them.  When instructional coaches are working with teachers you take the 20-2 approach (2-minute conversations about non-work related items, 20 days in a row).  But what about students? This year, …

Respectful Student and Teacher Relationships

The power that comes from building strong respectful relationships between students and teachers cannot be overstated.  I am spending the first week of my school year, getting to know my students and let them get to know me.  There is power there.  Many people think that students will do what is asked of them without …

1st Day Back to Class

So after six years as an instructional coach, I've jumped back into the classroom full time.  I'm not going to mince words.  It kicked my butt.  After six years of sitting side-by-side with teachers and coaching them, I just realized that the verb in that was "sitting."  Wow, how I had forgotten my style of …