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, … Continue reading Building Trust with Students
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 … Continue reading Respectful Student and Teacher Relationships
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 … Continue reading 1st Day Back to Class
So, if you’ve read any of my blogs or tweets, by now you should know that I’m a teacher. Like most high school educators in the US, I enjoy my summers unwinding from the hectic fray of the school year and prepping for the next. Once upon a time (in my youth) I helped work … Continue reading Neurocinematics in Education
Recent events in schools across the US have been plagued with a series of violent events. In eighteen years, there have been 130 shootings in K-12 and another 58 at colleges and universities (link). There are approximately 132,656 schools in the United States as of the publishing of this article. That means that 0.1% of … Continue reading School Safety Solution
I was recently caught off guard when I came across the quote below, “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” by Theodore Levitt. I’ve been doing an extensive amount of reading recently about Innovation and Creativity and this simple, yet realistic variation never dawned on me. For the longest time, … Continue reading Creativity vs Innovation
How do Digital Natives beat their drums? It sounds like the beginning of a bad “Dad” joke. However, in education, every since Marc Prensky coined the term in 2001, there has been non-stop debate about the term Digital Native. Mr. Prensky used the term to rightfully describe a generation of people who had been born … Continue reading How do Digital Natives beat their drums?
