Teachers need tools and support to be effective in their work and maintain emotional well-being. Although the rewards can be profound, educators face job stresses that challenge the maintenance of emotional balance. Teachers are tasked with creating a structured learning environment that promotes academic achievement, intellectual curiosity and social-emotional development. Accountability to standardized learning outcomes intensifies the demands of teaching.…

Money Does Matter After All By C. Kirabo Jackson…

Opportunity Culture Outcomes: The First Two Years By Emily Ayscue Hassel…

We recently wrote a post on shared values and the important way those shared values, when lived in practice, can help the organization. This is especially true when parents and students trust the invitation to join teachers and school leaders to contribute to student success.  Trust is essential in an efficacious and healthy organization. Stephen Covey described it as the bank account…

While some teachers think that summer is a time when you can relax and enjoy warm weather, I take it as a personal and professional challenge to find as much information as I can before the school starts.

This summer I went through the newest educational apps most of us either ignored or didn’t know exist.

In this article, I will list…

Bottom 5%

by Peter Greene…

I came across an interesting article in Scientific American.  While waiting in the barber shop, I saw read the line, "Too often school assessments heighten anxiety and hiner learning.  New research shows how to reverse this trend."  Initially, it hit upon all of the negatives that go along with testing.  Then, it introduced a teacher who uses multiple choice questions as her lessons.  The practice is called Retrieval Practice.  The article states that there is empirical support for this…

So much professional development is focused on skills and methods and so much is necessary to learn and do.  Unless we grow as confident, open hearted, resilient humans, the skills and methods we learn and implement will remain as work to be done...We can find wisdom and knowledge within that speaks to who we are and how we act. How we revere others must not be an act of comparison, but one of celebrating their uniqueness and, therefore, our own. If we can do that, then...and…

THE TEACHER OBSERVATION

by Fred Welfare

A response to Dr. Michael Cubbin's post 

TEACHER OBSERVATIONS DON’T WORK… BUT WHY?

The teacher observation is an inspection of a lesson. Sometimes the observation is a snap-shot or walkthrough, just to see if certain components of the classroom and lesson are in place. The…

Iowa: Kindergarten is the Néw First Grade…

NY Times

July 16, 2015

To the Editor:

Re “Obama Unveils Stricter Rules on…

Leaders are cognizant of the need to have a strong and positive school culture, built over time among a community with shared values. They are also under pressure to incorporate change to the routines within the school and sometimes to the culture itself.     Read more...