What may be holding back one teacher may not be holding back another. What may seem overwhelming to one may not be to another.  What may be encouraging to one teacher may not be to another.  How to find the answers and move everyone forward?  Leaders need to be able to ask the right questions for each person. Read more...

Virginia Beach public schools are discussing a new initiative called Compass to 2020, aka the Strategic Framework. Seems to me it’s mush on steroids.

 One of the many “strategies" is this: “Develop a plan to systematically integrate developmentally appropriate social emotional learning strategies into the…

What Makes for Effective Professional Development?

In this Teachers United report on teacher preparation, support, and retention, Sarah Margeson, Chris Eide, and Alison Fox list the criteria for effective professional development:

• It is designed to improve teacher effectiveness as measured by improved student outcomes.
• It is tied to schoolwide reform efforts, a clearly communicated vision for student…

Foreign language websites – This regular feature in The Language Educator recommends several free websites:

• LessonPlanet – This site www.lessonplanet.com has thousands of lesson plans and worksheets for Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish.
• Visual Dictionaries in English…

 People say things and do things that offend.  It is human nature.  But for those in public service, and those who work in service of children, teaching and leading, learning how not to say or do things that offend is essential. There are opportunities for learning how to communicate, how to institute new programs or follow new mandates. Professional development about the use of social media, training from developers of newly adopted programs, and information from…

I wrote the following which appears in today’s edition of the Baltimore Sun in the Readers Respond section.

Liz Bowie’s recent reporting on Maryland’s teacher evaluation system (Where ineffective teachers are found, November 2, 2014) raises many questions.  Bowie’s investigative report contains several quotes from Sandi Jacobs, the vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.  The NCTQ is a Washington think tank with a clear political agenda that is…

The quality of the education students receive in a school rests largely on the teachers in it. The achievement of the students in schools, however, depends on a vast array of factors that all in education know and can easily list.  Poverty, disability, language, health, mental health, life situation, parents, the leaders, all play a role in how far teachers can bring their students forward. So to look at one factor is both misleading and most importantly, potentially destructive, even…

Sustaining Outdated Practices Will Not Transform Schools…