Teaching

Factors that disrupt student academic performance include weak responses to data, work outside of the students' ZPD, and little depth of knowledge.

My colleague and I took a constructionist approach to teaching. Our students tinkered, failed, learned, and created. Here’s how we did it.

I am responsible for everyone and thing in this class and therefore at times what I say and do may confuse you or even seem unfair or wrong.

If you want a child to give up, constantly emphasize their shortcomings and let them know you're doing so for their own good.

After the teachers disappeared, students knew that if they were too rowdy someone would notice, so they kept the noise to a minimum.

Just as a teacher has to create conditions that support and encourage student success, school districts have to support teachers’ professional development.

There’s a large risk in waiting until the end--because in that great length of time many students may have fallen off the learning path.

Teachers are passionate about helping their students and as a result seeking to improve their craft. That said, PD doesn’t always feel particularly helpful.

By definition, learning is social in nature. Using different mediums, whether it be books, discussions, technology, we study and make meaning together.

If you had to start somewhere--with one idea or 'thing' to change, what would it be? What if your only goal was to change the arc of your students' lives?

Problems still surfaced but with a system in place, it was much easier to identify exactly what went wrong and why and communicate it to students.

Mediocre teaching loiters around the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy, rarely asking learners to think critically. A Culture of inquiry can change that.

Does the item require a passage, or a graphic? If so, is all the necessary information provided, and is it appropriate and accessible to the student?

Students need access to lower-level information to then use in the higher-level thinking that requires them to synthesize disparate facts and perspectives.

It's an extraordinary amount of work to design precise and personalized assessments that illuminate pathways forward for individual students.

Lesson study is not about discovering the one right way to teach a lesson but about building knowledge of many teaching models and strategies.

The 'giving' of yourself implies that you give your whole self to the act of teaching--that you merge your 'self' and your pedagogy.

I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated in the classroom, less tolerant, less friendly, and worst of all, sarcastic. I was utterly exhausted.