This beautiful clip of Achievement First’s Summer Payne Cold Calling her kindergarten students is a throw back. I think we shot it in 2010. For a couple of years it was a staple of our workshops. Somehow we haven’t used it in a while. But it’s still so wonderful. And quite influential- I still go to…
Some of the most important moments to manage when you are trying to build great culture are the moments when things are going well. It’s important to reinforce positive behavior when you see it of course and when you have to make small re-directions to help students keep doing the right things the sooner you can…
Yesterday I wrote about three types of writing—how they are all important but possibly out of balance, and how the third type of writing, Developmental Writing, is critically important and often sorely overlooked. Today I want to say a bit more about Developmental Writing and the role of revision. First I want to point out that…
This is the first of several posts I hope to write about writing—why it is important and how despite our best intentions, I think we can teach and practice it better. Some context: I’ve visited a series of better-than-average and mostly-very-good schools recently—perhaps ten in at least three states—and afterwards I find myself thinking most of all…
High quality training for teachers is a great thing, especially when it addresses the real world challenges of the classroom in a practical and useful way. But even the best training, we should remember, hasn’t yet changed what happens in the classroom. It takes sustained focus after training to do that. And it takes something that’s…