During our team’s most recent weekly video meeting, we watched an outstanding clip of Jamila Davis from Troy Prep Elementary School executing nonverbal interventions with warmth, positivity, and finesse. We were so excited about the clip that we instantly added it to our video lineup for our August workshops. Watching it even made Doug do a…
Michael Laser writes novels for adults and younger readers, and teaches at a state university in New Jersey. He recently wrote to reflect on the low state of writing skills among his students… and to ask what to do about it. He’s identified an issue that’s critical to me and my team: the weakness at the…
This is the second of three posts by my colleague Dan Cotton that’s based on a series of conversations we’ve had about the nature of relationships in the classroom. The first post appears here. Dan writes: Consider this brief moment from outstanding high school English teacher Beth Verrilli’s classroom: Her students are reading Macbeth. They’re…
My colleague Dan Cotton and I have been talking on and off for much of this year about relationships and classrooms- both the importance of relationships but also some of the more surprising aspects. Dan’s written a series of thoughtful reflections that I’m going to post–and respond to–over the coming days. Here’s his first: Trust is…
One of the most important skills for any teacher or coach is observing during independent practice. It’s one of the keys to Checking for Understanding. Joaquin Hernandez, Jen Kim and I put some new framing on this critical topic in the 2.0 version of the Teach Like a Champion Field Guide, which comes out in September. …