Happy New Year from TLaC Towers! Just before the holidays we watched a clip of Najee Carter at North Star Alexander Street Elementary School. It left us feeling downright warm, fuzzy and full of holiday joy- not something one necessarily expects from a Systems and Routines clip! As a capstone to this season of giving, TLaC…
Coming back from Winter Break can be tricky. Everyone’s been away from their routines for two weeks. Maybe they’re not as sharp as they could be. And maybe by mid-year it’s not just winter break that has led to decreasing follow-though. My colleague Jen Kim offered up this very useful discussion of clip we recently watched…
BBC Radio 4’s series The Educators ran a long form interview today that I did recently with host Sarah Montague. Here are three thoughts in response: 1. I genuinely enjoyed the conversation. I don’t say that often about interviews but Sarah Montague and producer Joel Moors were unusually well prepared and knowledgeable. My mom, a journalist,…
We’re talking Check for Understanding at our Engaging Academics workshop in Albany this morning- specifically how great teachers normalize growth mindset–struggling forward, errors and all–and make that seem like the most normal thing in the world. This is critically important because if students try to hide their mistakes from their teachers it is 10x harder to…
Here’s a bit of useful teaching vocabulary for you. The “plane” of your classroom is the imaginary line that runs the length of the room. It’s the red line in the diagram at left. The “plane” can be anywhere but it’s often about where the first student desks start. It indicates where “your” space ends and…