Over the next week or so I’ll be sharing a series of four blog posts about Nicole Willey, a third grade teacher at Leadership Prep Ocean Hill Elementary Academy in Brooklyn. Each post features a short video of Nicole at work- three of her teaching and a fourth a clip of a development meeting with her…
I am reading Eric Kalenze‘s Education is Upside Down. He observes: “It’s a vast overstatement to say that a single… institutional mission exists to guide [the] practices of American education.” Reading that reminded me of a question we asked when hiring teachers for a school some years ago. We asked: “We’d all like to do everything…
Got this note today from my colleague Rob Richard who’s a big baseball fan. That said, even if you are not a baseball fan, this article on Paul Goldschmidt and how his focus on technique led to his incredible rate of growth is definitely worth reading… and maybe even passing along to students. Doug- …
Two weeks ago week my colleagues Erica Woolway, Hilary Lewis, and I led our first Uncommon-wide workshop for Deans of Students. We got together with 60 or so amazing folks from across the organization who play a lead role in shaping behavior and culture in our schools. They inspired us and taught us, so I thought…
Morning. Happy weekend. Thought I might take the liberty of passing along some thought-provoking ‘teacher’ reading to go along with your weekend coffee. 1) First this op-ed piece from Natalie Wexler in the NY Times. It does a nice job of questioning the knowledge-versus-skills myth. Knowledge and skills (like “problem solving’ ‘critical thinking”) are, to me,…