At our workshops we often talk about the importance of shared vocabulary–the power of being able to communicate accurately, quickly, without ambiguity about technical aspects of performance. This is true whether you are a teacher (“That was great but what if you unbundled your questions a little more and added a “Stretch It”) or a principal;…
Andrew Stephenson is a friend and colleague at Uncommon Schools. He’s a former fourth grade teacher—a very accomplished one—who’s training to be a Director of Operations—a job that essentially means co-leading a school alongside a principal and doing all the organizational stuff so the principal can be locked in on curriculum and instruction and just about…
I’m taking a little time off this week (remembering to actually take vacation is definitely the “50th technique” everyone asks about). To keep the thread going here on the blog i asked my partner and co-author Erica Woolway to share some thoughts about teacher training from some of our work with TNTP’s Nashville Teaching Fellows. As usual…
Little things mean a lot. Even at the elite level it’s often the mundane things that drive results. Check out this picture of the USMNT practicing: Note the ball placement–clusters of them at the ready for each group. Zero downtime lost due to ball not ready to be put into play. Note the standardization…
Saw this brief article in today’s Washington Post about the Redskins’ punter and snapper using video of their practice to improve performance. What’s useful about it–and useful in this case means what ‘useful’ means at its very best: simple, productive, and smart-to-the-point of obvious-except-that-not-everyone-thought-of-it–is the placement of the camera: on Punter Sav Rocca’s facemask. The idea is…