Mo’ Better Teacher Evaluation

Since we can’t seem to get away from formally evaluating teachers – here are some thoughts on improving the process: Teacher evaluation and professional growth is an essential factor in the health and culture of a school and its collective of learners. As such it must be a clear and understandable part of every teacher’s […]

10 Steps To Help Create Effective Group Presentations

It seems as if more and more of my work is collaborative in nature – including presentations to either my colleagues or at conferences. Students also have to frequently design and give presentations as groups or as partners. Reflecting on some presentation work with both students and colleagues has led to the creation of this […]

Mosaic FNG – Of Supernovae and Vision

As one of my colleagues put it, You can ask each Mosaic teacher about what Mosaic is and what it isn’t and you’ll get different responses from each of us. No surprise or disagreement from me. Much has been written about Mosaic over the past three years. We’ve each contributed in our own way to […]

On Homework (Briefly)

In response to Brian Aspinall’s succinct post about homework: If homework is defined as independent work assigned to students to be done on their own and then checked at school or submitted for “points or checks” then homework – at all levels – can seem a bit silly – especially while in elementary school. There […]

Teachers be Teaching and Assessors be Assessing

…Teachers crowded into a few rooms “learning” to assess their assessments, that is, slow-motion what is used to assess students, whether as formative, interim, or summative, and effectively grade the assessment using a rubric of sorts. The end result being a score of 1-20 where anything above 14 is considered a “gold-standard” assessment. (Note: the ACT […]

Professional Goals (2012 Edition)

My individual and team goals for this year revolve around building relationships (communication), access, research, and exploration. Relationships My team and I will utilize technology to help empower our colleagues to share and communicate their ideas, reflections, and, well, anything. We hope to meet with building principals to communicate our shared desire to help and […]