Finding Better Ways to Measure Learning: Liz Beck’s Story
We’re rolling out a new community called Better Measures for Learning (BM4L), and we hope you’ll join us. The community is a free space for educators who want to rethink what, how, and why they teach and grade. If that sounds like a pretty big set of questions, it’s...
Coaching as a School Leader
Can school administrators also be coaches? The short answer is “yes” but with certain caveats. Our job as leaders is to develop our people, and coaching is a big part of that. And yet we also have the role of evaluator. How do we reconcile the two tasks of coaching...
Not Frontloading. Is That Even Possible?
When it comes to planning Project Based Learning (PBL), one of the things we hear a lot is that teachers want to “frontload” content material before doing a project. By frontloading, we simply mean the common practice of a teacher explaining or “covering” content...
The Real True Actual Reason My Lesson Plan Failed 😉
Our crew has been thinking and writing about lesson plans and planning, and in the midst of being terribly serious (which we totally ARE, ha), we also laugh and poke fun at ourselves. Because it’s a teacher’s life, right? You grind your teeth, and you also laugh so...
When Lesson Plans Flop in the Classroom
I'm willing to bet that if you’ve ever been a teacher for more than, say…a week, then you’ve seen a lesson plan fail spectacularly. One of my personal favorite lesson plan failures involves my apparent inability to count two-digit numbers: I tried to put the kids in...
CoachFest 2021 Was Just What the Doctor Ordered
Many of us, especially those of us in education, were hoping the pandemic would be behind us by now. We cancelled CoachFest in 2020 and weren’t sure we would even be able to host the event this year, but we kept hearing the message, “We need this.” So with limited...
Cold-Calling is Awkward and Amazing
I started cold-calling at the recommendation of a teacher down the hall. He was a Chemistry teacher who used popsicle sticks to guarantee equity in calling on students in his classroom, and it seemed like an awesome idea to me. One immediate roadblock I encountered...
New RootEd Cohort Beginning Soon, Apply Now
Calling all teachers in Western North Carolina! Prepare your students and communities for the challenges of tomorrow by engaging them in solving the challenges of today, right in their backyard. Apply by September 15th, 2021 to join our 3rd annual RootEd in Western...
CoachFest Early Bird Pricing Ends August 31st
The CoachFest Conference and Retreat for coaches and leaders in education is happening November 4th and 5th, 2021 at the Blowing Rock Conference Center in beautiful Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Early bird pricing for the two-day event is $285 and ends August 31st....