My colleague, Rachel and I just met to discuss her goals for our coaching session. As we got to talking she shared that she had little time to produce on her goals from our last peer coaching session; I could feel her anxiety drop when I asked if she would like to spend our sessions creating … Continue reading Communication & Collaboration- When ‘REAL’ conversations show results. →
As an educator I find myself saying “In our jobs, we are never bored”. I mean this as a complement to the profession; it doesn’t matter if I am in a room full of young students, college students, or adult learners, I am never bored and plan on keeping it that way. Often the cost of … Continue reading The First Impression of a Digital Instructional Coach →
I hear from educators all the time that they cannot find the time to practice using all the new technology tools available, let alone collaborate around ways to utilize these tools in the learning environments they support. As educators, we are masters at making the most out of ‘our 24’, but for time and sometimes … Continue reading Digitizing Your Favorite Lesson →
The digital world offers many ways of connecting with fellow professionals beyond your typical day and location. Instead of waiting for the weekly professional development meeting or your planning period to connect with your school bestie, educators can access Professional Learning Networks (PLNs) and get suggestions, answers and numerous perspectives within a few minutes. Innovating Pedogogy (2016) … Continue reading Professional Learning Networks: Connect, Relate, and Create →
“Instruction should have clear goals that are separate from the means for completing the task, and these goals also should be thoroughly understood by the teacher and clearly communicated to students” (Basham & Marino, n.d., pp.11). This is what we hope for daily. We spend hours designing lessons, reviewing curriculum and examining formative assessments to support … Continue reading Curating, Managing, & Selecting Digital Tools to Support ALL Learners. →
Teachers are experts. We work on our craft, we study our content in depth, and many of us are fortunate enough to teach the same grade or class year after year, perfecting the content lessons with care and detail. Within the current learning realities we need to move past the ‘on the page’ learning to … Continue reading Learning, First & Digital Tools, Second →
Instructional coaching takes investment on many levels. Katarina Schwartz (2019), talks about how to support teachers as they maximize the use of technology in classrooms and how coaches can support the teacher through the process in Coaching Teachers To Become Powerful Users of Classroom Tech. The success of a coaching relationship is built on relationships… Continue reading Coaching & The Cycle of Learning: How Learning Should Out Weigh The Shiny Digital Tools.
How many times did the technological ‘Founding Fathers’ have to fail in order to create something our world could not live without? When I think about it, all of our founding fathers in American history, focused on citizenship at a deep level, they created, they failed, they redesigned, and they worked at the idea again… Continue reading Facilitate Failure to Allow For Creation
How many of us have looked at a lesson after one of those days in the classroom only to wonder why it was so difficult to get the students to engage in the learning? I can think of several lessons that I thought would be engaging and exciting for my learners and felt the let… Continue reading Designing learning with the reflection of assessment in mind.
Is compliance the death of autonomy? Is autonomy the key to building our leaders through a sense of constant and meaningful leadership? I recently sat down with my mom who happens to be a career and management coach. People employ her to gain and share perspective on how they can grow as professionals within numerous… Continue reading Learners = Leaders & Leaders= Learners
