Our students come to school for a variety of reasons: to see their friends; to participate in electives, extracurricular activities, and athletics; to interact with and get support from caring teachers; to get a credential for college, career, or the military; because their parents need child care; because state law requires them to attend; etc....
Jimmy Casas said: a system which assured [students] of success only to find out [that] meant success for those who were willing to play the game of school and who were compliant. . . . students attended school in body but were absent in mind and in spirit. In other words, they had checked out...
As coronavirus cases continue to increase across the country, numerous school districts are reluctantly announcing that they will be doing ‘remote learning’ again this fall. Although we had the summer to prepare for this eventuality, unfortunately we have instead seen a lot of magical thinking from educational leaders and policy makers. As much as we...
In a couple of recent posts, I said: One of the biggest challenges of ‘remote learning’ over the past few months has been that most of the motivators been pared away. For many students, all that has been left is the uninspiring learning. Little to no interaction with classmates. Little to no interaction with caring...
I have a new 4 Shifts Video Series. I am trying to replicate – as best as I can virtually while sitting in my office chair! – a half-day workshop with me around the 4 Shifts Protocol. The series consists of 7 self-paced modules and includes 38 videos, 7 lesson redesign opportunities, 6 additional instructional...
Upcoming travel and events December 3-5 – International School of Amsterdam, The Netherlands February 3 – Virginia Is for Learners Innovation Network, TBD, VA February 25-26 – Missouri Educational Technology Leaders CTO Clinic, TBD, MO March 10-13 – Central & Eastern European Schools Association (CEESA) Annual Conference, Budapest, Hungary June 8-9 – Roanoke County Public...
Solution Tree is hosting a series of webinars this summer. My co-author, Julie Graber, and I are delighted that we were selected to do a FREE 4-week book study on Harnessing Technology for Deeper Learning! We will meet online at 2:00pm Eastern (USA) for 45 minutes every Tuesday between August 4 and August 25. Did...
As always, Katie Martin has been doing a lot of wonderful work this summer around deeper learning and student engagement. I thought it might be fun for the two of us to just get together and chat. I tweeted an invitation to her and she kindly took me up on the offer. Two days later we made that conversation...
Some schools spent the summer engaged in magical thinking that everyone would be back in person this fall, just like before the pandemic. Others paid attention to the data and rising number of coronavirus cases and used their summers more wisely to design for better remote/hybrid learning and teaching than the mostly-low-level direct instruction, digital...
Dear Linda, Fifteen years ago you let a pigtailed 2nd grader walk down the hall and take 5th grade math. We came to you as the principal of our elementary school in Minnesota and said, “She’s ready for something more.” You smiled at us, looked at the data, and said, “We’ll find a way to...