Archive

November 2011

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Since last spring, I’ve had the opportunity to ask well over 1000 educators what their vision is for the graduate they hope to produce. I’ve asked them what their vision is of the professional they hope to become as well. The answers I’ve received have been varied of course, but these are some of the things I’ve heard over and over and over again: We want our students to be inquisitive about the world and…

I think this is a critical guiding question for every educator in New York State right now, particularly those who are facilitating work with the Common Core Learning Standards, APPR, inquiry teams, and assessment design. If ever there were a time when mindfulness would take a back seat to panic and job satisfaction would be sacrificed to perceptions about imposed mandates, that time would be now. We run the risk of losing some incredibly talented…

In addition to sharing as much as I can about my work with the CCLS inside of schools this year, I’m also taking more time to reveal the workings of the WNY Young Writers’ Studio over here. Studio is a writing community comprised of teachers and writers of grades 1-12. We also identify mentors within our program who are interested in becoming teachers themselves one day, and we provide them opportunities to learn and apply…

This week, I’m sharing out some of the processes I’ve used to help teachers build a fluency with the Common Core Learning Standards. First, I returned to the importance of vision and the call for strategic plans that support the work of Race to the Top while remaining aligned to it. Then, I shared a creative strategy for assessing what teachers may already know about the standards and where their needs might be prior to…

In order to mine a standard’s true meaning, you typically have to unwrap it a bit. The purpose of this work is to distinguish the standard’s explicit and implicit meaning. Implicit meaning? Aren’t standards supposed to be articulated with precision? Well, that’s the hope, but even the best standards require skillful interpretation. This is informed by the professional conversations that we have with others and the expertise we are all willing to share. For instance,…

At first glance it might seem like we are doing this already, but teaching confidently with the CCLS challenges us to understand them with depth. Glancing at the standards is what we do when we say we are reviewing the standards….exposing ourselves to the standards….. or introducing the standards to teachers. Developing a fluency with the standards? Well, that’s a whole other ball game. This week, I’ll try to share as much as I can…