It was a rainy afternoon, long before anyone was really thinking about global pandemics and civil unrest. We were visiting my favorite art store, and I noticed this notebook on the clearance table. “That’s massive,” my husband John said. “What would you fill it with?” I didn’t know then. Now, I do. The first pages of this notebook document my work and what I learned from it during the last lesson studies I led in…
It all started when we were about two weeks deep into our new pandemic lifestyle. John and I were sitting in our living room, which sits about twenty feet from the tree-lined sidewalk that edges our street. That sounds quaint doesn’t it? The tree-lined sidewalk that edges our street. And it is most days. Some days though, those huge trees fall down. The fall down on top of our houses. Like our house, for instance.…
Hey–happy Friday! How was your week? Mine was productive. Very productive. And productive feels so much better than just about anything else right now. I just wrapped my first week as an Instructional Designer at Daemen College, and I am loving it. I mean, talk about serendipity. There may be no better definition of just-in-time professional learning right about now. I’ll try to pay as much of it forward as I can. My first recommendation?…
“I’m feeling better,” she said, and I had to agree. I’m feeling better, too. We’re adapting, as much as we’d rather not, and I don’t know about you, but I’m noticing that my days have a rhythm now. The weekends are distinctly different from the weekdays, and when I read, I’m able to concentrate again. I live in New York State, and our first days on PAUSE left me feeling simultaneously stunned, adrift, and eager to…
Last week, I started a conversation that I promised to continue throughout this month, one post at a time. It’s about privilege, power, and print inside of our writing workshops and classrooms. Where we’ve been, where we need to be going, and what I’m trying to do, in order to help people get there. My ideas are a small contribution. I know this. I have much more to learn and others have so much more…
When we embrace diversity, we strive to make the demographic of our schools and classrooms diverse. When we embrace inclusion, we ensure that diverse people are seated at the tables where learning is happening and decisions are being made. And when we embrace equity, we create environments and cultures where diverse people can show up authentically, as their complete, and wildly diverse selves, in order to be seen and appreciated, and in order to make…
I’m often asked what young writers can do to seek and connect with authentic audiences. Sure, writing for themselves, their friends, their family members, and their teachers might be rewarding, and it is absolutely authentic when the purpose is to move the reader rather than simply earning a grade, but how might young writers produce dynamic content for a wide readership? I find that when I think of influence in terms of degrees, it helps.…
Alignment matters. Defining the standards we expect students to meet, making them accessible to the kids we serve, and assessing and supporting progress toward them–this matters. Much. I’m not merely referring to state standards, either. I’m referring to the standards that our best practitioners–the experts in our field–have defined for us, based on decades of research. I’m referring to our personal standards and the ones that our school communities hold dear. I’m referring to the…
I’d just wrapped a mini-lesson on using evidence to support a claim. The writers that filled up the room were shifting away from our meeting spot and toward the back of the room, where an assortment of loose parts awaited them: blocks and marbles, LEGO and clay, buttons and string, paint chips and paper clips. Pebbles. Acorns. A deck of cards. Markers. There were other things as well–a wide assortment of materials for students who…
Over the last ten years, I’ve facilitated district-wide shifts to standards based grading numerous times. As I prepare to begin again in a new-to-me school district, the memories of those professional experiences aren’t the ones rising to the top of my consciousness, though. I’m thinking about how standards based grading helped me parent better. I actually wrote a tiny bit about that on this blog, way back when. My daughter Nina was in fifth grade. She…