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Work From Home – Innovating Work During Inclement Weather
Snow days bring unparalleled joy to students [and educators]. Anticipating and finally hearing the cancellation of school on the news, and now on social media, is almost a childhood entitlement. For most educators, this is welcome news, borderline excitement. I’m convinced that the inner child in all educators turns a couple of cartwheels at the announcement. […]
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I’m Not Afraid of the Door Handle
We are very intentional in our work to make change and trying make teachers feel safe and respected in our endeavors to change students’ lives. I’m very careful to avoid using words like ‘successful’ and ‘right’ because I think it promotes previous stereotypes and mindsets that things have to be done a certain way and/or failure […]
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Value of Shattering Comfort Zones
Great things happen in classrooms, in department planning, with school cultures, when we are willing to challenge ourselves. Current students don’t get the ‘Day 23 Activity from the file cabinet’ because the teacher is willing to let go of an activity he/she feels good about and is willing to build a meaningful, personalized activity; We are […]
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When Does Profound Learning Occur?
I’m becoming more cognizant of how and how often I am using the term ‘learning.’ Like most, I’ve been using it mainly to describe how well students regurgitate facts and associate it with an achievement score. I was recently sharing with some principals in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and about halfway through the presentation I started to […]
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Engagement vs Empowerment
Student engagement has always been a critical goal for how we set up classrooms and develop lesson plans. Ensuring that we have a tight time frame of activities and that we were monitoring students of on-task behaviors were [and are] essentials. This defined quality lesson planning. Some recent training in my district on engagement led me […]
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Lowered Expectations
Teaching is one of the most fulfilling professions ever. Ask any teacher who’s had a previous student return to talk fondly about their time in the classroom and you’ll know what makes this job so rewarding. But along with this fulfillment comes some of the greatest challenges – committing to lifelong personal growth and professional development […]
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Derek L. McCoy 