Dear colleague, It’s common enough to hear a well-meaning teacher use language like this: In one sense, I get it. When a class period becomes nothing more than a teacher distributing worksheet after worksheet to keep kids busy, that class is falling short of its potential. Our job is to teach, not to chuck worksheets […]
School Level
What is Good Professional Development?
One reason teachers leave the profession is surely that the profession doesn’t feel all that professional sometimes. This is caused, in part, by poor professional development. (It is also caused, in part, by poor teacher attitudes around professional development… but that’s a topic for another post.) In designing professional development that’s good, I find the […]
24 Tips for Leading Better Professional Development
At this point in my career, I’ve led over 100 different professional development experiences, ranging from keynotes to conference sessions to whole-day breakouts. The work has been with a broad spectrum of audiences: whole district staffs ranging from 6 people (total staff, whole district) to 1,500; elementary teachers exclusively; secondary teachers exclusively; ELA-only groups; only […]
Why I Don’t Write Much About Large-Scale Teaching Reform and Policy Change
I received a message recently that speaks to a tension I’ve felt for some time as a writer. I will call the writer Jonathan, as this is the pseudonym he preferred: Dave, I love your stuff and I really enjoyed reading [your post “Tough Minds, Tender Hearts.”] I totally buy what you’re saying here, and […]
Tech for Tech’s Sake Isn’t Good in Our Classrooms
One of my students this fall — we’ll call her Rachel — has a problem with technology. Whenever she’s on a Chromebook, it’s as if her fingers take on a mind of their own. She’s almost never on task when I come around to see the thesis statement she’s supposed to be typing into PollEverywhere, […]