Cranky Blogger Warning: You know the rules, here. I’m blowing off a bit of digital steam in this one. Take this post for what it’s worth—which might just be nothing by tomorrow morning.
Look, I understand exactly who I am: A sometimes-articulate, full-time classroom teacher who gets discouraged every [...]
Dean Shareski, an educator and blogger that I respect greatly, recently reflected on the change efforts in his district, writing:
I also get to spend a great deal of time with our superintendents and other leaders in our division and to a person, they all want to create a division where students [...]
Over the past week, I’ve been sharing sets of tips that I always recommend to teachers who are beginning classroom blogging projects.
The first entry covered questions connected to common technical questions: Should I have one classroom blog or a blog for every student? Should our blogs be [...]
Last weekend, I shared part one in a three-part mini-series detailing tips and tricks for classroom blogging projects—and it was a hit! Not only did the post draw a ton of attention, it also drew a ton of dialogue here on the Radical and in other blogs spread across [...]
I’ve been doing a bunch of work lately with teachers who are interested in incorporating more digital learning opportunities in their classrooms. Often, the first tool that they express interest in are blogs.
Blogs offer teachers and students a natural bridge between work that they are already doing (producing written [...]
So here's an interesting question: If students cannot self-assess without a clear vision of the intended learning, what is your learning team doing to make sure that students understand the expected outcomes for your lessons?
Download Slide_ClearVisionofLearning
My first book—co-authored with my friend and colleague Parry Graham and titled Building a Professional Learning Community at Work—has finally hit the shelves! My copies landed on my doorstep about two weeks ago, and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.
What you’ll see [...]
PLC expert Rick DuFour has started an interesting strand of conversation over at the All Things PLC blog this morning. Referring to some of the interactions that we had in our recent Voicethread on professional learning communities, Rick wonders why teachers are unwilling to question colleagues engaged in [...]
Larry Ferlazzo has been one of the most influential minds in my own personal learning network for a long while now. I first stumbled onto Larry’s work when In Practice—a collaborative blog that Larry writes with two other thinkers I admire, Brian Crosby and Alice Mercer—was [...]
Blogger’s Note: I’m about to tackle a topic that is hot in the county where I currently work. The views expressed here are my own. They do not necessarily represent those of my employer AND I’m writing on my own time, my own dime and my own computer.
Oh [...]
Tad Sherman---a new education blogger who is writing about his experiences as an assistant principal over at The New AP---caught my eye the other day when he left the following comment on my Data Nightmare post:
One of the things that stood out to me was the number of [...]
I realized the other day that it’s been awhile since I’ve written one of my This is Why I Teach posts, and that’s a real bummer. Stopping every now and then to remember what it is that I love about my job is important because with the criticism [...]
So, I may be playing a familiar tune here, but I’m tired of being asked to work in new ways without being given the knowledge, skills, time and tools to complete new tasks. It’s the whole reciprocal accountability soap-box that I jump on a dozen times a year.
[...]One of the skills that today’s students need to learn--and that many schools fail to systematically teach--is how to identify hoax websites. In a world where content can be created by anyone, being a critical consumer of online content is not an optional skill.
So I figured I’d introduce [...]
Sitting here on the morning after our four-day focused conversation with Rick and Becky DuFour on structuring professional learning communities, I find myself in a familiar place: Trying to sort out exactly what it is that I've learned.
While I'm sure that I'll be mentally wrestling with questions' [...]
It's hard to believe, but TODAY is the last day for participants to jump in to our conversation (see here) on the nuts-and-bolts of restructuring schools as professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour---authors of Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work. After three days of brilliance from dozens of [...]
Have you had a chance to stop by our ongoing Voicethread conversation on the nuts-and-bolts of structuring professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour yet?
If you haven't, you're missing one of the most amazing opportunities to learn more about professional learning communities.
Not only are participants like Dan [...]
So our conversation on professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour has gotten off to a great start, seeing librarians, school principals, professional developers and classroom teachers stopping by to learn and to lend advice.
Here are some highlights:
On slide four, Rick and Becky argue that one of the [...]
Here it is, Radical Nation: The first day in our four-day conversation on the nuts-and-bolts of restructuring schools as professional learning communities with Solution Tree authors and school change experts Rick and Becky DuFour.
Interested in joining the conversation?
Then click this link: Enter Revisiting PLCs at Work Conversation
You [...]
So who's planning to stop by our Tuesday through Friday conversation on professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour?
I know that Rick and Becky’s newest book Revisiting PLCs at Work has gotten me all fired up about learning communities again, providing me with a [...]
Regular Radical readers know that PLCs have been front-and-center in my mind for the past few days. After all, we’re going to spend time talking about the nuts and bolts of restructuring traditional schools as professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour next week (see here, here [...]
As regular Radical readers know, we're in the middle of planning for an asynchronous Voicethread conversation with school change experts Rick and Becky DuFour (see here and here) who will be helping us to think through the nuts and bolts of restructuring schools as professional learning communities from' [...]
In preparation for our upcoming four-day focused conversation with Rick and Becky DuFour on the nuts and bolts of transforming traditional schools into dynamic professional learning communities (see here and here), I wanted to review their newest book, Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work for you.
Here are [...]
In response to my recent slide on the students of tomorrow and the classrooms of yesterday, regular Radical reader Mike H wrote:
So I showed this slide to the department chairs I work with from middle school to high school and 15 new teachers of the county. We have a [...]
It’s still hard for me to believe that we’ll be spending four days in September (the 8th through the 11th) exploring the nuts and bolts of professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour.
Talk about a great opportunity to listen to and learn from two nationally recognized [...]
About two years ago, I had one of the singular most exciting moments of my professional career.
At a dinner meeting designed to introduce the members of our State’s Board of Education to the core principles of professional learning communities, Rick and Becky DuFour---who, along with Bob Eaker, were the [...]
So Dina Strasser----my friend and favorite digital skeptic who blogs over at The Line---stopped by to offer some healthy pushback to our recent conversation about teachers who fail to embrace new digital tools independently.
Dina wrote:
In closing I'll suggest one of those legion reasons beyond laziness, which happens' [...]
As a hard-core rock and roll fan, one of my greatest regrets in life is being born in 1970---10 months after Woodstock. I like to believe that I’d’ve convinced mom and dad to drag me to Bethel in my diapers had I caught whiff of the collection of stars----and hundreds [...]
Almost a year ago, I wrote a post wondering whether or not the economic crisis that our country was stumbling through---at that point only a few months and a few billion dollars old---was going to result in a shift towards the kinds of online education opportunities that Clayton Christensen [...]
Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant has me thinking about digital professional development again. His basic argument: That schools are facilitating an almost crippling digital “codependence” in educators by offering countless training sessions on simple tools to our teachers.
For Scott, the conversation began while thinking through the [...]
I can't tell you how touched I've been lately by the outpouring of response from Radical readers and members of my Twitter network, who have offered words of congratulations and advice on my recent adoption.
Literally dozens and dozens of people who I've never met have taken the' [...]
Meet Reece, y'all:
She was born on Monday, and if all goes well, my wife and I will be adopting her and heading home to North Carolina by Tuesday of next week! I guess that makes her the newest member of Radical Nation, huh?
I sat her down' [...]
Like many states, North Carolina’s legislature is wrapped in one of the toughest budget sessions of the past 50 years.
Along with raising taxes and cutting services in almost every department, the men and women who represent us have been pushed into the position where even education----something that [...]
A few weeks back, I sat down with a friend named Gretta who is the principal of an area school working to strengthen their professional learning community. Her first question is one that I’m asked all the time.
“Bill,” she said, “how should we organize our learning teams? Is [...]
If you've been following the conversation on the Radical recently (see here and here), you'll know that we've been collectively wrestling with the place that the magic bubbles (read: standardized test scores) should have in assessing student understandings.
One question that I haven't had a chance to answer [...]
Having been approached by several different publishers interested in seeing my name on a title in their collection, I've spent the better part of the past few years toying around with the idea of writing a book about teaching and learning.
The whole process has been a bit intimidating, actually. A book' [...]
I'm enjoying the give and take of the conversation that has developed in the comment section of my recent blog post on the Danish system of assessing students because it is forcing me to think! As always, diversity of opinion provides the kind of external challenge necessary for new learning. ' [...]
As most Radical readers know, I’ve spent the past eight days touring Denmark as a part of a program run by the Center for International Understanding—one of North Carolina’s most important professional development organizations for teachers.
While I completely enjoyed the opportunities that I had to learn [...]
So I'm heading to Denmark tomorrow, serving as the Educational Facilitator on a professional development trip for the Center for International Understanding. I'll be helping a group of 20 North Carolina teachers to think about how they can connect their experiences abroad to their classroom instruction.
A side benefit for [...]
I had the chance to spend about an hour today talking about education with a parent who is also a business woman. It was one of the better conversations that I've had in the past few months. She started by mentioning how "over the top" our state's end of' [...]
An email landed in my inbox this week from a woman named Christianne Birtwistle who is working for Teachers TV, which has to produce the most interesting "makeover show" on "television" today. Titled From Good to Outstanding, this show spotlights teachers working to improve their instruction with the help [...]
It's been another difficult week for me. Too many conflicts and not enough comfort---and that's on me. I'm a fighter by trade, and am one of those people who never seems completely relaxed unless he's in the middle of a good argument.
It's exhausting, though. I gotta give it a' [...]
The last week of May is always a big time for sixth graders over at Salem Middle School because many of the fall season sport coaches hold interest meetings for sixth graders who want to learn more about playing on school teams.
And my kids are always completely jazzed! One of [...]
Wow. Working through my recent thoughts about organizational juice has been a real challenge for me. Based on responses from readers, I'm not sure that my point has been terribly clear! That's the beauty of blogging, though----the pushback provided by readers forces me to polish my own thinking.
So' [...]
After spending the better part of the last two days thinking about my recent battles with digital bureaucracy, I’ve come to realize that I CRAVE something that I’ll never have: Organizational Juice.
