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Add More Music How the Pepper Effect Taps into the Magic of Creativity, Collaboration and Innovation by: Laura McDonell
Listen Where words fail, music speaks. (Hans Christian Anderson) A Must Read A few weeks ago, I read The Pepper Effect by Sean Gaillard. After reading Gaillard’s book, I gained a new perspective on how I can do things differently to achieve the impossible. The book helped me to think...
The Guts to be Not Good by: Laura McDonell
Listen How Starting Before your Ready is the Key to Success Three years ago, my middle son Luke decided that he wanted to play hockey. He taught himself how to skate on our pond and was determined to try a new sport. Luke decided he was willing to start at...
Find the Ones Who Haven’t Given Up by: Laura McDonell
Listen One of my favorite movie scenes is the final scene in the movie Tomorrowland. The movie stars scientist Frank Walker, played by George Clooney, who at the end instructs Casey Newton (Britt Robertson), as well as several other kids in Tomorrowland, to go out and find the people who...
Create More Space by Laura McDonnell
Discovering Ways to Empower and Connect in the Classroom What is the best way to set up your classroom? What is the best use of space in the classroom? And, how can we continue creating spaces for students to thrive? Because each teacher is different, each makeup of students is...
Remembering What it is Like to be a Student by Laura Mcdonell
Listen How learning how to play chess made me a better teacher. There is No Limit to What We Can Learn. I choose to believe in a growth mindset and have confidence that I can learn almost anything. Learning does not come without challenges, and there are times when...
Change the Behavior, Change the Class (Part Three) by Hollie Hamaker
Listen When I think of the word "mentorship," I think of some ideal mentors. Professor Dumbledore and Gandalf are some of the first mentors that come to my mind. However, I should start putting my fellow teachers on that list. In the final installment of "Change the Behavior, Change the...
The Best Choices are Right in Front of You by Laura McDonell
Listen Rearrange the ¨Furniture¨ and Discover a New Perspective Growing up, one of my favorite things to do was to rearrange my bedroom. I loved the opportunity to have my bed facing a new direction, a chance to slide the dresser into a new location and enjoy seeing things from...
Is It Worth The Time? Finding a way to Stretch the Hours in a School Year by Laura McDonell
Listen Stretching the Dollar If anyone can stretch a dollar, it is my Mom. A stay at home Mom who put her career on hold to raise four children, my Mom had to find a way to stretch one income. She was a master coupon clipper, sales shopper, and had...
Show Students What’s Inside Your Head: Make Your Thinking Visible By Laura McDonell
Listen I can still remember Algebra class in high school. This class was different from other math classes. It was as if I went from being taught in a foreign language to entering a classroom where English was spoken. I could not believe that I understood what the teacher was...
Listening
Listen For teachers, this has become a year of “windows”. We’ve spoken to our students through the window of a computer screen, whether through pre-recorded lessons or live classes. The screen recorder counts down and then we’re going through the details of the instruction, or watching the squares as they...
Book Review: The Distance Learning Playbook
Listen I was mowing the yard, listening to some education podcasts a couple of weeks ago, and listened to two different podcasters interview the authors of The Distance Learning Playbook: Teaching for Engagement & Impact in Any Setting. First, it was Justin Baeder of Principal Center Radio interviewing Douglas Fisher....
Reformation: Adjusting Responsibilities of Learning and Control
Listen In the past, both the responsibility for learning and classroom control rested squarely on the shoulders of the teacher. If your students were loud and misbehaving, or if they failed a standardized test, you were not only held responsible for it in a figurative sense. Instead, you could lose...
Reformation: Creating or Redefining Your Purpose Statements
Listen In our last article, we shared some of the mission statements, vision statements, and value lists for some of the top schools in the world. As we looked through these statements, we were really inspired to work on our own statements. Many, if not all, schools and districts have...
Part 2: Reformation: Indoor Learning Environments
Listen In our last article, we discussed how the Ron Clark Academy, Wooranna Park Primary, and Fuji Yochien embrace and have designed environments that are used to fulfill their mission statements and pedagogy. Here are a few more leaders in this area. International School of Hellerup in Copenhagen The International...
The Reformation Age of Education
Listen We’ve known for some time that education was in need of a major overhaul. Many teachers and administrators have been ready for it for a long time. Some districts, a few states, and the occasional national leader have stepped up and championed the cause for change. But largely, our...
Answering "Why" in Professional Development
Listen Years ago, I was in a professional development meeting that tackled the topic of adding “essential questions” to each of our planned lessons. There was instruction on the language we should use, the structure of the questions themselves, and how to tie each question to state standards. Yet I...
The Class Is Half Full
Listen There is a lot for us to complain about when it comes to where we find ourselves as teachers these days. This is arguably the most difficult time to be a teacher in several decades. We are all relearning how to teach. Anxiety and stress are at all-time highs...
How to Be an Approachable Leader
Listen We’ve all had an administrator say that their door is always open, only to find out it was just something they said. Their door is literally closed nearly every time you walk through the office. Perhaps their door is always open, but they are never in there, so what...
District Toolkit Needs Learning In 2020-2021
Listen States and local districts across the United States are preparing to pivot away from crisis learning and toward something a little more stable and workable for the 2020-2021 school year. As educators and former educators ourselves, we can see the daunting tasks district and building administrators are facing that...
Rules and Tools for Classroom Management
Listen Online learning is a brave new world. You may feel that you’re starting to get the hang of the online learning experience, but you hope to add a little more depth in the coming weeks. That’s hard to do when your online classroom is like the Wild, Wild West...
Equipment and Setup Recommendations for Online Teaching
Listen There’s a lot of advice out there for teachers who’ve recently had to start teaching online. You can find a lot of information about platforms, how to upload work, and ways to get started. We wanted to offer some advice that we weren’t finding in other places that established...
8 Tips for Teaching Classes Online
Listen UPDATE 2: 3/14/2020, 5:30 P.M. The free version of Zoom is back up and in order. UPDATE: (3/13/2020, 12:31 P.M.) We recommended Zoom below as a free service, but in the past 12 hours, we’ve become aware that their free services are temporarily suspended because they are overwhelmed...
It's All Downhill From Here
Listen The beginning of your first year is pretty overwhelming, and you have to focus on just getting your bearings and routines to work for you. It’s possible to feel like you’re barely keeping your head above water during that time, but sometime in January, you may start to...