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Empowering Educators, Inspiring Learning
Teaching is an art and a science. Here, we explore strategies that foster engagement, equity, and student agency. Join the conversation and take your practice to the next level.
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Most schools have one day each week where the schedule is different, and classes are shorter to accommodate staff meetings. Often this day falls mid-week, disrupting a teacher’s flow, leaving a lot of teachers wondering what to do […]
In this episode of The Balance, I talk with Adam Welcome, a father, educator, speaker, and writer. Adam has written three books–Kids Deserve It!: Pushing Boundaries and Challenging Conventional Thinking, Run Like a PIRATE: Push Yourself to Get […]
As the fall semester comes to a close, many teachers are thinking about final exams or end of the semester summative assessments. Often those semester exams cover a lot of information. The prospect of preparing students for those […]
Few things are more frustrating than repeating yourself over and over. Yet, many of the teachers I work with repeat the same information and directions multiple times in a lesson. Sometimes this is the result of students who […]
Is your teaching practice sustainable? The answer I hear most from teachers is “no.” Teachers enter this profession determined to do it all – design and facilitate lessons, communicate with parents, monitor and track student progress, provide timely […]
“What are students doing in the stations that are not the teacher-led station?” I field a lot of questions like this. Teachers want to know what types of activities I incorporate into station rotation lessons. Since my teaching […]
When I facilitate station rotation workshops with teachers using StudySync, I encourage them to consider designing offline discussion stations. There is value in having a small group of six to eight students discuss a text as opposed to […]
In my blog post titled “3 Ways to Build Student Agency into Your Lessons,” I encouraged teachers to design lessons that allow students to make key decisions about their learning. Student agency is one of the easiest ways […]
Last week in Palm Springs, I had the pleasure of coaching a 9th-grade math teacher. It was exciting to work with a math teacher who was eager to try using the station rotation model in her math classroom. […]
Scavenger hunts are one of my favorite strategies for encouraging students to explore, be curious, and think critically. I use scavenger hunts at the start of the year to foster community building, and I use them to keep […]
In the last two blogs, I have focused on strategies teachers can use to 1) assess prior knowledge before a lesson and 2) check for understanding during a lesson. I’ve suggested that teachers build mechanisms into their lessons […]