Teachers On Fire
-
What is assessment?
For decades, schools and educators clung to old paradigms of assessment. They treated grades as wages: students do the work, and teachers pay them for that work. They treated assessment as a means of ranking and sorting: winners at the top, losers at the bottom. They treated assessments as leverage to ensure compliance: follow the rules, and you’ll be… Continue reading
-
Let’s Save Space for Messy Teaching
Yes, the ideal lesson plans come with learning targets, success criteria, and assessment rubrics (co-created with students) in place. They activate prior knowledge, help students acquire and apply concepts, include adaptations that include all learners, provide means of formative assessment to inform teacher instructional decisions, and use anticipatory activities to set the stage for the next steps… Continue reading
-
It’s Time to Rethink Formal Teacher Evaluations
Would teachers experience vastly better professional growth if all the time and energy spent on formal evaluation processes was spent on coaching in classrooms instead? Yes. Would staff wellness, culture, and climate in most learning communities improve? Yes. (For principals, too — formal evaluation reports eat up huge amounts of time and energy.) Can formal… Continue reading
-
9 Survival Tips for New Teachers
How to survive and thrive in the toughest years of teaching. Dear New Teacher, Thank you for joining the teaching community. Thank you for your commitment to the learning and growth of our little people. Thank you for bringing your optimism, your ideas, your passions into our world. We love you. We need you. We’re… Continue reading
-
Why I LOVE the Kindle Reading Experience
In less than three minutes, I’ll show you why I became OBSESSED with reading on my Kindle. Continue reading
Teachers on Fire 