Professional Development as Organizational Learning
Not to brag, but my colleageus and I are often told how much people appreciate our particular brand of professional development. My Instructional Rounds network members routinely claim their experiences to be the most powerful of their careers. My peers hear the same from our College Prepared Project participants, be they veteran teachers, central office administrators, or building leaders. Why is that? What makes professional development consistently effective? Although one
The Power of Silence
I spent a week last summer driving across the United States, contemplating along the way which of my experiences most influenced my practice. Through vast spaces of solitude, absent audio books and music, I found myself considering the power of silence. An introvert, I am no stranger to the practice of reflection as a cognitive tool, but as a leadership coach, facilitator, and presenter, silence was not something I would deliberately weave into my work. Silence seemed somethi
Instructional Rounds: Not just a Repackaged Walkthrough
They’re the newest thing out of Harvard: Instructional Rounds. But aren’t they just walkthroughs repackaged? I think not. After years of working with those responsible for developing the instructional rounds protocol and facilitating a number of iterations across the country, I can say unequivocally that walkthroughs and rounds are not the same, nor should they be. Both procedures are designed to spark improvements in student learning and they can easily supplement one anothe
Are We Deskilling Our Teachers?
I’ve always been an advocate of standards, high ones, to be sure – those benchmarks that target minimum levels of competency. They seem to me to be something to shoot for, a guarantee, if you will, that the goals we set for our students will ready them to do whatever they decide to do with their futures. On the other hand, I’ve never been a fan of standardization. I’ve had many a conversation with parents over the years explaining the difference between standards and stand
Do You Need a Coach or a Consultant?
A good question – one we like to ask and help clients answer often because there are distinct differences and justifiable needs for both. The key is in knowing the difference and assessing your needs as an organization. A simple way of distinguishing between the two is to think of a consultant as a way of addingstaff capacity and a coach as building staff capacity. Here’s how it looks:Many organizations need a task completed for which they lack adequate staffing. This could b
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