In July 2016, I’ve moved to the district office level and no longer work at a school as a principal. To make matters more complicated I work in a completely new district – most adults didn’t know who I was, and certainly none of the students knew me. I’ve always believed that relationships come first, before solid relationships the work with curriculum, classroom design, thoughtful integration of technology and anything else really can’t happen with fidelity.
Our students are our business…our bottom line…our revenue stream – they’re the reason we work in education and just because we work in the central office doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know any of them, or any of them know us. We should break the myth that the central office is the ivory tower.
I’m very guilty of this, and need to do a better job of getting out of the office and into the schools and classrooms. That is, until I get the robotics club to build me a virtual presence device like Sheldon’s:
Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE—what I call the alphabet tests—are reasonably good measures of academic kinds of knowledge, plus general intelligence and related skills. They are highly correlated with IQ tests and they predict a lot of things in life: academic performance to some extent, salary, level of job you will reach to…
If society learns to value motivation as much as intelligence or leadership skills, it could be an enormous boon for children. Source: Highly motivated kids have a greater advantage in life than kids with a high IQ Intrinsic motivation that is, it isn’t about external rewards such as stickers or money.
I popped my head into one session: there were only two people in the room — talking about Mentoring New Principals. Initially, I was saddened at the small turnout in this particular session. Until I realized the these two people would not have met and had a professional discussion about a topic both cared about if it wasn’t…
It follows the discovery by teachers that children familiar with traditional computer spellcheckers were simply applying it to the tests. Source: Pupils find spellchecker ‘cheat’ in literacy test – BBC News They taught the students TOO well!
New York Libraries are bring public domain books to life through Instagram stories. Source: The New York Public Library is using Instagram Stories to bring classic novels to your smartphone – The Verge Sure, you can subscribe to receive classic works in your email or on your smartphone, but the New York Libraries are taking it…
We asked prominent voices in education—from policy makers and teachers to activists and parents—to look beyond laws, politics, and funding and imagine a utopian system of learning. They went back to the drawing board—and the chalkboard—to build an educational Garden of Eden. We’re publishing their answers to one question each day this week. Responses have…
