Be of Use

What does good professional development look like? I've struggled with this question during my decade as a professional educator. Some of the questions I've asked myself or discussed with others is - Before school? During school? After school?  Compensated? Contractually compelled? Not compensated? At will participation? The better question is - how does the learning take place - not when or why. If we preach to our teachers to change how they are doing things in the classroom, it's pretty disingenuous to set up professional learning in a lecture hall/auditorium setting, or a 40 minute demo with time afterward to "give it a try." My last full day of the 2012-2013 school year, was my most proud because I think the team I worked with got professional learning right. It was a leadership retreat, rather than a data focused retreat this year. My director laid out the videos she wanted to share to get the building leadership teams to - for lack of a better ...

Like other folks, I was surprised and annoyed about the end of life announcement on Google Reader. This is something I use everyday (but I guess I'm only one of a few thousand...not several million) and I rely on it for getting a great deal of good ideas sent directly to me. Tonight I had a thought that it might be a good thing. Did Google Reader stunt my own growth and curiosity to read about what many others have to say? There's tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands or more...) of educators out there sharing what they're doing, what they're thinking about but don't have the bully pulpit of Larry Cuban or Will Richardson. It certainly doesn't mean they have lesser things to say. Mostly they right about their own action research they're doing right now - very useful things to read for practitioners. In the last few weeks I've divorced myself from Reader and used other avenues to get my information from. Tonight I came upon this nice post on I ...

My New Year's Resolution for 2012 was to blog. Well from a legacy grading point of view I'll give 35 posts a gift C+. This past semester I've been assigned to dive into assessment - because after all its 50% of my job. What Stiggins writes about that really has peaked my interest is students owning their own assessment. Makes all the sense in the world, but I never thought about the power of that. This is a good way to view blogging - as the assessment of how you're doing/what you're doing. Miguel Guhlin said its more about getting his thoughts down and reflecting more than anything. So perhaps I can use blogging as 1) a means of self eval and reflection ad 2) as an example to teachers of self-evaluation. I believe for 2013 I need to blog more frequently just to get in the habit of writing to find a rhythm/voice. Another thing I've noticed from other edubloggers is that depth is so important. Some of my posts were less than what is expect out of myself for wor...