Building on three years of success with a schoolwide behavioral management program, Etowah Middle School decided to go even deeper and engage students in small groups for social-emotional learning. Assistant principal Nate Ayers describes some of the steps EMS has taken “to facilitate a safe and positive learning environment with strong social and emotional support.”
ABPC is excited to announce the Key Leaders Network and Powerful Conversations Network sessions for 2020-2021. This school year participants will enjoy more hands-on learning; more modeling of effective remote, blended, and flipped learning; more networking opportunities; more flexibility, and more exposure to just-in-time content. In this blog, you’ll find what you want to know about the what, when and how — and the all-important WHY.
ABPC Assistant Director Stoney Beavers continues to create useful teaching and leadership videos that last just one minute! Most of Stoney’s Snippets and Snaps are interesting tidbits from his own professional learning. Occasionally we gather up the latest entries and post them here at the blog, for easy browsing and access. Here’s our third batch, featuring Zoom breakout tips, Bento book boxes, Jo Boaler and more!
Workplace drama, as Cathy Gassenheimer discovered when she examined the work of leadership consultant Cy Wakeman, grows out of resistance, weak ownership, and lack of self-reflection. What can leaders do to avoid the ’emotional waste’? Read Cathy’s take-aways for educators.
Former NTOY and Teaching Channel host Sarah Brown Wessling and her colleague Paul Teske are creating a three-part Flipped Classroom and Online Learning series for ABPC that will benefit educators in classrooms AND remote situations. This week we talked to Sarah about the uncertainties teachers, students and families are facing. Watch our Concise Conversations chat and learn more about the PD series!
The worst thing we can do for students today, writes Pike Road Elementary assistant principal Jeremy VanEgmond, is to underestimate their ability to thrive in a digitally empowered world and make a positive difference in the challenging future they will live in. He believes educators must #OverEstimateKids and adapt teaching and learning now to meet our current realities.
In a time of social isolation and feelings of loneliness among many children and adults, ABPC’s Cathy Gassenheimer and education consultant Dr. Kisha Tolbert Simmons discovered they were both reading an insightful book: Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, by Vivek Murthy, MD, the 19th U.S. Surgeon General. They’ve teamed up to share their reflections in this joint blog post.
Summer is a great time for professional learning, even in a pandemic, as Stoney Beavers found out during last week’s CLAS 2020 Convention @Home. He loved the dress code (Zoom Casual), managed to find the venue (“Your couch”), and fully appreciated the agenda, filled with insightful and thought-provoking speakers – including John Hattie, George Couros, Regina Louise, Hamish Brewer and an impressive array of Alabama school leaders. Read his reflections here.
Program Coordinator Dakota Punzel describes the birth and ongoing evolution of Concise Conversations, our new weekly 15-minute livestream program on Facebook hosted by Cathy Gassenheimer and Jackie Walsh. Dakota, whose tech skills earned him the job of “show director,” presents our first eight CC sessions along with some lessons learned (for those of you who might want to try this in your school or district).
If you want to widen your personal and professional learning networks, writes Stoney Beavers, “look for a Twitter chat that interests you and come on in. The water is fine.” Stoney shares his own experience as an education chat rookie, recommends a good place to start, and includes some links that will help you figure out the how, which, what, and (perhaps most important) why.
