As cognitive scientist David Perkins reminds us: If you don’t think, you don’t learn. It is the ongoing reflection by a teacher about their practice that results in improvement. In Creating a Culture of Reflective Practice, Cathy Gassenheimer writes, Pete Hall and Alisa Simeral show us how to build this reflective capacity schoolwide.
This week ABPC’s Cathy Gassenheimer (@cathygassenheim) tweeted live from the Learning Forward Annual Conference in Dallas, Texas. We’ve been curating some of Cathy’s tweets along with other tweets from Alabama educators who attended the premiere professional learning annual event. In this post, we share some final highlights.
Cathy Gassenheimer is tweeting live from the Learning Forward Annual Conference. In one of her favorite Monday sessions, Cathy joined Jackie Flowers, Director of Instruction & Professional Learning in the Florence City Schools. Find out what they learned at a session with expert Nancy Love on teacher teaming to maximize formative assessment.
Cathy Gassenheimer (@cathygassenheim) is tweeting live from the Learning Forward Annual Conference in Dallas, Texas. We’re capturing her Twitter streams for various sessions and sharing them as posts. Educational leadership superstar Michael Fullan’s pre-conference session on Sunday was her first stop. Here Cathy shares some background and bits of Fullan wisdom.
Do you want to become a more confident and prolific writer? Maybe you’d like to really commit to a professional blog, or publish an article about a successful practice, or even write a book for educators – or a novel! Whatever your reasons for polishing your writing skills, John Norton shares some resources that can help.
Muscle Shoals City Schools is making quality questioning a key improvement strategy. In our final post by district instructional partners, Cheryl Lockhart shares some of the tools McBride Elementary has developed to support students and teachers as they “jump into the pool” and begin the shift to a culture of deeper thinking and discussion.
Muscle Shoals City Schools is making quality questioning a key improvement strategy across the system. In the second of three guest posts by district instructional partners, Sandy Armstrong reports on the QQ experience at Howell Graves Preschool after a team of teachers attended ABPC’s summer Quality Questioning Institute.
Quality Questioning is a highly effective way to engage our students in deeper learning. To help ensure more Alabama teachers gain access to training in quality questioning, ABPC has begun offering QQ Institutes, led by national expert Jackie Walsh. In the first of three guest posts by instructional partners in Muscle Shoals City, Dianna Ritter reports on the QQ experience at Highland Park and Webster elementary schools.
We all like good stories. Stories capture our imagination and invite us to consider the possibilities that life presents us. Stories often offer an escape from our daily hum-drum routine. But can they change behavior or invite people to consider a different perspective? Bob Garmston, co-founder of Cognitive Coaching and author of The Astonishing Power of Storytelling, thinks so.
Chip and Dan Heath are masterful storytellers. In The Power of Moments, they explain the idea behind creating your own peak memories with an abundance of stories you’ll enjoy. The book chronicles insights and occurrences of people from all walks of life that lifted their spirits and often caused them to change their direction or goals.