Year 0 instructional notes

   The screenshot above is the  APS "Shift the Academic Struggle" Continuum . At the Teaching Partner meetings I'm attending regularly now, we talk often about "shifting the academic struggle" to students. These conversations are vitally important because they encourage our group to think with others about how to engage students in heavy thinking work. As teachers are up to their elbows in new curriculum tools and challenged to think about standards prioritization as they use those tools to plan, it is essential that as we move from planning to teaching, we remember that all the intellectual work we did in planning should help us "do less" of the thinking work in the classroom.  When I'm invited into classrooms for the purposes of observing, coaching and giving feedback, teachers usually appreciate if I watch with a critical question in mind: "Who is doing the work and who is doing the thinking?" It is such a valuable consideration becaus...

The conversations I'm having with teachers about next year often turn to the unique challenges we'll encounter in opening a new school, forming new collaborative teams, and establishing new routines. The prospect of starting the year with small(ish) class sizes is one potentially exciting challenge we discuss. We've wondered aloud how we'll establish collaborative classroom cultures if, hypothetically, a class is particularly small and shy, or just low energy. At the same time we wonder about the kinds of problems we encounter, we talk about how small classes afford us the chance to teach in ways that are more responsive, and individualized than we can when our classes are at capacity.  I like to imagine we'll know each individual student a little better, and the supports we plan for students who seem to need extra help, or who need a challenging extension will be tailored to the specific learners as a result of small student numbers. It is fun to think about how th...

In a teaching partner meeting just before the holiday break, we were asked to look through the APS PLC Rubric to describe the work of teachers we were observing in PLCs. Since the school I work for is still one that lacks teachers and student work, I chose the rubric indicators that struck me as the most important for effective PLCs. Here they are, cut free from their boxes in the rubric, with key phrases bolded.  Dillon/Highlands Copy of APS PLC Rubric I expect some of our teachers next year will be familiar with this rubric because they’ve used it in a professional development setting. Others might be seeing it for the first time. Whatever the case, the document will probably help anchor our initial work in PLCs because it provides some vocabulary, and critical criteria for us to consider.  Here are the four boxes I chose, with some key phrases highlighted: Priority standards, assessments , and instruction are all aligned to focus teaching and learning. Priority standards us...

Yesterday, professional learning pulled me away from the hiring and planning work that is in full swing at the slightly strange offices of our not-yet-real school. Teaching partners were invited to join Communities of Practice around APS in order to learn more about our instructional areas of interest. For the morning session, I chose to visit Arkansas Elementary to learn about Number Corner in the Bridges curriculum, and to observe an early career teacher working with students on the first day of a new month. In the afternoon, I opted to visit Dartmouth Elementary, where I observed students writing about a fictional trip to space.  My choices of destination for yesterday's Communities of Practice were driven by my desire to learn elementary curricula that teachers will work with next year at our school. I've done most of my teaching and coaching work in the secondary grades, and I've always specialized in literacy, so it is important for me to get the best working knowledg...