Professional Development

Pearls need discomfort, right?

“Those that have survived such perils of the sea as typhoons, suffocating red tides, and attacks from predators are brought ashore and opened. if everything has gone well, the result is a lovely, lustrous and very valuable pearl.” Click image for source. Yesterday after work I was typing up a commitment contract with our head Pearls need discomfort, right?

Leadership for any kind of change.

Please, Administrators of Canada (and probably the US and Australia, and South Korea, and New Zealand, and Morocco, and…), please stop jumping headfirst into change initiatives and expect your teachers to jump on with you as if they had been there from the start. Do you know that some of the least effective PD (wish Leadership for any kind of change.

Challenging Conventional Wisdom, Indeed.

There is a great conversation going on over at the CASTLE book club blog (orange group) about the  teaching of facts and skills. I plan on posting this post over there but my login and password are stored on my home computer, I’m correcting procrastinating correcting English papers at work. For now, I will post Challenging Conventional Wisdom, Indeed.

Professional Development Meme 2009

I’ve been tagged by Greg Cruey, who came across this at Clif’s Notes recently. Directions Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical Professional Development Meme 2009

Collaboration for student success: teachers and para-educators working together

**Kartoo Visual search for paraeducators** (type paraeducator in the search field, click on the mindmap key) The idea of extra help in the classroom is becoming more and more a reality for many classroom teachers. As we move away from stand alone resource room models towards inclusion for students with needs there is a recognition Collaboration for student success: teachers and para-educators working together