I wrote about vulnerability in an earlier blog  and was reviewing my thinking this week as I prepared to work with principal and instructional coach partners in planning for student achievement and teacher success at their schools. One of the issues I knew I wanted to explore in our conversations was, “How do principal and […]

Last year I shared about the work that I was doing with Hisar School in Istanbul, Turkey.  At that time the leadership team was examining critical student behaviors that they felt were important to making desired increases in student achievement. Having selected the behaviors, they designed a learning walk instrument around these six areas: Learning Objective… […]

While reading an Education Week Blog by Jill Berkowicz and Ann Myers, The Importance of Challenging Our Comfort Zone   (August 6),  I was reminded of the need for school leaders, instructional coaches and teachers to create environments where staffs and students are comfortable with discomfort. Berkowicz and Meyers explore the need for school leaders to be […]

I have had several opportunities in the last month to spend time with coaches and principals doing group observations in teachers classrooms followed by group discussion of individual’s analysis of what they saw happening in the teaching/ learning process. These sessions often conclude with my modeling of a conference with the teacher about the observation. […]