It’s that time of year again when my schedule often contains “opening day” presentations. Sometimes I’m part of an end of summer professional development event or part of a getting started session for administrators or teachers. In any case, one of the discussions I try to facilitate explores what messages educators want to communicate to […]

A few years ago I decided to switch my word choice from differentiated to personalized learning. The switch was made because I found that some teachers were differentiating their lesson plans when they didn’t yet know who their students were. In other words they were planning for a higher group and a lower group or […]

In an earlier blog  I shared a website  for Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations (an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to studying, promoting, and putting into practice the conditions that foster student aspirations in schools and learning communities around the world). I recently found The Teacher Voice Survey  that assesses staff perceptions of teaching and learning […]

When facilitating teachers’ exploration of student expectations and effort, I often begin by having teachers identify a time that they observed students engaged in what might be called quality learning. After they have shared their experiences, I ask them to analyze the experiences looking for the following elements; Depth, complexity and detail— When engaged in […]

Through the Trainugly website I listened to an interview with John Kessel—Director of Sport Development for USA Volleyball.  Kessel focused on what we know about motor skill learning and how athletic coaches should use that knowledge in practice. As I listened I was struck with connections to student learning in classrooms and to professional development […]

This formula for motivation caught my interest due to my work with tapping student effort: Expectancy x Value = Motivation  The relationship between expectation and value is “multiplicative” rather than additive because in order to be motivated, it is necessary for a person to have at least a modest expectation of success and to assign […]