Leadership

Teacher feedback is essential for fostering growth, improvement, and positive change within a school. Feedback leads to better student engagement and learning outcomes by identifying and refining teaching methods, which improves teacher effectiveness. Constructive feedback fosters a positive school environment by boosting teacher morale and communication. Ultimately, investing in teacher feedback enhances student learning by…

The Learning-Focused Newsletter continues to be an invaluable resource for district personnel, school administrators, instructional coaches, and teachers throughout the academic year and into summer planning. The newsletter’s articles are versatile and useful for incorporating high yield strategies throughout all lessons. The articles can guide collaborative planning, serve as the agenda for team meetings or…

Educators believe in the importance of learning from our mistakes and failures, and it isn’t uncommon to hear conversations about how we should support and maybe even celebrate failures. Students should understand that mistakes and failures are an integral part of learning and growing. But as educators, do we really embrace the same mindset for…

Updated: August 2024 This article was written in 2022, and unfortunately, the statistics regarding teacher retention have only become more concerning. According to statistica.com, in May 2024 alone, over 59,000 teachers and educational staff quit the profession. Additionally, teachercareercoach.com reports that 44% of teachers leave the profession within five years of entering. While teachers give many reasons…

In the book, the culture code, by Daniel Coyle, he describes a contest that was created by Peter Skillman. Each team’s mission, if they chose to accept it, was to build the tallest structure possible with the following materials: Twenty pieces of uncooked spaghetti 1 yard of transparent tape 1 yard of string One standard…

According to Joyce and Showers (2002), less than 10% of what teachers learn in traditional professional development is transferred into classroom practice. When teachers are asked why it is so challenging to implement new learning, they tend to have the same responses: a lack of time, resources, and practice. And while all of these do…

Exemplary schools understand that teaching effectiveness is the first and foremost factor associated with student achievement. Typical schools usually adopt a framework of practices to guide them toward their goals. Most of the frameworks that schools choose broadly define what to do and often include the targeted artifacts of successful implementation. These frameworks are essential…

We’ve all been there — full-day professional development workshops that give lots of information in a short period of time, and then a wave goodbye and a wish for good luck. Research is clear that these type of sit-and-get trainings aren’t effective, and often leave teachers more overwhelmed than overjoyed. Why does traditional professional development…

It takes more than one-and-done professional development to make a true impact. The goal of all effective teacher professional development is for educators to acquire new knowledge and skills, and most importantly, translate their new knowledge and skills into classroom practice. Clearly, without classroom implementation, there is no impact on student learning. Unfortunately, professional development…