“What if we walked into this new school year knowing beyond all doubt that our kids will learn at high levels because of OUR design decisions for their learning?” Not a possibility. Not a goal. A certainty. What if we didn’t just cross our fingers and hope the first day would go well? What if […]
What If We Believed Learning Was Inevitable? Read More »
Every morning, we step into our classrooms with more than a lesson plan in hand. We carry the immense opportunity and responsibility of designing learning that matters. Tier 1 instruction isn’t some buzzword reserved for the pages of our SIP or for evaluation frameworks. It’s what we do every single day for every single learner.
Three Tier 1 Necessities for the New Year Read More »
Teaching isn’t hard because it’s bad work. It’s hard because we’ve piled it high with the kind of work that doesn’t work. Work that looks good on a lesson plan, sounds good at a board meeting, and feels good on paper, but leaves teachers running on fumes by fourth period on a Tuesday. We keep
Stop Breaking Teachers: The Power of Doing Work That Works Read More »
Picture a school where learners thrive. Not because one teacher pulls a miracle. Not because a test score spike looks good. But because the system was built for it. Where collaboration isn’t an initiative but a norm. Where expectations are high and clear and consistent. Where the good stuff happens on purpose, not by accident.
Build the System. Guarantee the Win. Stop Chasing Success and Start Engineering It Read More »
The year’s winding down. The bulletin boards are starting to come down. Desks are being cleaned out. Awards are being handed out. And for a few fleeting moments, it’s quiet. But before we rush off to the lake or start planning PDs for next year, I want to ask a simple, but loaded, question: What
The Work That Works: A Year-End Reflection for Educators Read More »
Every May, when testing season’s dragging on and the copier is jammed for the fourth time before lunch, we get this week carved out to celebrate the people keeping the whole thing together: teachers. The calendar calls it Teacher Appreciation Week. And while the PTA might bring muffins and the administration will definitely leave some
More Than Just Muffins: A Real Take on Teacher Appreciation Week Read More »
Imagine a classroom where every lesson sparks curiosity, every student feels empowered, and every teacher knows exactly how their methods shape learning. This isn’t a distant dream, it’s the potential of evaluative thinking in K-12 public schools. Too often, education operates on autopilot: teachers deliver content, assuming learners will absorb it. “I taught it, now
The Power of Evaluative Thinking: How to Finally Break the “Teach and Hope” Cycle Read More »
Look, I get it. As educators, we’re swimming in data, and Lexile scores feel like a life raft, a tidy little number that promises to show how well our kids are reading. But chasing that number is like trying to catch a cloud: it looks solid from a distance, but up close, it slips right
Stop Obsessing Over Lexile Scores Read More »
There’s a mindset in education that’s easy to slip into and even easier to stay stuck in. It’s the belief that there’s one right way to teach. That if we just commit fully to one method, whether that’s direct instruction, inquiry-based learning, content-first, or thinking-skills-driven, we’ll land on the “best” approach for every learner. But
Stop the “One Way” Mindset & Actually Design for Learning Read More »
Picture this: a classroom buzzing with energy. One learner rattling off facts like it’s nothing. Another stuck on question one, unsure where to start. The difference? It’s not intelligence. Not even effort. It’s what they walked in with. Some show up already loaded: homes full of books, rich conversations, museum trips, story time routines that
From “Lots” to “Less”: Building a Foundation for All Learners Read More »
