This time of the year is always bitter sweet. We are excited to witness the learning our students and educators have achieved over the year, and yet, we are sad to say good bye to colleagues who are retiring. These dedicated educators have made lasting imprints on the lives of students and educators. As they embark on their next journeys, we congratulate and thank them for their contributions to education.
WHERE WILL YOU BE ON JULY 28, 2015?
Join your colleagues from across Virginia on Tuesday, July 28, 2015, at the Chesterfield County Public Schools Thomas Fulghum Conference Center for Designing Inquiring Minds. This five-hour workshop is led by Ron Nash and Jenny Sue Flannagan, well-known educators across Virginia. Register TODAY! Group discounts available. Go to Learning Forward Virginia's web site for more information about this outstanding workshop.
RESEARCH: A Brilliant Article
The Brilliant Report is an e-newsletter from Annie Murphy Paul. Ms. Paul is "an author and journalist who helps people understand how we learn and how we can do it better." It's natural to think that a great way to learn is by tinkering around trying to make something in order to solve a problem. This kind of free-form exploration is highly prized by many of us-and by me, too! But this article offers some sobering evidence about when tinkering is effective and when it's not.
TURTLES, TANKS, and THREE TYPES OF TEACHER LEADERS
Noel Tichy, a business school professor at University of Michigan and an expert on front line leaders, argues that we often put our staff in metaphorical turtle tanks. Put a turtle in a small tank and it stays small. Move the same turtle into a larger tank and it starts to grow. In other words, a turtle's size is proportional to the size of its environment. So we would argue is the case with teacher leaders. Read the article here.
EDUCATOR DISCUSSES WHY EVERY TEACHER NEEDS A PROFESSIONAL LEARNING NETWORK
Curriculum director Steven Weber believes that every teacher should have a professional learning network and gives tips on how to best do so. A professional learning network allows for teachers to reach fellow educators all over the country to find answers, ideas, and suggestions for these subjects and then some.
HOW TO USE TWITTER CHATS FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
It used to be that teachers had to get together at conferences to share their expertise, their lesson plans, their ideas and opinions, their best practices, and their questions. Now teachers have a wealth of online options for sharing what they know and for discovering new professional development resources and opportunities to strengthen their practice. Continue reading....
DO'S and DON'TS of EFFECTIVE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
from BAM radio
CHOOSE LEARNING THAT BENEFITS ONE AND ALL
"When the faculty in my school were complacent about change, it was time to learn about the students we were leaving behind," writes Deborah Jackson, president of the Learning Forward Board of Trustees and Learning Forward Virginia Professional Learning Services Chair. "By looking not just at the state or systemwide data, but also what we could learn from homework and teacher-developed tests, we learned that students in a range of subgroups weren't proficient. Because those subgroups were small, our scores overall looked fine. But attaching names to the data helped the faculty realize that settling for fine was not an option. Every student had the right to strong teaching, and now we could figure out how to make that happen." To continue reading, click here.
