Blogs on Teacher Development

When a colleague at another urban high school commented to me that because his students needed more structure, he no longer employs project-based learning, I replied that his decision presumes that PBL is unstructured.

Recently, a nationally recognized expert in classroom management visited the campuses of Envision Schools to help coach our teachers. Though he had plenty of advice about how we can make our learning environments more structured so student learning is accelerated, he was also effusive about the sense of respect he witnessed between students, between students and teachers, and between adults in the schools.

I'm in the middle of reading to my seventh-grade class the book Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli. Our overarching theme this year is Stories of Home, and this book seems a perfect fit.

I recently bought a Garmin nüvi 360, one of those global-positioning-system (GPS) devices for your car that plots the best route to your destination and then vocally guides you along. It's really an amazing device, and one of many that has the ability to get you where you want to go no matter where you start. Add Bluetooth capabilities to this device so that your phone is fully hands free, and you're really doing great.