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You'll find practical classroom strategies and tips from real educators, as well as lesson ideas, personal stories, and innovative approaches to improving your teaching practice. If you have any thoughts or comments about these blogs, please don't hesitate to let us know.

Elena AguilarMarch 25, 2013

The following is an excerpt from my new book, The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation. It offers a coaching framework and dozens of tools which can used by a range of educators. The following is from chapter one.

What Can Coaching Do for a School?

There's generally an agreement that educators need more knowledge, skills, practice, and support after they enter the profession. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), calculates that it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice -- practice that promotes continuous improvement -- to master a complex skill. This translates into about seven years for those working in schools. The majority of teachers and principals want professional development; they want to improve their craft, be more effective, implement new skills, and see students learn more.

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Ben JohnsonMarch 25, 2013

In Texas, there are 180 days of instruction, taking away 30 days for state testing so that leave 150 days for instruction. Let's say that a teacher gives a curriculum-based test once every two weeks and the district benchmark test three times a year. That is 21 less days of instruction or 129 days. Now, schools typically have three days of teacher in-service. Five special assemblies, two holiday parties, two half days, four emergency drills and three sick days takes away 15 more days bringing it to 111 days.

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Dr. Joe MazzaMarch 25, 2013

Have you ever wanted to see what really goes on in classrooms of the world's number one educational system? Well, here's your free virtual plane ticket to Helsinki, Finland.

Doctoral learners from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education will spend a "week in the schools" -- the schools of Helsinki, that is -- looking at a variety of research areas through the lenses of students, teachers, parents and leaders. These lead learners will use that week to reflect upon where the United States and Finland agree and disagree on core beliefs surrounding teaching, learning and leadership.

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Today is World Water Day. We're mostly made of it -- about 60% of the human body is water. We need a lot of it -- you can't survive more than a week without it. And we've got a finite supply -- only a fraction of the water on our planet is drinkable. Yet many of us take it for granted.

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Matt DavisMarch 22, 2013

I still remember April Fools' Day when I was a fourth grader. A reading comprehension worksheet went out to the class, and in minutes, we were all dumbfounded. The story and questions were incomprehensible, written in complete gibberish. But our teacher went along with the joke. We had a half hour to finish it, and it was going to be worth a substantial amount of points.

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Betty RayMarch 21, 2013

I must confess that I don't read nearly as many books as I used to BC (Before Computers) and BK (Before Kids), but I have been stealing precious moments to savor the ideas and perspectives in Present Shock, the new book by Douglas Rushkoff.

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Elana LeoniMarch 21, 2013

ASCD's annual conference (see #ASCD13 on Twitter) recently came to a close, and one of the main themes that kept surfacing was the need for more "connected educators." At this conference, there were definitely some great "firsts." The general session kicked off with a keynote from Freeman A. Hrabowski III, who tweeted his first tweet; an impromptu #edcampRogue sprouted up from in-attendance edcampers; and author and poet Maya Angelou was even tweeting at age 85!

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Karen LeaMarch 20, 2013

Do you remember learning to tie your shoes? Or learning to bake a cake? Or learning to read? I'm guessing you did not learn by watching a video or listening to a lecture. You learned by being shown, and by practice. The same principle applies to our teaching! We must model for our students.

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