Dr. Jeffrey Wilhelm and I were recently asked by educator and author Larry Ferlazzo to respond to the question: HOW CAN WE KEEP STUDENTS ENGAGED WITHOUT CARROTS & STICKS? My response originally appeared at Education Week here and was cross posted at my blog. Becoming a father and making the transition to teaching primary students (as a...
At Kent we provide many opportunities for parents and families to stay informed and involved in their child’s education. Nothing is better than face to face communication but many times this is not possible. Therefore, I believe it is important to provide a variety of ways that parents and families can both receive information...
Cross-posted at “The Wejr Board” blog. I recently had the honour of presenting to a neighbouring school district about my journey in developing on online personal learning network (PLN) and becoming a connected leader. The slides from the presentation are below but here is a brief (ok, this is LONG for a blog post)...
In his book Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni tells us that if you have a team that sits around and always agrees, you are not a real team. Teams must challenge each other to be better. There is no innovation if everyone agrees; agreement equals status quo. I have recently read a...
We often look to our past through a lens of ‘that is how things should be done today’. This past week I have read a few articles and posts about how we need to return to the old, better ways of doing things and how ‘kids these days’ are lazy and have such a...
Last year, during the reading of Dr. Ross Greene’s book “Lost at School” (another must read for any parent or educator), the following question helped me to further drive my views on student discipline: Why is it that when a student that struggles with reading or math… we support… yet when a student struggles...
As our school moves to attempt to add another stream of communication to parents via SMS (text messaging), I have been asked – “how many ways do we need to communicate with parents?” Should parents not just try harder to stay informed of their child’s education? My responses are twofold: We need to differentiate...
Parent involvement and engagement are areas in which I have been trying to grow as an educator. Through families at my school as well as online, our school has begun to try to be more inviting and to actually listen to the voice of our families. This post was originally posted on The Wejr...
“Instead of worrying about the message your school is sending on social media platforms, consider the message your school is sending by NOT engaging with social media at all.” M. Peacock via Ferriter, Ramsden, Sheninger. A few years ago, I was speaking with a friend of mine who has a strong online presence, Kye...
Student behaviour and discipline are well-discussed topics at schools and many schools have opted to use school-wide behaviour programs to help “solve” issues with student misbehaviour. A few years ago, as a new principal, I made a decision to recognize the children for “making a difference” at our school. The idea was that at...
In October, I posted an idea here called FedEx Prep: Time For Innovation. Based on the ideas discussed by Daniel Pink, in his book “Drive“, the idea was to increase innovation in our school by offering something that is needed: time. Now, I realize that the FedEx Day (Based on the idea from Atlassian)...
As educators, we are often faced with an opportunity to take the easy road or the hard road. The easy road often works for us as parents, teachers, and administrators but it rarely works for kids. The difficult road may be an immediate challenge and take much more time and effort but this is...
Across the world, educators are more and more finding themselves involved in bullying and not just through their students, but rather actively bullying others or being a victim of it. What do we, as administrators and adults, do when the bullying taking place is among the adults in the school/district? I remember starting out...
While reading Carol Dweck’s “Mindset“, I came across this great quote from Lou Gerstner: “Hierarchy means very little to me. Let’s put together in meetings the people who can help solve a problem, regardless of position.” Dweck also adds that from the view of the “…growth mindset, it is not only the select few...
Post originally appeared on the Wejr Board blog. In the past week, a number of events have occurred that highlight the issues of privilege and power in the world. I have included some key comments from the original post. “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in...
“The problem is that most schools don’t like great teachers. They’re organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average.” — Seth Godin How many educators do you know that try to change the system of education? How many educators do you know that just stick to the status quo?...
“The major aim of schooling is to enable students to become the architects of their own education so that they can invent themselves during the course of their lives.” — Elliot Eisner Part of our school goal at a our school is to “develop each student’s unique talents and interests”. Three years ago, the...
If you are a principal, when was the last time you phoned a parent of a student… just because? If you are a teacher, when have you called a parent to tell him/her the wonderful qualities within his/her child? If you are a parent, how often are you at the receiving end of a...
There are always obstacles to innovation for teachers; time and focus on curriculum can often hinder creativity and design. After reading Daniel Pink’s “Drive” and listening to Tony Wagner speak, I reflected on Atlassian’s idea of “FedEx Day”,where …to spark greater creativity among his team, and to make sure Atlassian’s programmers were having fun...
Most principals became administrators because they are passionate about education and they love to teach. Why, then, does the system make it so difficult for principals to teach? How can we change the current structures in a way that would encourage principals to have the flexibility to do more of what they love? Last...
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