Author: Gabrielle
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Creating a Climate for School Transformation
Social Emotional Learning Concepts Foster Change Over the last few weeks, our school has been grappling with the issue of grades as Vermont moves to a proficiency based system. I’ll save that blog post for down the road but during these conversations one thing has become abundantly clear to me. Any teacher who has been…
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Student Involvement in School Change: Organizing
Student Involvement in School Transformation If you haven’t read my previous post on the 1st steps I took with regard to student involvement in the school change process, you may want to before continuing. During this second meeting with students, I asked them to consider all the ideas that they had brainstormed and categorize them;…
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Students Transforming School: Brainstorming
Envisioning the Ideal School Introduction and context: As the first task of my fellowship, I created a steering committee to help me with the work I would be undertaking next year. I chose several teachers and an administrator and asked each one of those people to invite two students to participate. Because my project is…
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The Perfect Teacher Appreciation Gift
No gifts for teacher appreciation week I have a simple (or maybe not so simple) request for teacher appreciation week. I would like to be trusted. I was recently awarded a fellowship that offers both time and quite a lot of money for my school. At a recent dinner they planned to honor new and…
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7 Ways to Scaffold Self-Directed Learning
How Self-Directed Can Students Really Be? If I said that students should be in charge of their own learning, I wonder how many would tell me that, while that was a nice thought, students wouldn’t be able to handle it? I know I certainly considered that myself. As we planned our first self-directed learning unit…
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21st Century Professional Development
As I have been engaging in research, collaboration and learning regarding personal learning and school transformation for the past year, I have continually encountered an irony that keeps nudging at me. We have discussed all the shifts in mindset that these changes will require. We have talked a lot about what will change for student…
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7 Ways to Start Talking Education Transformation
Starting the Conversation About Education Transformation If you have been around the education world for a while, you know that most change happens in the following way. Your principal or administrator makes a decision to go forward with an initiative. An inservice is provided and you are expected to implement the initiative. It’s no surprise…
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My Teacher Told Me Not To Bother With School!
Should We Really Be Focusing on College? How would you feel if a teacher told your kids that they didn’t have to go to school to make a living or be happy? Or that they could make plenty of money without going to college? As a teacher and fervent proponent of education, this certainly makes…
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Save Time and Empower Kids
This post is coming from a convergence of an extremely busy week filled with planning a new unit, completing my paperwork duties, administering state testing, planning for summer projects, taxes and just regular life and work on top of that. Time is probably a teachers most common enemy. Meanwhile I was reminded of a funny…
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The purpose of grades?
Are we tapping? Our principal recently asked us to reflect on the purpose of grades. I have already done quite a bit of thinking about this topic. I have some very strong opinions about grades. I thought I already had an answer but then I realized that what he was really asking was about what…