Powerful Parent Interviews
Just once you’ve cross the finish line with report cards, next up is Parent Teacher interviews. For some, this is an unknown that can feel incredibly daunting – but by keeping the following five “P’s” in mind you can have a successful first round of interviews! Partnership – This was the BIGGEST mindset tweak for [...]
Report Cards: Autopsy or Physical?
This is definitely an on-going debate at my school. Report cards – how to we best report achievement? While many of you are in the throes of writing report cards, you may not quite have the time at the moment to venture into the “what ifs” of assessment. For many of you, report card theories [...]
No More Classroom Repeats – PLEASE!!!
One of the things I like most about teaching Language Arts is the wide open space I have to chose novels, poems and other readings that really meet my students in their interests levels and what’s happening around us in our culture. There is a certain degree of freedom that I have to make personal [...]
Back To School Advice for Parents
In the Vancouver Sun last week , Janet Steffenhagen passed along the following message from BC’s Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid’s, her back-to-school message for parents: As your child heads back to school this year, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the important role you, as parents, play in the success of all [...]
Family Book Club
It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon – and I just happened upon this – a Family Book Club put on by the Telegraph newspaper in the UK. What a great idea to get the family reading. I think that kids learn by example – and seeing their parents involved in a book gets them motivated and [...]
“Real-Life” Learning
My students are all a buzz (and I have even heard from a couple of parents) about the excitement in the air about the web pages my students are creating in order to communicate their research about each of the fifteen mayoral candidates in our city. First off, my students are excited about anything and [...]
Parental Pledge – Commitment to Education
We teachers know that parental support is half the battle in educating students. Having a team of parents that support the work you are doing in the classroom, encourage students to do their homework at home, and so forth can take what you’re teaching in the classroom and give it exponential value. Here is a [...]
It’s Sharing – Not Stealing
So many times I hear that word “stealing” amongst colleagues. There is this belief that what one teacher creates is completely and entirely “theirs” and that we are committing some kind of crime or educational sin by asking to borrow, adapt or use their brilliance. Now I am not talking about copyright – that truly [...]
Bullying or Teasing?
Today we had an absolutely fantastic morning of professional development by Kimberly Eckert of the Eckert Centre on “Raising an Assertive Child.” She has many parenting workshops and this morning offered some insights to us as teachers on how we can properly handle conflict in the classroom. What an eye-opener it was for me! One [...]
Demystifying Democracy
Yesterday, after asking a co-worker to proof-read my email, I anxiously hit send to 15 mayoral candidates, and the respective aldermanic candidates for wards 12, 13, and 14. I invited each candidate with an email address / web-page to comment on our classroom wiki pages. It all started a couple of weeks ago. I had [...]
