Continuing to Re-invent Professional Learning
by annedavies | March 7, 2023 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
March 7, 2023 We’ve been having the most interesting conversations with clients these past few months as professional learning becomes a part of all of our lives again. And, as is true with any significant life change, we are not going back to what we had. We...
Happy New Year – Take Two!
by annedavies | January 31, 2023 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
January 31, 2023 In many parts of the country, students and teachers are preparing to end one part of learning and begin a new one. For some this may mean a new term or semester or simply the halfway point of the school year. This mid-way point presents us all...
January 2023 – Rebuild and REfresh
by annedavies | January 17, 2023 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
January 17, 2023 Welcome to 2023!! As leaders we re-fresh, re-think and re-build professional learning and development with powerful, thoughtful, intentional small steps. Today’s new teachers are today’s new generation of thinkers and learners. And, because our...
December Blog – Pause and Reflect
by annedavies | December 8, 2022 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
December 8, 2022 The snow has been falling here in the Comox Valley this past week. Being in a coastal climate, the flakes are huge, wet, heavy, and beautiful. It is a winter wonderland. And, as we all know, along with the snow comes the decision-making and a...
RE-Fresh Professional Learning: Finding Time, Energy and Enthusiasm in These Times
by annedavies | November 13, 2022 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
Nov 13, 2022 As leaders reestablish a culture of professional learning across schools and systems, they are overcoming the challenges of not enough supply teachers, not enough money, not enough time and a lack of appreciation of the importance of professional...
Whew! Fall Term 2022 is Underway
by annedavies | October 28, 2022 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
October 28, 2022 Whew! September is over! SEPTEMBER - the first month of school across much of North America - is such a busy time! So much to learn about students, their families, our colleagues and our community. It’s a time when educators are thankful they...
July Blog – Designing for Next Year
by annedavies | July 6, 2022 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
July 6, 2022 Recently, I was in conversation with a group of neighbours at the end of the driveway. It was the time of evening when the light was soft in the sky and the worries of the day seemed to have faded away. Two of us were educators and the rest held...
June Blog – Nurturing Our Resilience As Leaders
by annedavies | June 1, 2022 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
June 1, 2022 From the small Hungarian village where my father was raised comes a folktale that might be one that has also been passed to you. It speaks of a man who was the woodcutter of that community. He supplied homes with wood to fuel their fires and to...
April/May Blog – Endings and Beginnings: Reflecting on Resilience
by annedavies | April 30, 2022 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
April 30, 2022 We know assessment in the service of learning makes a huge difference in student learning outcomes and that’s why it is important to plan for its central role in every new initiative whether we are thinking about welcoming newcomers to Canada,...
Powerful Feedback
by annedavies | March 10, 2022 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
March 10, 2022 As we’ve been focused this month on feedback that supports learning, we’ve had lots of great conversations with colleagues. One group with whom I work is teacher candidates. As we explored feedback, I engaged them in the following learning task:...
Assessment for Leadership
by annedavies | February 8, 2022 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
February 8, 2022 Over the past couple of months, we have been preparing for the inaugural series of The Leaders’ Roundtable – a twelve-week focus on leadership that inspires, transforms, and brings hope, even in these times. This preparation has taken us back...
Hope and the New Year!
by annedavies | December 31, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
December 31, 2021 During an online gathering of family over the holidays, one of my cousins said that his son was going to require an IEP in the new year in order to “catch up”. Another cousin immediately asked, “What is an IEP?” A few of us chimed in with the...
BLOG – Supporting You…So That You Can Support Others
by annedavies | November 24, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
November 24, 2021 This past week, a principal said something very interesting to me in a conversation about instructional leadership. She stated, “We are being told that we are leading in a post-pandemic world and, yet, it seems we are still very much in the...
BLOG – Report Cards: Event or Process?
by annedavies | October 31, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
October 31, 2021 Just last week, I was speaking with a colleague about the new report card format that is being used in her system. She shared with me that almost as soon as that new format was released, emails and calls started flooding her office – even...
BLOG – Seven Actions…for Instruction and Assessment
by annedavies | September 30, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
September 30, 2021 During a recent news program, I was listening to two television hosts discussing the top story of the day. In sharing her views, one of the hosts challenged the other and then punctuated her statement by stating, “That is really two sides of...
BLOG – Feedback: It’s not an event…it’s a process!
by annedavies | August 31, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
August 31, 2021 In the months leading up to the 2020 Olympics held in Tokyo in July 2021, the media covered not only the athletes’ preparation in relation to COVID procedures and protocols, but their preparation for the mental stress and anxiety that they would...
BLOG – Beginning with the End in Mind
by annedavies | July 29, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
July 29, 2021 Recently, with a mask securely fastened on my face, I looked through a shelf of different meats at a local deli. Tucked to one side were bags that were marked ‘ends’ – those final 4-5 cm of a larger piece of meat. They are most often sold at a...
BLOG – Communicating Learning to Others
by annedavies | June 1, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
June 1, 2021 As the ending of this school year fast approaches, we most likely will be involved in reflecting on the year that was. We might even be asked some of these questions: What might be some ideas and strategies that we learned as a teacher or as a...
BLOG – Designing Professional Learning for These Times
by annedavies | May 2, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
May 2, 2021 We began our April 2021 blog post with these sentences, “It has been an unbelievable past twelve months...and that’s an understatement! Each of us could create a list to precisely describe the reasons why these past twelve months have been...
BLOG – 12 Quick Fixes: Teaching and Assessing in These Times
by annedavies | April 1, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
April, 2021 It has been an unbelievable past twelve months...and that’s an understatement! Each of us could create a list to precisely describe the reasons why these past twelve months have been unprecedented. That list might include things like: I haven’t seen...
Collecting Evidence of Learning
by annedavies | March 12, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 1 Comment
March 12, 2021 Whether in elementary or secondary classrooms, today’s curricula are far too complex to assess using products only. A case in point comes from students in a third-grade classroom in Manitoba. In early December, right after report cards were...
BLOG – Planning Reliable and Valid Evidence
by annedavies | February 28, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
February 28, 2021 We find ourselves continuing to exist in states of uncertainty. Few among us knew last March that we would still be living our lives – both professional and personal – in the throes of a global pandemic. We pivoted quickly from in-person...
I Love To Read And Lead
by annedavies | January 31, 2021 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
Feb 01, 2021 Reading is a key component of being a full participant in a democratic society. Unravelling the mystery of how children learn to read fueled my studies for my MA and Ph.D. There is an urban myth that illiteracy rates at Grade 3 are used in the...
Goal Setting
by annedavies | December 31, 2020 | Blog, Leaders, Teachers | 0 Comments
Jan 04, 2021 After I realized that the ‘19’ in COVID-19 was a pretty good description of my potential weight gain, I decided to work with a personal trainer on a weekly basis in a COVID safe way. This worked for about five weeks and then a new set of...