BLOG – Supporting You…So That You Can Support Others

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?

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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...

Collecting Evidence of Learning

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

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

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

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...