Fostering Innovation & Creativity Through Student Summits
Four years ago, the Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board started an annual professional development event that has become the day that I look forward to every year. This is my reflection on our professional learning journey.
Conferences
I...
Classrooms as Think Tanks
Part 2: Greasing the Wheels of Cognitive Flexibility
I’m guilty of having spent a lot of time in my English class teaching students how to dig in to a particular stance and set conclusions. There were lessons on good thesis statements, on finding evidence that would support that thesis, and even lessons on...
Classrooms as Think Tanks: Setting the Conditions for a Thinking Classroom Part 1: The Values Causal Model
I spent the first part of my career working industriously to be what I thought was a really good English teacher: I carefully plotted and organized lessons and activities to ensure students could demonstrate their abilities and successfully complete the assignments...
Opening the Door to New Learning Opportunities
In secondary schools across Ontario, students traditionally graduate from one of three high school pathways. Students graduating with an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) earn a combination of 30 compulsory and elective high school credits. Essentially,...
Learning with an Asset Lens
All too often in education, we focus on the gaps in learning, what’s missing, and what a learner needs to do to be more successful. Instead, we can think of learners through an asset lens. When we view learners as capable, creative, communicative individuals...
Partnering for Black Student Well-Being: A Teacher’s Journey
On April 21, 1971, my mother left Jamaica as a teenager and reunited with my grandmother in Toronto. She remembers the screech of the subway, the bustle of shoppers at the Eaton Centre and wearing her winter coat to bed in a desperate attempt to keep warm....
Viva La Revolution! With Special Thanks to Jo Boaler
“Viva la revolution.”
A statement written by Jo Boaler as she signed an article I had written for the Fields Institute in Toronto about incorporating low floor, high ceiling tasks into my Grade 5 classroom. Viva la revolution... the words circled around...
Deep Learning and Well-Being – Levelling the Playing Field for all Children
I was honoured with an invitation to speak at Michael Fullan’s conference on New Pedagogies for Deep Learning: Engage the World to Change the World, in Vancouver in April 2018.
Apart from the terror this created for me, as Michael is such a giant in...
Keeping the Focus on What Matters Most – The Learning
What should matter most in our schools and classrooms is student learning. Whether we are teaching 5 year-olds or 15 year-olds, music or mathematics, physical education (PE) or physics, all stakeholders in education strive to provide an environment that nurtures...
Process versus Product: The Knowledge Building Connection
I remember when I first started teaching back in the early 1990’s, it was exciting and challenging and everything was new – so much to be learned. I was determined to be the teacher that made a difference in students’ lives. My mind was filled with...