The TLAC team and I are heading to New Orleans after Winter Break, doing a two-day updated Engaging Academics workshop on January 11th and 12th. We’re excited to be presenting- it’s one of our best workshops–maybe the ideal ‘introduction to TLAC workshop–but this one should be especially interesting as it includes a few significant changes that…
High quality training for teachers is a great thing, especially when it addresses the real world challenges of the classroom in a practical and useful way. But even the best training, we should remember, hasn’t yet changed what happens in the classroom. It takes sustained focus after training to do that. And it takes something that’s…
Every week at TLAC Towers we watch and analyze video of teachers. This week, though, we did something that we’ve never done before. We watched video with students–Ziyanique Wells and Ayianna Texidor, two inspiring scholars at North Star’s Washington Park High School in Newark. Ziyanique and Ayianna are interested in teaching so English teacher Ashling…
Show Call is one of my favorite teaching techniques. It’s essentially a visible Cold Call. You assign a written task and then, when it’s done, choose an example or two and project to the class. I love how it puts student work at the center of the classroom, making it visible and tangible so everyone can…
A couple of weeks ago I shared a picture of Jo Facer at Michaela school. She’d used a list of sophisticated verbs that added depth and nuance to discussion about what a text “showed” to expand her students vocabulary and precision when discussing texts. The idea resonated with lots of folks so I am happy to…