Budgets and calendars don’t lie. If the priority is literacy but the master schedule, the coaching assignments, student support, and the spending look identical to three years ago, the priority is rhetorical. Focusing resources on the most important measure of success matters.
Consistency does not mean robotic teaching. It means students do not have to win the teacher lottery. A schoolwide literacy commitment should be visible from classroom to classroom. The goal is not sameness for adults; the goal is reliability for students
A student-centered piece of advice about inquiry-based learning: the knowledge you spent a few days building in students by having them read an article or chapter before sending them off on a two-week role-play inquiry project, you know the one where they pretend to be a biologist, historian, or geographer, is nowhere near enough.
We are constantly trivializing expert-level knowledge by assuming students can meaningfully engage in inquiry after only brief exposure to content and believing they will simply pick up the rest along the way. Experts can do that. Novices cannot. A few days spent reading an article or chapter does not provide enough background knowledge for students to authentically think and work like a economist or chemist.
Here’s what you should do instead: spend those two weeks building far more knowledge. Give students repeated exposure to the concepts, vocabulary, examples, explanations, and models within the discipline.
Two weeks spent building accessible knowledge in long-term memory through explicit instruction will help students think and inquire more like a mathematician, poet, or engineer than two weeks spent pretending to be one ever will.
Look what just dropped. Can’t wait to listen. @MrZachG@AJPettway1 S5E28: AJ Pettway on “Student-Centered Learning,” Instructional Coaching, and School Leadership – Education Rickshaw https://t.co/JG5J6LotHX