When I first moved into my house, I went to the hardware store and bought myself a set of tools. It had the basics such as a screwdriver, a hammer, and a pair of pliers, but it also had several really neat tools such as a stud sensor and several spackling tools. I went home [...]
Dr. Mike Neal, Coordinator of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Kansas, reminds us in a very moving way of the power that teachers have to meaningfully shape the lives of their students. I entered my first college class in the mid 1960′s at the University of Kansas. It was a Monday [...]
Recently, a teacher with whom I was working confessed to me, “Robyn, I cannot work any harder than I am already working. And yet, my kids aren’t making the progress they need to make to pass the AP test. I am so frustrated.” I hear this a lot. Teachers are working as hard as they [...]
One of the foundations of effective rigorous acquisition as well as strong support for struggling students is that teachers activate prior knowledge. Activating prior knowledge not only helps students make connections between what they know already and what they are about to learn, it helps students become mentally engaged in upcoming learning. We’ve been hearing [...]
I first met Stephanie and Gloria when they attended one of our Supporting Struggling Students workshops a few years ago. They loved the idea of creating a proactive intervention plan and took copious notes during the workshop. I didn’t see them again until the following year when they attended one of our Motivating Reluctant Learners [...]
This post is an article reprinted from our September 2009 Newsletter This summer I did something I haven’t done in a long time. I taught a class of rising tenth and eleventh grade students. It was only for a week, but that one week changed the way that I do my work and think about [...]
Recently I conducted a workshop in a large school district on rigorous instruction. I was training about 300 teachers so we broke the workshop up into two days. Because I argue that teachers need to reflect more on their own practice, I make it a point to take some time to reflect after each workshop [...]
I had been working on the final draft of second edition of The Differentiation Workbook and had nearly finished it when I got interrupted and put it down. When I went to pick it up a day later, it was gone. Just like that. Gone. I looked everywhere. I went to my office and my [...]
Recently, I invited my favorite eight-year-old to help me bake cookies. I set out all the ingredients we would need and we got to work. First we measured the flour. She asked me, “Can I do it?” “No sweetie, you’ll make a mess. Let me measure the flour and then you can put it in [...]
Every year, we spend time at Mindsteps™ conducting student focus groups with the schools we serve on an ongoing basis. We conduct these focus groups to find out if the work we are doing with teachers and administrators is really making a difference where it counts – with the students. Every year, I am surprised [...]
