Over the past few weeks, my mind has been flooded with thoughts regarding flexible delivery of instruction. I'm not sure my definition of it works for everyone, as I would argue it has different meanings to different people. With the addition of blended and online courses, more and more educators have been intrigued by how to use time and space in order to individualize instruction and empower students. Luckily, in my role, I have the opportunity to collaborate with teachers who are actually teaching blended and online courses. So, when meeting with a group of our blended teachers, we developed a working definition of flexible delivery of instruction: Creating a culture for empowering students to take ownership of their learning. If you've been following this blog over the past two years, this definition stands behind all that I believe to be true about good teaching. As teachers, we must create learning opportunities for students to create, critically think, collaborate, co
One week ago, our staff participated in our first School Improvement Day of the year. With the chaos that the start of the year brings, it was a really wonderful day to slow down, engage with our colleagues, explore new ideas, and extend our knowledge. Various staff members took the lead, and just like we encourage our staff to offer in their classrooms, teachers had choice when it came to how they wanted to spend their time. By the end of the day, the energy was still high and many teachers shared excitement for what they saw, heard, and learned from their colleagues in the building. Anytime you can get teachers together talking, sharing, and learning - life is GOOD. I am excited to share our agenda for the day, some takeaways from the different sessions, and some of the feedback we received from our staff. As I mentioned earlier, a majority of the day centered on ENGAGING with colleagues, EXPLORING new ideas, and EXTENDING their knowledge. After brainstorming different ideas duri