This fall, The Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning at the University of Indianapolis is offering a Science of Learning Micro-Credential. When I saw information about it over the summer, I immediately signed up. I have long been fascinated by the human brain's learning process. That makes sense, as I was reminded in a recent professional development session, because learning is the top value I selected when reading 

My computer has a sticker that says, “Wake Up and Work Out.” I live by that mindset. If I get up and work out before doing anything else, I've banked at least one win for the day. That means even if everything else goes crazy (like the recent day when our internet service was out almost ALL day, on a day we were supposed to be doing our state assessment), I have something to feel good about while dealing with the stress of the day.

April 12, 2025

As a teacher, what do you define your primary purpose as? We all know that a lot goes into supporting our students – we’ve been trained in SEL, Restorative Practices, Crisis Intervention, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and that list could go on. In addition to the training we’ve had, we have supervisory roles; we communicate with families, we manage our classrooms, we document student attendance, we collaborate with our colleagues, and we may even support students by organizing extra-curricular activities.

Some of you may not know this about me, but many of the core memories from my pre- and teen years relate to my time as a Boy Scout. I attended weekly meetings with my troop; we had campouts throughout the year; each summer, we went to a scout camp; and every other year, there was a high adventure trip. Eventually, I worked my way up the ranks from Scout to Eagle, the highest rank available in scouting.

2/15/25

Last week, we began a new round of professional development. One of our School Improvement Goals is to increase the number of students proficient in evidence and elaboration in their writing. In our most recent round of ILEARN testing (the test used in our state to check student proficiency in math and ELA in grades 3-8), only slightly more than 17% showed proficiency in this area.

February 2, 2025

I’ve recently been reading the book Just Tell Them: The Power of Explanations and Explicit Teaching by Zach Groshell. I see it as something of the convergence of the work from John Sweller on Cognitive Load Theory and the work from Anita Archer on Explicit Instruction. I’ve been really enjoying the book, and I highly recommend it as a way to reflect on how you explain your instruction to your students.

This blog entry provides advice on how to teach reading comprehension using grade level text instead of instructional level text. It provides 8 useful approaches.