Over a decade ago, a group of amazing women educators came together to study, define, collaborate, and write about what really matters in education. We spent a year — looking at research, creating sustainable professional learning structures, and naming and practicing our beliefs about learning. The positive implications from that time are deep and wide.
Across our year of study, we each kept a notebook filled with ideas, inquiries, and wonderings. Individually, we made a list of book titles that outlined what mattered most to us. These were books-to-be-written in the years to come. They captured what lived in our heads, hearts and guts and came directly from our years of teaching experiences and our love of education.
While miles separate us today, our work from that year continues to resonate with me. That year shaped me. It nudged me to think differently and it created space for me act bravely. I kept that notebook and continued to add to it. Eventually, the one notebook turned into seven—what fun—and out of those notebooks came writing that has helped me make sense of our work in schools.
I’m excited about some new books that I’ve written and co-written that are coming into the world—each with ties to that first writing crew all those years ago.
Side by Side instructional Coaching: 10 Asset-Based Habits That Spark Collaboration, Risk-Taking, and Growth [Benchmark, 2022]
Audience: Instructional Coaches, Principals, Curriculum Directors, Department Chairs, Team Leaders [anyone who facilitates learning with and for others]
Gist: Every child deserves a teacher who has a thinking partner. That’s because our work in schools is too complicated and important to go it alone. The 10 Habits in this book are designed to create support structures for everyone and led by everyone—administrators, instructional coaches, department chairs, team leaders, grade level colleagues. The key ingredient is working together in asset-based ways to build capacity across the learning community. Whether you already have a well-established coaching program or you are trying to build support from the ground up, this book will give you lots of practical ideas, tips, tools, how-to lists, and protocols to support your efforts. Although this book has a literacy focus, the 10 Habits are transferable to all content areas.
This book unpacks these 10 Habits:
1. Develop Relationships
2. Communicate Plans
3. Define Beliefs
4. Design Goals
5. Co-plan
6. Co-teach
7. Create Tracks
8. Reflect
9. Build Capacity
10. Prioritize Across the Year
BUY THE BOOK HERE!
What’s Our Response? Creating Systems & Structures to Support ALL Learners [FIRST Educational Resources, 2021]
Audience: Classroom Teachers, Intervention Specialists, Instructional Coaches, Administrators
Gist: In education time is never on our side. Too much time is being spent in meetings to discuss students’ deficits and not enough time harnessing their assets. Students come to school each day with individual and collective wants and needs, and it’s our job to harness who and where they are. The RtI process doesn’t have to be a machine model approach with an over-reliance on short sided skill and drill; it can be a dynamic, flexible, in-the-moment response focused on good instruction. This book explores how to keep students at the center of decision-making so that the focus is fidelity to our students instead of fidelity to content, curriculum or program by addressing 5 Problems of Practice with RtI which include:
We need to break out of the RtI box.
We need to honor and increase teacher autonomy and agency.
We need child study teams focused on students’ assets.
We need to increase students' thinking and doing time.
We need good instruction because that makes the best interventions.
This book will provide dozens of ready-to-use, solution-oriented tools to create asset-based systems and structures so that you are better positioned to create an instructional response that will support all students’ growth.
I’ve been blessed with incredible mentors, thinking partners, and editors. I’m inspired by a current writing group called The Radish Writers. Being a part of a writing tribe is one of the greatest gifts—if you don’t have one….go start one! Gather people who want to write and think and do together. It will inspire you. It will unleash you. It will change you.
BUY THE BOOK HERE!
Short Texts: Mighty Mentors for Readers and Writers
Audience: Classroom Teachers [K-5], Intervention Specialists [K-8], Instructional Coaches, Principals, Curriculum Directors
Gist: Short texts are everywhere, and so are the readers who love them. In this anthology, learn how to select, plan with, and use short texts to increase reading volume and inspire opportunities for writing. From novel excerpts to the writing on the back of a cereal box, short texts have so much to teach our students about the form and function of reading and writing in the world. And this amazing resource has so much to teach us about the power of “short” to help readers and writers go the long distance.
What you will find in this book:
CONSUME, PRODUCE, SHARE, EXTEND—a process for considering what texts we choose to consume, how we mine texts for what matters, whether we want to produce something to share with others, and opportunities to extend our reading and writing
30 + short texts spanning non-fiction, fiction, poetry, environmental print and more!
One-page Planning Templates that help you think through the trickiest parts of each text type and the stickiest ideas
Completed Planning Templates to give you a running start of ready-to-go lessons
Ways to use short texts with all your readers (whole class, small groups, and one-to-one) and across the content areas
Extensions for using each short text to inspire and inform writing
COMING SOON!
