Our site has recently begun the journey of evaluating our grading practices through a deep dive into the book, “Grading for Equity“, by Joe Feldman. It’s a hard conversation to have for any teacher because it is personal and our brains have been so ingrained in the current grading practices that are in place. However, it is an incredibly important conversation to have to understand if our grading practices are truly equitable across all students.

When we discuss these grading practices, it is more than simply evaluating the current 0-100 scale that tends to dominate education. It goes much deeper than this. It also includes conversations such as late work policies, hard vs soft skills, assessment practices, and more. All of these pieces of our grading practices can influence students and their grades. Do our current grading practices represent the type of education we are giving our students today? Or do they more closely model a world of the past? Honestly, I am still exploring my own beliefs for the most equitable grading practices. There is a lot of hard work, conversations, and reflections that will be coming over the next several months. During this time, I hope to create some interactive and engaging professional development activities that you could also share with your teachers, departments or sites.

In this first activity, I created a simple, short, and interactive PearDeck presentation that challenges teachers to evaluate their grading practices to determine if it is truly equitable. I can take little to no credit for the content in this, since the majority of it came from Joe Feldman’s Quiz on his Grading for Equity website. However, I took this quiz and put it into a presentation that would allow school sites to have interactive conversations as they go through it. Here are a couple ideas on how to use this activity with your staff or team:

• Individually Paced – Set up the PearDeck for teachers to complete on their own and at their own pace during a staff meeting. Review the answers at the end, then break into groups to discuss these answers.
• Whole Group Paced – Set up the PearDeck for teachers to complete as a group. Display the responses to the whole group to see if the site is aligned or not. Review the answers, one by one, discuss during the presentation. If time allows, break into groups at the end for further discussion.

Personally, my favorite is the whole group option, although that was rarely my teaching style in the classroom. However, it is truly powerful to go through these questions as a whole site and compare where everyone is at and to see whether or not the school was aligned. You may find that, on certain questions, nearly all your teachers completely agree with one another. On the other hand, there may be questions where they are more split – which is where the true work begins!

If you are interested in using this activity with your site, all you need to do is:

1. Make your own copy.
2. Install the PearDeck add-on.
3. Present with PearDeck!

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Important Note: To view the answers choices to the quiz, you must present through PearDeck.  You can also view them in the speaker notes at the bottom.

Has your school taken a deep dive into its grading practices? If so, share in the comments below!

Whether you work in elementary, middle, or high school…it’s that time of year! The time of year that we start planning for the transition for many of our students to new grade levels or even different schools. As a middle school Vice Principal, I’ve been reflecting on what a huge transition our 8th graders will be going through on top of an already strange school year. Despite the difficulties of this year, I feel our school site has done an amazing job getting to know our students and trying to find ways to support them from a distance. If we have two years of knowledge of our students, I truly feel it is our duty to help pass along this information to our feeder schools to continue to offer the SEL support that will help them succeed in high school.

Below, you will see a sample of a spreadsheet that I created for our administrators, counselors, and teachers to collaborate on about some of our most struggling students on campus. These struggles can range from academics, attendance, and behavior. The goal of this collaborative spreadsheet is to share information about these student’s struggles and what has been working for them in the previous school years. It is not a spreadsheet to “warn” the high schools of students with bad behavior or grades. It is a spreadsheet that is designed to share concerns and ways to continue support for the students as they move into high school.

If you decide to use this collaborative spreadsheet, I highly encourage you to frame the conversations around the things that the students do well, as much as where they struggle. I also encourage you to remember that the end result is to share information with the following grade levels that will support the student, rather than harm them. I hope you enjoy this spreadsheet and find it useful in supporting your students as they move on to new adventures!

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What have you tried in your classroom or at your school to support students as they transition into new grade levels and/or schools? Share in the comments below!

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) has been a huge focus for our site over the last couple of years – especially during the last year during the pandemic and distance learning. SEL is “the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” (CASEL) If you are unfamiliar with SEL, I highly encourage you to check out CASEL’s website as a good diving point, then conduct your own research to learn more about how it can support your students!

One way that we are promoting SEL this year is on our “SEL Wednesdays” which has been our asynchronous days at our school site. Teachers have been encouraged to assign a short assignment that promotes SEL for their students to complete. Recently, I found several great activities on Scholastic and converted one into an editable Google Slide Deck for students!

In this activity, students are challenged to complete an “Optimist or Pessimist” survey and score their responses to determine which quality they have. After this, students are challenged to analyze their score and talk about next steps to either maintain or change their outlook. Below, you will find a quick look at the activity, as well as the full view and copy version:

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Do you have any SEL activities you are willing to share? Drop them in the comments below!

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post and shared a survey called “The Teacher Transparency Challenge“. To this day, it is still one of my favorite things that I have ever done in my classroom. It was simple – I wanted to know how my students felt about my class and teaching. The transparent, unfiltered truth. I wanted to know if I was truly meeting the needs of ALL my students and if there was anything else I could do to help them be successful.

One of the comments from my student has always stayed with me. They said, “You could focus more on your quiet and introverted students, not just the loud and outgoing ones.” It totally changed how I taught my students going forward. It also completely changed how I interacted with students to this day. It helped me to remember that there are all sorts of students in my class and I need to support all of them equally.

During distance learning, I feel that it may be beneficial to revisit the Teacher Transparency Challenge – Distance Learning Style! I’ve updated the survey to include a section on distance learning. I highly encourage you to take a moment and give this survey to your students. I think we all know that distance learning is a struggle and you might feel hesitant about giving this out. Distance learning is hard and we are all struggling – no matter what our role might be. However, it is also incredibly important for your students to be heard during this time. It’s important for us to continue to be reflective educators. It’s important for us to continue to try to meet the needs of all of our students, to the best of our ability.

Friends – I promise that I am only encouraging you to be reflective. This is not coming from a place of judgment because I know how much teachers are rocking it during distance learning! I only want to encourage you to continue to be reflective for kids.

Below, you will find the “View” version of the survey, as well as a “Copy” version:

Click HERE to make your own copy.

Have you given any distance learning surveys at your site? What were your “aha” moments?

Distance learning has been a challenge for thousands of educators around the country. Not just professionally, but it has been a great challenge personally.

Working from home is not as glamorous or easy as it seems. It can be quite a challenge.

It can be a challenge to balance taking care of your own children and meeting the professional expectations of your career. It can be challenging to know where your personal and professional life begins and end. It can be a challenge to balance it all.

So, I decided to organize a webinar featuring a panel of educators from a variety of personal and professional experiences to share what they do for self-care during distance learning. It’s so important to me that educators hear that they are not alone in this and that it is hard for everyone. I hope you take a bit of time to watch this personal, supportive, and often silly webinar on self-care.

Below, you will find some of the resources that were provided during the presentation:

• Presentation
• YouTube

What are you doing for self-care during distance learning? Share in the comments below!

Years ago, I read a book called How Full Is Your Bucket while I was attending graduate school for my administrative services credential. Although it wasn’t technically an “education” book, it was probably one of my favorite books of my master’s degree program. In this book, the author talked about the “magic ratio” of positive and negative moments that make up a person’s day. Essentially, the ratio is a 5:1 where it takes five positive moments to combat the one negative moment. Five to one…This means that four positive moments are outweighed by one negative moment in the day. It means that only at five positive moments do we break even with the one negative moment.

The magic ratio has been weighing heavily on my heart and mind this week.

I absolutely love my job but, I would be lying if I didn’t say that there were a lot of negative moments in my role as a Vice Principal of discipline. It’s just a simple fact that I don’t always get to see the students at their best moments. Although this is a fact, I have found that I love this role and forming relationships with some of our most struggling students. It’s amazing to see the progress that some of our students are making as we go throughout the year. Yet, it can be easy to fall into the trap of the magic ratio and allowing that 5:1 ratio to dictate the outcome of my day.

I remember thinking this way in the classroom, too. Perhaps it was reviewing the results of an assessment and seeing that 30 of my students performed well, while 5 of my students  struggled. It could have been the times where I reviewed a note from a substitute to find that four class periods were amazing but one class was disrespectful or off-task. The 5:1 ratio still held true in these situations. I couldn’t focus on the positive and all of the amazing things that happened that day. I could only focus on the negatives.

While there is a lot of research to support the idea of the magic ratio for positive and negative emotions, I’ve decided that I want to actively break that ratio into nonexistence. I want to be more mindful of focusing on the positives, rather than negatives – because guess what? There are a lot more positives in the day than negatives and those should carry the most weight.

While I have been thinking about this a lot lately, I was surprised to find that this was apparently on the minds of many people in our district. In fact, our district leadership meeting this week focused on this very idea, specifically on how we can create lasting positive change in our schools and lives. To help us start to develop sustainable and lasting change, our district leadership was taken through a series of videos and activities. These activities were short and simple ways to create more positivity…which has inspired me to create an activity for you to share with your students or staff, too!

Based upon some of my reflections, plus our amazing district leadership meeting, I created a HyperDoc that could be used with either staff or students to inspire positive thinking and change on your campus. Again, I have to reiterate that a majority of these activities were completely stolen from my own district, so major props to them for bringing great PD to us!

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(The easiest way to share this with staff for them to create their own link is by sharing the “copy” link above.)

As I move forward, I am hoping to put more of these “five actions” into, well, action in my own life on a daily basis. I do believe that it help defeat the magic ratio and bring more positivity to myself and those around me. There are so many positive things to focus on in our lives and in our careers – we just have to be more mindful about it!

How do you support your staff or students in creating and developing a positive mindset? Share in the comments below!

I’ve become a huge fan of implementing social-emotional learning (SEL) practices into the classroom over the last few years. Personally, I felt like I had already implemented many SEL practices into my classroom (just naturally) but I became more intentional about it over the last couple of years. I’ve seen it have a profound and positive impact on students, whether in my position as a teacher or in my newer position as an administrator.

Social-emotional learning is “the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” (CASEL) Many of our students do not know how to manage their emotions or appropriately respond to situations. SEL practices can be a powerful learning experience to help students grow – but it can only be effective when taken as a schoolwide approach. Therefore, I recently created a presentation to give our staff some quick and simple ways to start implementing SEL in their classrooms.

In this presentation, you will find the following:

• A brief overview and video on introducing SEL.
• Four (4) quick SEL activities to use in your classroom.
• Two (2) digital resources for SEL activities.
• A restorative practices activity.

Below you will find the presentation, as well as a copy version of it if you would like to make it your own:

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How have you and/or your coworkers been implementing SEL practices into the classroom and/or school? Share in the comments below!

This week, I will be sharing social and emotional learning (SEL) activities and strategies in a breakout with our staff. It’s a completely brand new presentation – and a little outside my normal wheelhouse of presentations. However, I have been trying to be intentional in my last few trainings to create and lead on topics that I have not done before. It’s very easy to fall into a rut…and I definitely don’t want to do that!

In this presentation, I will cover:

• The five CASEL competencies of SEL.
• Four quick and easy ways to implement SEL into your classroom.
• A few helpful websites with SEL resources.
• A quick walkthrough and activity on restorative circles.

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Please feel free to steal, modify and use this presentation with your own staff members. Remember – we are better together!

Earlier this week, I came across a TEDEd video called “Why You Should Define Your Fears Instead of  Your Goals?” The premise of the video is:

The hard choices — what we most fear doing, asking, saying — are very often exactly what we need to do. How can we overcome self-paralysis and take action? Tim Ferriss encourages us to fully envision and write down our fears in detail, in a simple but powerful exercise he calls “fear-setting.” Learn more about how this practice can help you thrive in high-stress environments and separate what you can control from what you cannot. (TEDEd)

Click below to watch this video:

Honestly, I found this video to be fascinating for two reasons – an educational and a personal reason.

First, I found that this video is very relevant in education due to the conversations surrounding social and emotional learning (SEL). According to CASEL, SEL “is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” While this definition primarily focuses on the positive aspects of emotional intelligence, I truly believe it is helpful for students to understand and define their negative emotions and how to overcome them. Therefore, this video gave me some excellent inspiration for a HyperDoc (which I will share below!) to support students in defining and overcoming their fears.

Second, I found that this video spoke to me on a personal level. It’s true, students are not the only ones with fears and areas of growth! Ever since I was a child, I have been an overthinker and someone who struggles with fears. You name it – I’ve probably thought of the worst case scenario that could occur. However, I have definitely improved over time and it was due to a very similar approach as in this video. I would start by thinking about what I feared, how I could prevent it, and, if my worst fears were to come true, what were the possible outcomes and how could I fix it. I’ve found it to be very helpful over the years by always asking, “What’s the worst that could really happen – and how could I fix it?”

As I finished watching this video, I realized it would be a fantastic opportunity for students to stretch their SEL skills. In fact, I really wish I had gone through an activity like this at a younger age! Therefore, I created a HyperDoc that I believe would be appropriate for any age, with slight modifications, to support students in defining and overcoming their fears.

Here are some key activities in this HyperDoc:

• ENGAGE: Students will create a collage of pictures that represent the word “fear” to them.
• EXPLORE: Students will research and rate common fears.
• EXPLAIN: Students will watch the TEDEd video: Why You Should Define Your Fears Instead of  Your Goals?
• APPLY: Students will complete the “Define, Prevent, Repair” activity.
• SHARE: Students will share their slide deck with a partner for feedback and collaboration.
• REFLECT: Students will reflect on what they have learned.

Create Your Own Copy!

If you are interested in using this HyperDoc, click on the link above to create your own copy – and it’s yours!

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this blog topic. Have you done any “fear setting” activities with your students? What other ways do you support social and emotional learning (SEL) in your classroom? Share in the comments below!

If you work in education, there is a very good chance that you have attended your fair share of parent/teacher conferences. Throughout my 12 years in education, I have attended dozens upon dozens of parent/teacher conferences. These meetings are so important for students. The more communication that can occur between all stakeholders, the more likely students will be successful academically, socially and emotionally.

However…if you have attended a lot of parent/teacher conferences, you may notice one thing that is often missing. The most important part of any parent/teacher conference – the student!

So, how can we bring students into these conferences and help them be their own advocates? How can we help them recognize their areas of struggle and the steps they need to take to overcome them? How can we help them ask for support?

Let’s let them lead their own meetings! Our students are more than capable of sharing about their performance in class and their areas of struggle. Instead of the meetings being centered on the parents and teachers, let’s empower our students to ask for support and participate in this important process.

In the video below, I will share with you a Google Doc template that can be used in parent/teacher conferences. This document contains:

• A form for students to complete before the meeting.
• A parent/teacher conference script for the student and counselor.
• An area to record meeting notes and the stakeholders who attended.

Interested? Watch this video!

Parent Teacher Conference Form (View)

Parent Teacher Conference Form (Copy)

Do students lead the parent/teacher conferences in your school and/or district? Would this be something you would be willing to try with your students? Share your thoughts in the comments below!