“Lastly, there’s one more beneficial side-effect that comes from peer observation: having your students see you together. Something powerful happens when students see their teachers together. You become larger than the sum of your parts, stronger not only in number, but because this simple show of cooperation tells them you are united, which is an important message to send to kids. In the same way that children feel more secure when their parents are getting along, students feel something similar when they see us support each other.”
“Oh, and he also wanted us to observe each other using the strategies in our teaching. People FREAKED OUT. Not about having to read another book or try new strategies. It was the peer observation. Lost their ever-loving minds. “I don’t want someone else in my room looking for mistakes!” They said, all in a tizzy. “And I don’t want to be the observer either! Who am I to tell someone else what they’re doing wrong?” Eventually, because it was mandated, they had to get over it. But their initial response showed a lack of understanding for how truly amazing peer observation can be. If we can get past the discomfort, opening our doors to other teachers can be a fantastic source of professional development.”
“The Aspen study identified eight overarching strategies that high school leaders can take to escape the 70’s model and invigorate their sports programs.”
“Kwame Christian is the director of the American Negotiation Institute. He offers a simple, three-step technique to engage in tough discussions while keeping the conversation cool: 1) Acknowledge and validate the emotion. Recognize how everybody is feeling about the situation, even if it's difficult. 2) Get curious with compassion. Ask lots of questions and genuinely listen to the answers. 3) Engage in joint problem-solving. Once both parties have acknowledged how they're feeling and identified why there's an issue, come up with solutions together — so that there is buy-in from both sides.”
“We can never achieve what we want simply by pointing out what we don’t. This is why I’m cautious about the term anti-racist. We should be mindful and avoid defining the world we want by articulating what we don’t want. The absence of violence doesn’t constitute peace, nor does the absence of illness constitute health. Peace is something entirely different from anti-violence; health and well-being cannot be adequately described as anti-illness. Light is not anti-dark, nor is water anti-land. These are important things in and of themselves… Belonging perhaps comes closest to what comes after anti-racism.”
“This makes the fall booster conversation interesting. Last week, the FDA authorized a BA.4/5 vaccine formula. However, one could make the argument that the original BA.1 vaccine formula would be better with this BA.2.75 news. But, chasing variants is never going to work. Our goal should be broaden protection. An Omicron vaccine will do that, regardless of the sub-variant circulating.”
“A recent survey found 85 percent of school principals are experiencing job-related stress and 48 percent are dealing with burnout. What can be done to keep them in their roles?”
“Based on my decade of experience designing and facilitating strategy retreats in small and large companies around the world, there’s a more creative approach CEOs can take to make the most of this annual opportunity with their executive teams.”
“Communicate often and clearly. Develop managers to lead and retain their teams. Workplace wellbeing is a differentiator; make it a priority”
“7Taps is the best tool I’ve encountered for creating a quick microcourse. A microcourse is a miniature learning experience. It’s useful anytime you want to teach or explain something quickly and concisely, without creating a complex course or writing a long memo. Here’s one I created with 7Taps about how to spend less time on email. It took me about 25 minutes to create. It takes about three minutes to consume.”
“Some writers write in the name of Art in general—James Salter for instance: “A great book may be an accident, but a good one is a possibility, and it is thinking of that that one writes. In short, to achieve.” Eudora Welty said she wrote “for it, for the pleasure of it.” Or as Joy Williams puts it, in a wonderfully strange essay called “Uncanny the Singing that Comes from Certain Husks,” “The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve … something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness—those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings.””
“Nearly a century old, it’s still avidly read and discussed in MFA circles, thanks to its author’s meticulous dissection of the devices of fiction, likely more valuable than any of the most recent craft books on the shelves. Unquestionably, it has been a kind of ur-text for many fledgling novelists because it discloses so clearly what one writer calls the “narrative math” that underpins all fiction.”
“One of the most popular genres of videos online is to comment on other videos online. Are they comedians or media critics?”
“For 3-D printing, whose origins stretch back to the 1980s, the technology, economic and investment trends may finally be falling into place for the industry’s commercial breakout, according to manufacturing experts, business executives and investors.”
“I suggest much of what large pre-trained models do is a form of artificial mimicry. Rather than stochastic parrots, we might call them stochastic chameleons. Parrots repeat canned phrases; chameleons seamlessly blend in new environments. The difference might seem, ironically, a matter of semantics. However, it is significant when it comes to highlighting the capacities, limitations, and potential risks of large pre-trained models.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson