In Service

Sometimes, one needs a bit of a fire lit beneath them in order to stop procrastinating. It’s been an exciting week of blogging in our home, thanks to the inspiration of my daughter, Laura. And I figured since everyone else has gotten on the ball with this little challenge of hers, I should probably do [...]

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Yesterday, I led a Cooperative Learning workshop with a group of second year teachers. I’ve presented on this topic, in this district, several times before–and it was one of my favorite kind of days.
The group was small–there were seven teachers, total. And they were a diverse group: music teachers, speech pathologists, special education teachers, and [...]

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Many of the school districts that I am working with this year have identified vocabulary development as an area in need of attention. Instructional practices are lagging behind what current research suggests might work best to help our students build deeper understandings about words.
Digging into this issue quickly leads most teachers to the realization that [...]

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How did YOU feel when you perused this document for the first time?
I know how I felt.
And I know how a few hundred teachers in Erie County felt as well.
Just a teensy bit overwhelmed. And kind of in need of a drink. Despite any happy rumors we heard, the new Core was not more specific, [...]

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As a coordinator for curriculum and staff development, I have the good fortune of working with many data-savvy administrators and teachers. Eager to uncover what the New York State Assessments truly demanded of students, and more importantly, determined to develop a common, deeply aligned curriculum that would produce results, this very group of educators challenged [...]

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Students and teachers in New York State spend a good portion of their school year sharpening their skills and knowledge in preparation for the English Language Arts Assessements in grades 3-8 and the Regents Examination, offered in grade 11. Ironically, if you were to ask many teachers to predict what was going to be on [...]

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If my building principal had pulled me aside ten years ago and asked me how I used data to inform my instruction, I would have handed her my latest stack of unit tests or essays and explained that at the end of each unit, I tried to get a handle on what my students were still [...]

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Stephen Peters is a former classroom teacher, assistant principal, principal, and director of secondary education. He is the author of Inspired to Learn: Why We Must Give Children Hope and Do You Know Enough About Me to Teach Me? He’s served on panels, hung out with everyone from Oprah Winfrey to the former U.S. Secretary [...]

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