Inspiration
The Benefits of Immersive Learning
Realizing Our Vision This past January, The Bay School of San Francisco launched its inaugural Immersives program: three-week academic courses that are experiential and project-based. After two years of developing curricula, honing pedagogy, securing partnerships with organizations throughout California, and working out the logistics of each course, Bay expanded its campus beyond its walls and…
Read MoreJoin the Club
Clubs and affinity spaces are designed to appeal to people of common interests and experiences. This shared experience ignites a sense of understanding and support within the group, a familiar camaraderie. The sense of empowerment that exists in affinity spaces is more critical when this group of people is part of a less dominant, disadvantaged,…
Read MoreEducating As If We Are Already There
“I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life’s blueprint?” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked this of Philadelphia’s Barratt Junior High students in 1967. When I read his speech at the King Center in Atlanta it made me think of my role as an educator because Dr. King’s question…
Read MoreA Letter to Teachers
I spent a good part of the summer (and the months leading up to it) planning and co-facilitating Teaching Foundations in Southern California and the Bay Area with a team of stellar facilitators and cohorts of inspiring participants. While I end each session feeling physically tired, my heart always is full, and from that fullness,…
Read MoreWhy Restorative Justice Practices and Community Matter More than Ever in the Era of School Shootings
This morning, like every morning when I park in a lot of the middle school where I am an assistant principal, questions flood my head in anticipation of the coming day. Which students will need academic support and interventions today? How can I best coach that teacher with her long-term lesson planning to increase her…
Read MoreApplying CATDC Practices of Learning and Leading to your own School Community
Over the past decade we, Cathy Aragon, Meredith Landis and Sylvia Rodriguez Douglass, have individually learned from many workshops and conferences provided by the CATDC. In the last year we found ourselves drawn into conversation, reflecting on what we brought away from these professional learning opportunities and recognizing the major themes in our work that…
Read MoreLessons from My First Year of Leadership
This year was my first as an administrative leader. After teaching for many years, I was promoted to interim division head and needed a crash course in effective leadership. Thankfully, the CATDC was offering an ongoing program for new leaders. The four meetings over the course of the year provided me with a network of…
Read MoreSo What Do White 4th Graders Have to Say About Race?
As it turns out, a lot. Twice a month I get to work with fourth graders at a local school. The district has a stated commitment to racial equity and has been considering culturally responsive strategies with faculty and staff. When some middle school students of color reported a series of racial microaggressions, the administration…
Read MoreLean Into Discomfort: Developing Better Skills to Really Talk about Race in Schools
As we post this, events are unfolding in Charlottesville and across the nation that bring a new urgency to our need to increase our racial literacy. Yet, even as some of our school leaders denounce the white supremacy on display, there remain critical gaps and omissions in our words, our actions, and our understandings. Schools…
Read MoreCreating a Growth Mindset In and Out of the Classroom
We want our students to achieve growth, both in and out of the classroom. And we know that simple shifts and practice can have a profound impact on both their work and behavior. Building on Carol Dweck’s work on Growth Mindset and Carol Thomlinson’s Differentiated Instruction, we can design a roadmap for students to meet…
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