People

Discover Individual Strengths to Optimize Your Team

When it comes to evaluating others and ourselves at work, we often focus primarily on areas of deficiency or improvement. In his best-selling book, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Tom Rath writes: “From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to our shortcomings than to our strengths.”

Here are some steps to establish a strength-based approach with your team.

Processes

The Marshmallow Challenge: An Easy Exercise that Builds Your Team’s Capacity to Innovate

Investing 45 minutes into the Marshmallow Challenge at your next PD, as Tom Wujec writes, will “encourage your organization to think about what it takes to dramatically increase innovation.” Imagine what you team could do to dramatically improve student achievement with this kind of mindset.

Places

Designing Classrooms that Promote Rapid Teacher Feedback

Countless researchers, from John Hattie to Stuart Yeh, support the connection between feedback and student growth, yet our classrooms are not designed to provide it. Here are five ways we can arrange learning places around the routine of providing effective feedback during class time, when our students are with us.

Products

Free and Easy Storytelling Tools for Educators to Leverage

Northwestern’s Knight Lab built these tools for journalists – but they’re catching on with educators for a reason. Each tool has straightforward instructions on how to get started.

Time

Improve Collaboration (and Save Time) with a Stand-up Meeting

Effectively collaborating with colleagues doesn’t have to take up hours from your day or week. Taking a cue from the Agile movement, educators can increase collaboration while saving time by implementing a daily or weekly stand-up meeting, also known as a “scrum.”

Quote of the month:

“Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.”

–Joe Sparano