Hart Guiding Coalition

Category: Uncategorized

  • Come on, baby light my fire (but if Jim Morrison were passionate about literacy)

    Do any of you remember that book Sideways Stories From Wayside School by Louis Sachar? It’s a collection of stories about students, teachers, and other staff attending a school that stands 30 stories tall with one classroom on each level. It was meant to be built with 30 classrooms on a single level, but the…

  • The Best Laid Plans of Classrooms and Households

    Last month’s CAPS meeting explored effective institutional tier 2 supports: what processes do we have in place for students who do not master essential standards after our best first instruction, and also how are we extending learning for advanced students who need extensions? I have been teaching AP English since 2013, so when our speaker,…

  • Killing your darlings or throwing the baby out with the bath water

    An anecdote about authentic assessment At last month’s CAPS meeting, our guiding coalition was asked to reflect on the extent to which our team’s gradebooks were an accurate reflection of student learning. That is to say—as a team—do we avoid things like grading on compliance or completion? Can a student with an A in a…