Hello, I hope you are well, and I hope you have power and internet. Last week was challenging, because Isaias was deceptive—it didn’t seem like a big storm, so I wasn’t really prepared to be without internet for several days. To be fair, I’m not sure what more I could have done to prepare [...]
It’s been a grueling few months, hasn’t it? I hope you are doing OK. Many of the people reading this Coaching Letter have really had no break at all since we shuttered the schools in March. And now we have to gear up for whatever happens next, and that too will be a ton [...]
Hello, I hope you’re well. This Coaching Letter is about planning for the fall the right way—by paying attention to the research and by not getting trapped in a deficit mindset. As part of my principal preparation program—I mean, the one I took as a student myself—I had to take two courses in the [...]
Hi there. I hope you're doing well. I don't know if the end of the school year has provided you any respite or not--I know things are still very busy. I hope you do get to breathe a bt. Here in Connecticut it's been ridiculously hot and muggy, and I am grateful that we [...]
Friends, I had a Coaching Letter almost ready to go on Tuesday night. I can’t remember why I decided to send it on Wednesday morning instead, but on Wednesday morning it was nowhere to be found. Apparently I wrote the whole thing without saving? Stupid mistake. I was too annoyed and frustrated to try [...]
Friends, I hope this finds you well. My colleague Kerry Lord ran a Zoom session on wellness for 300 people today which expanded my thinking about what we mean by wellness—that it is not just about our emotional and physical health—we should also be talking about intellectual and social wellness. That all seems exactly [...]
It is June 3, 2020. Days into protests across the nation and world, human beings are angry, confused, frustrated, and in pain.[i] Today I sat down to pen a statement on behalf of CT Center for School Change, but I struggled. During the last several days, I’ve used writing as a source of sense-making, [...]
Despite the fact that I have a book manuscript due on June 1, and a module for the Center’s re-opening school workshop to design, and other district projects I’m working on, I have found myself having to fight the urge to work on an article for the Kappan’s April 2021 issue: “Research, meet practice.” [...]
Friends, I hope this finds you well. I can’t believe it’s so long since I wrote a Coaching Letter, and I can’t believe that when schools closed several weeks ago I thought I was going to have more time to read books. I bought a pile of them from bookshop.org. A book purchase is [...]
Over the last several weeks, I’ve partnered with numerous districts, schools and leadership networks. I’ve watched and listened carefully as they make sense of the pandemic and its impact on schooling. And as the father of two teenagers, I’ve watched my own district plan and re-plan how they will best meet student needs in [...]