I have to be honest. "Does the school have a therapy dog that I can pet?" is a factor I consider when planning my day.

I always start the school year with many goals, but this year, this might be one of the most important for me. tylerrablin.com/blog/the-art-o…

Does anyone have a really good (ideally free, but doesn't have to be) PDF translator? I have played with a ton, but the formatting almost always gets a little wild. DeepL is my front-runner right now, but I'm curious if anyone else has a better option.

11 days into the school year… and our staff has made 27 positive contacts home. And you know what? Now we have STUDENTS leaving post-it notes on our staff shout-out board. Positive phone calls home are for EVERY age, that’s a hill I’ll die on.

Filled in today as an admin at our kindergarten school, and I learned two major things: 1) Everyone working with kinder is a rockstar (already knew that but was reminded) 2) It’s pretty rewarding to help a S who’s going through to some big feels when they’re so little.

This is my sixth year (off and on because I always miss the classroom) as an instructional coach. This is the first year I really feel like I've hit my stride with it. Instructional coaches, we have a weird role that can be hard to figure out. Hang in there.

Instructional coaches, if your school or district can't answer the following question, either run or push really hard to get a defined answer: "What does good instruction look like?" If you're being asked to lead the charge, make sure that charge has a direction.

Last year, most of the requests I got were for tech support. This year, almost every request has been about assessment practices, instructional methods, learning progressions, etc. Looks like the rebrand from instructional tech coach to innovative learning coach is working.

Scouted a new location for photos near my house today, and the smoke combined with the sunset made for some fun shooting.

I'm pretty sure I can say this with no exceptions. I've never gotten value out of a required discussion board post-and-comment activity for an online class. Genuinely, is there research to support this approach?

I don’t have a plan, I have concepts of a plan.

I've been meeting with a teacher about grading practices, and today they asked, "What's the one thing I should change that would have the biggest impact?" My answer: take away your ability to average the score of assignments over time to calculate a final grade.

For those of you following along with my discussion board saga: I did my required post and responded to two people, as required. I will now get my grade. And then I hopped on here for some actual learning.

I'm testing out an idea with a teacher I work with, and so far the results have been awesome. This is a post-assessment reflection that students are using throughout the term, and even just from their diagnostic, it's so cool to see their responses. docs.google.com/document/d/13b…

Asking Americans who won the debate last night is the exact same as asking them who they were planning on voting for before the debate even happened. Confirmation bias is all you need to know about American politics these days.

Okay, I had a blast the past two days chaperoning for an overnight 5th grade field trip. AND it is also a miracle that I am still awake at 8:00 PM right now. Outdoor school’s pretty rad. It was the perfect combination of so many things I care about, but holy smokes, I’m wiped.