Instruction & Curriculum

I was an educator in the Missouri Public School System for 31 years. I have been an educational national motivational speaker for 27 years. I once spoke at the Missouri Honors Society Conference. Teenagers from all over the state attended. Afterwards, teachers brought their female students up to me. When I asked them what was […]

As teachers, we know that many factors contribute to students maximizing their potential and, hopefully, gaining mastery of a subject. And among those factors, only one is totally within our control – how well we develop and employ our teaching skills. Skills that are enhanced when we embrace the opportunity to learn from our students, […]

“Why cultural curiosity? Why diversity education?” A dear friend who didn’t grow up in American schools often asks me this question.  I answer by drawing from my own journey– as an immigrant child, a school social worker, and now a professor–and from what educators see every day: our schools are beautifully diverse microcosms of the […]

Research grounded in the Science of Reading underscores the importance of explicit, systematic, and responsive instruction in developing skilled readers (Shanahan, 2020). Guided reading, when thoughtfully implemented, serves as a differentiated instructional approach that complements the Science of Reading by supporting fluency and comprehension development. It is further designed to meet the diverse literacy needs […]

Mixed-ability classrooms are the norm in the Spanish primary education system. Teachers are required to respond to a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral needs while ensuring that learning objectives are met and a positive classroom atmosphere is maintained. Finding strategies that support both learning and wellbeing is therefore essential. In addition to these […]

In my first semester of graduate school for clinical mental health counseling, we spent an entire class talking about supervision. Not evaluation.Not observation checklists.Supervision. We talked about structured reflection, emotional containment, ethical limits, and the responsibility organizations have to protect people who do care-heavy work. We discussed what happens when professionals are exposed to distress […]

It’s difficult to imagine an educator who would not be emotionally affected and professionally engaged by this excerpt from a letter to educators published in Teacher and Child by Haim Ginott. “I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned […]