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Donna Spangler
Nov 20, 2023
Fostering Gratitude and Thanksgiving: A Guide for Instructional Coaches
The following piece by Donna Spangler appeared recently in SmartBrief. Donna served as coordinator of instructional coaching for Derry...
Doug Wren
Sep 11, 2023
Who Would Want to Be a Teacher?
Photo credit: Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein. From The Irony at the Heart of the War on Teachers Three and one-half years ago, much of the...
Danielle Johnson
Aug 20, 2023
Back to School for Educators: The ABCs for a Healthier School Year
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash Whether you are dreading the return to school or extremely excited about the new school year, these...
Donna Spangler
Jul 30, 2023
What Is the Next Step in a Retired Educator's Journey? Edjacent!
Photo by Nature Uninterrupted Photography Hello, fellow educators and learners! My name is Donna Spangler, and as I sit in my kitchen...
Doug Wren
Jul 27, 2023
Report Reveals the Sorry State of Public School Instruction
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash Findings from research conducted jointly by the RAND Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public...
Meghan Raftery
Jul 20, 2023
Gifted Education Should Not Be Zero-Sum
Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash One of my favorite books is The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together...
Danielle Johnson
Jul 16, 2023
Prioritizing Sidelined Narratives: Reshaping Education for Equity and Inclusion
Photo by Maheima Kapur on Unsplash Have you ever questioned the content of your textbooks or the narratives shared in classrooms? Did you...
Meghan Raftery
May 23, 2023
The Emperor’s New Clothes and the Virginia SOL Tests
My son is scheduled to take two state-mandated, standardized tests this month. He is in fourth grade. This would be the 11th and 12th...
Doug Wren
May 15, 2023
Will Old Donation School Ever Be Fully Integrated? Part 3: The Great Equalizer
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash In case you were wondering about the main title of this blog series, Virginia Beach’s Old Donation...
Doug Wren
Apr 6, 2023
Will Old Donation School Ever Be Fully Integrated? Part 2: The Folly of Testing First Graders
In Part 1 of this blog series, I reported some unsettling statistics from the Virginia Department of Education’s 2021 and 2022 Fall...
Doug Wren
Mar 21, 2023
Will Old Donation School Ever Be Fully Integrated? Part 1: Change Is Slow
Photo by Phil Reid on Unsplash If you saw my seven-part blog series last summer or my follow-up post, Two Steps Forward and One Back,...
Doug Wren
Feb 19, 2023
It’s Not a Coincidence
Photo by Tim Mudd on Unsplash This is the first blog post I’ve written in nearly five months. It almost didn’t get written, but not...
Danielle Johnson
Jan 29, 2023
New Year’s Nutrition
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash We are a few weeks into the new year and chances are you’ve set some sort of goal related to eating...
Meghan Raftery
Jan 15, 2023
Least Restrictive Environment
I kept a digital journal in college in the days before blogs. Upon graduation, I printed the journal pages and put them in a binder along...
Danielle Johnson
Jan 8, 2023
Do NOT Put Your Hands on Their HEADS
How did you feel when the Crown Act was passed in the House of Representatives on March 18, 2022? Now, what were your emotions when the...
Danielle Johnson
Jan 5, 2023
The Gift of Stress
I recently wrote about stress mindset and the power of shifting our perspective from seeing stress as a form of suffering to viewing it...
Danielle Johnson
Dec 6, 2022
The Problem with Professional Development (Part 2)
In part one of this blog series, I focused on my conversations with elementary educators related to their self-reported professional...
Danielle Johnson
Nov 28, 2022
Stress Mindset
Stressed. This is the one word response I hear most often when I ask my teacher friends, "How are you?" It's been a heavy year for...
Danielle Johnson
Nov 22, 2022
The Problem with Professional Development (Part 1)
Have you ever had the misfortune of attending a professional development (PD) session that had little interest or value in your current...
Danielle Johnson
Nov 17, 2022
Put Me In, Coach! I’m Ready to Play! (Part 2)
This is the second part of a two-part blog series. Part 1 provided an overview of coaching and my experience with instructional coaching....
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