Easy Strategies to build Future Ready Skills

Easy Strategies to build Future Ready Skills

In his article in Forbes, “The 10 Vital Skills You Will Need for the Future of Work,” Bernard Marr shares that the skills we believe are important in today’s market are quickly changing due to automation and artificial intelligence. What skills will the workers of tomorrow need? His research indicates creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, active learning with a growth mindset, judgment and decision making, interpersonal communication skills, leadership skills, diversity and cultural intelligence, technology skills, and the ability to embrace change. Do these sound familiar? The majority of these skills sound like the future-ready skills we are trying to instill in our students as educators! Creativity, critical thinking, active learning, communication skills – these are the kinds of skills we are being challenged to grow in our students for their future success. Continue reading

Self-Personalize Any Professional Development You Attend: Reflections from my Week at Harvard

Self-Personalize (1)

I had the honor and privilege of being selected and funded by Raise Your Hand Texas to attend The Art of Leadership at Harvard University Graduate School of Education earlier this summer. I learned more than I could possibly put into one blog post, but 3 things stood out to me about the training. These three practices are why I believe I came away with so many ideas I feel like I can really implement right away – and these three big ideas will shape how I approach future staff development that I attend. I hope sharing these three strategies with you will help you to make connections with content and get more out of your upcoming professional development opportunities.

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Cooperative Critical Writing

Cooperative Critical Writing Graphic

As we plan for improvement, writing is at the forefront of everyone’s mind on my campus, in my district, and across our state. We have been brainstorming practical and meaningful ways to incorporate more writing across academic areas in order to bolster and strengthen students’ skills. As I began brainstorming today, I realized that just writing more won’t entirely solve the problem because students who are struggling with how to write a complete sentence, for example, aren’t going to get any better at this skill by just being required to write more. And we’ve already got quality first instruction in place as well as small group interventions. Continue reading

Student Created Learning Playlists

Student Created Learning Playlists

When I was in high school, I recall frequently being divided into groups of four students, each of the four members being given a different section of the textbook to read, and then we would come back together and teach each other the part that we were responsible for. You may know this as the Jigsaw Method.

In this digital age, why not allow students to be more creative than this, use the digital resources freely available online, and create something that they are proud to share with their classmates  – or even a larger, global audience? Continue reading