Leadership Matters: Good Leaders Know When to Work…and When to Not
By Kate Wolfe Maxlow With the winter holidays right around the corner, it’s a great time to unwrap one of the best gifts you can give your direct reports: your occasional, purposeful absence. I learned this lesson the hard way the first time I had direct reports. As a new leader, I thought it was […]
Engaging Classrooms: Rethinking Instructional Time in Education (AbCD Learning Cycle)
by Kate Wolfe Maxlow In this age of screens and 30-second clips, it’s vital that educators keep abreast of the current research on student attention spans and how we leverage our instructional activities so that they’re developmentally appropriate. There’s both an art and science to stretching students’ attention spans successfully. Enter then: the AbCD Learning […]
Engaging Classrooms: Are Students Engaged…or Just Compliant? Here’s how to tell and what to do about it.
by Kate Wolfe Maxlow Picture it: you’re teaching your heart out with your carefully crafted slideshow. MacKenzie, as usual, sits in the front of the room, nodding along eagerly. As you make another brilliant point, you see her furrow her brow thoughtfully and write it down. William, meanwhile, sits in the back row, digging through […]
Engaging Classrooms: Why We Need More Arts in Every Classroom, Every Day
By Kate Wolfe Maxlow I can still sing the entire jingle from a Milky Way commercial that played non-stop on TV when I was five. I remember all of King Henry VIII’s wives from a coloring page activity I did when I was eight. I can name all of the states in alphabetical order because […]
Leadership Matters: Growth Mindsets…Do Our Actions Match our Words?
by Kate Wolfe Maxlow The term “growth mindset” is a well-worn phrase in education. Yet, sometimes we see schools where the staff talks a good talk about growth mindset, but certain actions or beliefs undercut the philosophy. It turns out, this can actually negatively impact the growth mindset of students. Why does this happen? Let’s […]
Is Your Whole School Greater than the Sum of Its Parts?
Your brain is made up of tons of tiny neurons. None of these neurons have conscious thought, yet all together, they result in the works of Shakespeare, the compositions of Mozart, and the creation of the internet. How? This is the concept of emergence: when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts […]