Sometimes a story can be more powerful than therapy. Picturebooks can help readers of all ages to realize they are not the only ones struggling with a problem or dealing with a difficult issue. Meeting a book character can shed new light on how to solve a problem. These books all are good examples of that. The Only Lonely Fairy by Lana Button, with illustrations by Peggy Collins is the story of one little girl who is too busy feeling sorry for herself to notice new friends. Leah has beautiful fairy wings but, seemingly, no one wants to play with her. All the other children are busy playing w ..read more

Kimerlé Crenshaw has an extraordinary CV: with degrees from Cornell University (BA), Harvard University (JD) and the University of Wisconsin, Madison (LLM), she is a specialist in race and gender issues and professor at both the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School. She has published widely and is best known for founding critical race theory (CRT) and the construct of intersectionality. It was an immense privilege for me to hear her give the 2024 AERA keynote at Philadelphia just two days ago.  There was a special feeling in the air when she took to the stage, with rapturous cheerin ..read more

In our rapidly changing digital age, the idea of truth is undergoing a significant change. In the past, truth was often taken from shared experiences and clear agreements. Today, truth often is manipulated by social media, algorithmic biases, polarization, organizations, companies, and in more instances governments,  fueling the algorithms that influence what we see, hear, and believe. I refer to this as a recalibration of truth. This new landscape requires us to navigate the complexities of deep fakes: video and voice, misinformation, and the algorithmically curated digital environments ..read more

Books are much like moccasins – they allow you to walk a mile in someone else’s footsteps; to experience life from someone else’s viewpoint. Books share stories from other cultures and countries. Here are some beautiful new titles to enrich any (classroom) library. Waci! Dance! is an indigenous celebration of dance and life. Written by Sage Speidel and illustrated by Leah Dorion, the art dances off the pages in this picturebook as a small child is dressed and gets ready to join her elders in a festive dance to drums. The indigenous words are explained in a glossary in the back. This beautiful ..read more

I have often heard this argument: graduates of international schools struggle to adapt to non-international environments, including their own. After years in a type of international bubble, the transition to a local reality can be difficult. The thought that stands out to me is the whole idea of adaptation to life after school. In fact – and this is what I am going to argue in this piece – that process being difficult might actually be a good thing.   What if a great education causes a certain defamiliarisation by dint of the new concepts it evokes in the learner, the thresholds cros ..read more

I have been posting a series of classroom observations in a style I haven’t seen – a stream of consciousness reflection of what I think as I watch class unfold. Let me know if you’ve run across this type of observation before. Waiting for students to arrive at class. The teacher plays an orchestral version of a popular Mexican pop song through speakers on his desk. Soft, welcoming.  I know the lesson today is going to be about looking at literature through different perspectives, different lenses, as the teacher has told me. I think of rose colored glasses, that is, seeing everything in ..read more

Classrooms are different now. I mean, similar, too. Desks, a display at the front, the teachers explaining, the students taking notes. But the teacher in this math classroom stands in the back, writing on his iPad, the results visible at the front of the room on a screen, and the students are mostly taking notes on laptops. So it’s different, but the same. The teacher is explaining slopes with equations and graphs. He’s going over exercises from the homework before giving the students a new problem to work on.  Behind the students across the room are a couple of posters. One is Mr. Slope ..read more

Walking… it might be as beneficial as reading! So here are some wonderful reads about walking: walking people, walking animals, even walking trees. They include brand-new as well as long-loved titles. There are other wonderful books about the importance of walking, some of which I reviewed for this TIE column before, including A Long Walk for Water by Linda Sue Parks and Walking Home by Eric Walters. Follow up reading one of these books by going for a classroom walk! The Cat Who Walked The Camino, written and illustrated by Kate Spencer is a wonderful story for anyone who has walked, or hopes ..read more

So recently I have been incredibly inspired by our students, across all of our divisions, and it has left me smiling from ear to ear. You see, over the past few weeks I have watched our students compete on the soccer field, in the pool, on the volleyball and badminton courts, on stage in the fantastic grade 7 and elementary school drama performances, and in the ISTA festival, MRISA junior football tournament, and Vex robotics showcases that we hosted here on campus. I have also seen them practicing in the music room for our highly anticipated talent show, and in classrooms as they learned, de ..read more

Source: https://alplearn.com/story/six-reasons-why-you-need-an-instructional-coach/ A colleague of mine was hired by an international school in Spain to be an instructional coach. Sounds interesting, I told her. I realized I was probably making up in my own head, however, what the term instructional coach actually meant. So I asked if we could do a short interview. I am recreating the conversation here, the words are not directly hers, but the meaning is. (And I ran this text past her to make sure it was accurate.) She had been working in the position for a year-and-a-half when we talked. Let ..read more