The 1-5-15 Bulletin

The purpose of the 1-5-15 is to offer quick notes on relevant educational topics. My sincere hope is that whether you have 1, 5, or 15 minutes that this bulletin and the content within it will have an impact on you and your classroom. Furthermore, I hope that the topics shared spur further conversation with your students and colleagues.

Feel free to email me directly if you would like to talk more about a specific topic shared this week at robert.sahli@spps.org.

Enjoy!

“At its root, assessment is how we determine if students have reached the places we promised they would be in our course goals. Do they learn what we say our courses will teach them? Assessment is nothing more than the tools we use to answer that question.” Kevin Gannon

This quote is taken from a post from Kevin, DIY Syllabus: What Goes Into a Syllabus

Kevin Gannon is the director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning and a Professor of History at Grand View University.

The following video was shared on Twitter by @focus2achieve.

I want to share this as a reminder to all educators that you ARE making a difference. When you are in the weeds it may not feel that way, you ARE making a difference.

I love how one of the teacher's shared that he doesn't recall the greatness of a teacher because of a single lesson or assignment, but because they invested in him as a person. Relationships are so key and will take us farther than we can imagine!

Here's the video - "Entire Basketball Team Surprises and Thanks Coach"

This week I am want to share an article that has a few tools embedded in the article, and depending on how deeply you want to dig into the work of examining your own biases this may take 15 minutes, but has the potential to take much longer.

The following article is the initial part of the work this week. The article is written by Sarah Fiarman in a recent publication of Educational Leadership. Sarah is a former public school teacher and principal, is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she teaches instructional leadership for elementary, middle, and high school principals. She is a coauthor of Instructional Rounds in Education: A Network Approach to Improving Teaching and Learning and a contributing author of Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning.

Sarah pushes educators to examine their own biases, while being transparent about how she went about the work of addressing her own biases. In the article Sarah shares the following quote, “Without realizing it, I had selectively noticed the misbehavior of just one subset of students.”

Sarah shares two resources an educator can use to examine their own biases and then ideas on how to begin to address those biases. The Harvard resource is one backed by loads of research and if completed with openness and honesty, can provide the momentum needed to address one's own biases.

My suggestion- dig in. You will get out of it what you put into it! Challenge yourself, go deep, and be willing to be uncomfortable.

Five Steps to Addressing Implicit Bias in Schools

Thanks for reading The 1-5-15 Bulletin!

Email: robert.sahli@spps.org
Website: http://frombehindmydesk.blogspot.com/
Location: Saint Paul, MN, United States
Phone: 651-744-3894
Twitter: @RobSahliAP