School Culture

21st Century Skills

I include the following sentence in my personal statement on Instructional Leadership: Acknowledging that today’s learners are different from previous cohorts, I accept the challenge to collaboratively prepare them for a future that, today, we cannot clearly describe. Many of the jobs that current high school students will have in...Read more

Problem Solving

Fixed mindset and uncertainty avoiding behaviours are both obstacles to problem solving. So, how do we overcome these? By scaffolding their problem solving processes.  I tell my students this as I encourage a disciplined approach to problem solving that is nicely summarized by the mnemonic G*R*A*S*S: What is Given? What information...Read more

Accept challenge! Struggle is good!

The bull’s eye diagram certainly generates discussion: comfort zone: the student can already do the target learning tasks without help; panic zone: the student cannot do the target learning tasks; and learning zone: (aka. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development) the student can do the target learning tasks with help. First,...Read more

Mindset and school culture

An important observation regarding growth mindset is that “[learning outcomes] were muted when the peer norms in a class or school did not value challenge-seeking.” So, consider classroom and school culture when promoting growth mindset. In the article, the link to growth vs fixed mindset appears in Geert Hofstede’s uncertainty...Read more