Brian Harrison’s recent blog post begs of us to watch a video (TED Talk by Bryan Stevenson) which will challenge us to think about our “Code of Conduct” policies in schools.
“Bryan Stevenson explains how and why it doesn’t ‘work’ with much more eloquence, authority and urgency that I ever could-I won’t even try (so watch the video-please).”
Please take some time today to watch, and to read how Brian connects the video with his deep thinking about how we need to help our kids, particularly those “in the margins” to thrive in school.
Brian Harrison: Fair is Fair, or is it?: http://brian-harrison.net/2015/11/18/fair-is-fair-or-is-it/
Brian Harrison is an Ontario School Leader and veteran blogger. His blog has been shared widely through SIM (System Implementation and Montoring) in Ontario and it is followed by many educators.
Recently, Brian addressed the challenges of communicating with parents about our practices around the teaching of mathematics in Ontario.
One of my favourite lines is, “We can use a lot of terms to describe math, but ‘new’ is not one of them …”. Brian provides some valuable logic about the meaning of “back to basics”.
Parents exist in a world bombarded by media reports of declining math scores. Our work as education leaders is in helping parents understand more clearly the importance of the processes we are using to ensure students fully grasp numeracy, rather than memorizing algorithms (as many of the parents were forced to do in school).
Further learning around how we can share our understanding of math instruction can be found on this Ontario Student Achievement Resources site: LearnTeachLead.ca. Posted on the site is a link to a recorded webinar where Dr. Chris Suurtamm discusses Confronting Myths and Challenges in Mathematics Education.
Be sure to read Brian’s full post here.
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