Tom Waters

Preview a Chapter Here Burned Out, Beaten Up, Fighting Back: A Call to Action for America's Public Educators Released on February 9, 2018 Dr. Latoya Dixon gives a practitioner perspective on the efforts of policymakers to reform education as they actually cause harmful unintended consequences. We have to shift the culture away from competition to collaboration, from standardization to personalization, from the test to the children. We are long overdue for this conversation. She offers a confession and personal narrative about her own burnout as a successful teacher and campus principal. She offers simple-to-follow action steps that will allow educators to fight back against the harmful effects of poorly-designed policy and demeaning narratives. We've become so connected to the test we're using to sort, sift, rank, and label our schools, that the issue of trusting teachers and educators to assess children's academic needs and provide for thos isn't a con...

Here's an early reflection for educational leaders in 2018...from educational leaders this year. With popular articles, blogs, and Twitter chats already blowing up 2018, I wanted to share with you my top inspirations from educational leaders so far this year. Without further ado, let's jump to it. On Leading Teams We must mine for excellence in every teacher and find ways for them to lead in building our Excellence Support System.  @JohnWink90 Schools rise and fall, not on test scores, but on leadership.  @heffrey Championship teams don’t sit in the locker room. They get on the court and demand excellence. They push each other to high levels of performance.  @mafost Principals, who you hire today determines the culture for tomorrow.  @nalang1 Behaviors that create trust & inspiration in a learning community team often begin w/ someone being vulnerable, baring a bit more of who they are and what they believe w/ the group. Trust often begins when...