Minding Our Future To cultivate excellence in public schools so all students succeed in learning and life.

“Children grow into the intellectual life around them.” -Lev Vygotsky

Essential Question: Thinking strategies are the tools with which we leverage deeper understanding. But what is deeper understanding? Ellin O. Keene, To Understand

“It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind.” J. K. Rowling Harry Potter an the Half-Blood Prince

“A new interactive definition of reading comprehension suggests that reading teachers understand the cognitive processes used most frequently by proficient readers and that they provide explicit and in depth instruction focused over a long period of time on these strategies” -Ellin Keene

“In a collegial atmosphere, teachers talk about practice, observe each other, work on curriculum together, and teach each other. The school that serves as a home for teachers’ minds is much more likely to become one for students minds as well.” -David Perkins

Instructional Spotlight: Workshop Model “…I believe that (the reader’s workshop) empowers students with the sense of time, self- authority, decision-making, and intellectual depth they need to foster their independence as nascent readers.” Patrick Allen,Conferring: The Keystone of Reader’s Workshop Pages 56 & 57 in PEBC Spiral

“Thoughtful reading is only rarely a matter of flashing insight. More often it is a gradual, groping process.” Dennie Palmer Wolf Reading Reconsidered

“There should be a little voice in your head like the storyteller is saying it. And if there's not, then you're just lookin' at the words.” -LaKeshia, 5 th grader

“Ask big questions... Take on the impossible: It is important to have goals that can take up an entire lifetime. The greater the question I take on, the more energy is given to me. There is nothing quite like the energy of discovery.” Don Graves Build Energy with Colleagues

“Even established faculty members benefit from watching colleagues, especially if they are exploring something new in their own teaching…Visiting another teacher’s room allows you the luxury of driving in the slow lane, stopping to see the big picture as you take notes, jot questions, and think about children other than your own. “ -Shelly Harwayne

“Learning to think begins with recognizing how we are thinking, by listening to ourselves and our own reactions and realizing how our thoughts encapsulate us.” Art Costa

Lori Conrad, 5 th grade lab teacher: “My hope is that these two days learning alongside my 30 co- teachers and co-learners won’t be so much about what you can do that is ‘the same’ as what you observe. Instead, my hope is that these two days will be about the changes you envision for the teaching and learning in your classroom and school.”