WHY?!

In reading Ms. Murphy's post about professional development, I got to thinking about what it means to be an endless learner. Like I said last time, it is essential to the career of an educator. On Monday after a faculty meeting, I met with a coworker to discuss the research behind best practices in Education (and people say our job is easy, pshaaw!). She brought out a book about vocabulary development in English Language Learners, something very important for the community in which we teach. I started reading and got some interesting insight into strategies for teaching ELL. Then my coworker and I got to talking. We both expressed our frustration with all the information out there and all the different strategies that are being used in Education. We feel entirely overwhelmed by all that there is to learn. How are we supposed to learn all this in the midst of planning, creating, implementing and assessing a variety of activities that are differentiated for every learner? sigh.

The answer is what every veteran teacher will tell you, baby steps, my dear, baby steps. Oh and don't stop learning! So Robert Marzano is a leading researcher in the field with many books that are helpful to anyone involved in Education. One thing he discusses is the idea that teachers really do want the information about the research behind strategies that they use. They want to know why it works and why they should do it. They want this in addition to step by step instructions and strategies. I must agree. With all the information that is out there, we need an answer to the question, why?

While Marzano's website appears to be an amazon-esque layout simply prompting you to buy something, I actually found a few great links including webinars on some excellent topics. Browse the "Free Resources" and get to learnin' (in all that spare time of yours).

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