Using 30 second video reflections has become one of my favourite ways to share on Twitter. There are a few reasons why I see this as powerful: It forces you to focus on what you are wanting to share because of the 30 second time limit. You become more conscientious of what you are going to share because you know that anyone in the world can see it. The ability to hear voices and see faces, brings a certain amount of “humanity” to see who is behind the tweet. It is a very powerful reflection tool, and this quote resonates through this process: This past weekend, I worked with a group of administrators from the “Texas Association of Secondary School Principals”, focusing both on their learning and leadership. It was a tremendous opportunity for me to not only share my learning, but to learn from them as well. I truly believe that the more connected we become, the smarter we all are. We can all learn from each other, no matter our experience or expertise. One of the people who attended, was Dr. Kenneth Gay. He is just an awesome person, and he shared his own fear of “jumping in”, and that he wanted to learn more. So trying to help him see the opportunities, while understanding his own reluctance, we did a video reflection together, side-by-side. Check it out below: I’m with my friend Kenneth who is signing up to Twitter and is a principal at #TASSP16ELR http://pic.twitter.com/qS2LedOKdY — George Couros (@gcouros) June 18, 2016 Sometimes the best way to model the power of certain learning opportunities, is to do them together. And I appreciated this comment from Cindy Kirby. @gcouros excellent teaching strategy…walk the path, side by side — Cindy Kirby (@CindyKirby05) June 18, 2016 What was awesome, was as the weekend went on, Kenneth saw the power of connecting through this medium, and ventured out to share on his own. Here is my reflection #tassp16elr2 http://pic.twitter.com/ld7JfunhEb — Dr. Kenneth Gay (@DrKennethGay) June 19, 2016 Throughout this weekend, as with any learning opportunity, there are people at all different levels in the room. What is important is not that they are learn the same thing, but that they learn. As stated in “The Innovator’s Mindset“, Effective leadership in education is not about moving everyone from one standardized point to the next but moving individuals from their point “A” to their point ”B.” What is imperative though is that that movement from point “A” to “B” is always the choice of the learner. Sometimes standing in front and sharing ideas is one way to create this movement, but as Cindy stated, sometimes the best way to learn, is to do it “side-by-side”.

I never wanted to be a teacher.

I loved school and enjoyed my time there, but my passion was always in sports and coaching. Teaching was a pathway to that love.  In fact, in one of my interviews, I was reluctantly hired because the principal thought I was more interested in coaching than I was teaching.

He was right.

And although I stopped coaching soon after, I started to referee basketball and that became a love for me.  Teaching was my job, but sports were my passion.

In my career now, I connect with people that had known they wanted to be a teacher early on in their childhood.  Their fire was sparked at an early age, but I was never that person.

But then you cross paths people that change your perspective, and some of the leaders that I have encountered in the last ten years or so, saw something in me that I never did.  They found a spark and fanned it into a flame, and gave me the tools to continue to let it burn.  This is why the topic of “leadership” is so important to me.  Those leaders are the reason I am writing today and more passionate about education than I have been any other field in my life.

Yet some of those same people that had that passion from an early age have lost it, and to be honest, it is because of leadership (or lack there of).  I never think that people intentionally try to kill a fire inside of us, but little things that they become unaware of, turn teaching into a “job” for some people, and it no longer becomes a “calling”.  Bottom line, it is a job.  But great leadership can make a job seem like something so much bigger.

So many blog posts and articles talk about “what’s missing” from education, and I rarely see this as an educator problem, but a lack of leadership.  Now if you are reading this and you are thinking “Yeah…my leaders have sucked my love of teaching away”, you need to understand that leadership is about influence, not position.  You can have that same influence on your colleagues, no matter what your job is.

The beautiful think about teaching is that our legacy is defined in what we give and empower others to do, not only in what we do ourselves.  If leadership is truly about how you influence others, isn’t every person in education, in some way, a leader?  Whether you influence kindergarten students, principals, or teachers, you could be the person that sparks and flames that fire in others.  You could also be the person that douses the flame.

As many educators in North America, look to recharge and learn over the summer, remember that you are, and can continue to be, the one that fans that flame in others.  Legacy as an educator and leader, will always be in what you give and empower in others.

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Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge by Paul Krueger

I've missed reading my sci-fi/fantasy books.  Somehow I got away from them this year, but I plan on making up for my horrible neglect. 

Science Fiction, like other genres, has many sub-categories. I tend to stick to contemporary fantasy, but also like good old magic tales.  I generally avoid techie science fiction. I love Mercedes Lackey's Elemental series, Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles,  Simon Green's Ghostfinders series, and Kristen Britain's Green Rider tales.  And of course, I was a huge fan of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels until she jumped the shark at about novel #9.  Ugh.  Same with Laurel K. Hamilton and the Anita Blake novels.  There are many, many more I will read and love as the years go by.  I've got Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series sitting on my bookshelves,unread.  I've got bits and pieces of other series also waiting patiently on my shelves.  I always love to peruse the science fiction/fantasy section at my local B&N.  You never know what will pop out.  

Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge is just one of those books that popped out at me.  I'd seen it on a recent visit to the bookstore, but didn't buy it.  Then I was somewhere, looking at something, and I saw it again.  I checked out some reviews, and decided to go back to B&N and buy it.  The idea of bartenders saving the world from monsters by mixing the ingesting certain cocktails that give them certain powers appealed to me on many levels.  For one, the creativity Paul Krueger had to come up with this story line.  For two, it takes place in Chicago--my "ancestral" home: place of my birth, where my parents grew up and married.  I'm a sucker for stories that take place in Chicago.  

So, Bailey Chen has returned to live with her parents after graduating from Penn State.  She's unemployed, but hoping to get a job--any job--soon.  Her childhood friend Zane gets her a temporary job at his Uncle's bar, the Nightshade Lounge.  Bailey and Zane have a friendship that is layered with all sorts of unresolved issues of the romantic kind.  When he was interested, she wasn't; now she's interested, and he has a girlfriend.  One night, Bailey is left to close up the bar.  She decides to mix a screw driver  to drink before leaving for the night.  The strange thing is, this drink Bailey makes gives her some super human strength.  And she doesn't realize it until she's walking home, by herself, and runs into something not so human: a tremen.  Tremens are demons that look like blobs of grossness, and they jump humans and literally suck the life out of them.  They especially like people who have been drinking.  Something about the mix of alcohol and human produces a life force that tremens love.  

Bailey quickly finds herself as a bartender-in-training of a different kind:  a monster-fighting bartender.  They patrol the streets at night, making sure humans are safe from tremens. Properly mixed cocktails produce magical effects on bartenders that usually last an hour, enough time to patrol, kill tremens, and get back to the bar.  Vodka gives tremendous strength, whiskey grants telekinesis, and rum will get you the ability to blast fire from your fingertips.  Pretty awesome stuff!  

But of course, things aren't so simple.  There are more and more tremens popping up, and in packs, which is highly unusual.  Something strange is going on, and it's got to do with one mystical drink:  the long island iced tea.  

I'm not telling you anymore.  This is a fun novel, and the first in what I hope will be at least a trilogy.  In between each chapter are bits of cocktail magical history from "The Devil's Water Dictionary", Bailey's guide to creating cocktails. Bailey is your usual out of college, don't know what to do with my life twenty-something.  She's pretty smart, but finds out that sometimes being book smart just isn't enough when it comes to fighting demons.  The characters that surround Bailey are all colorful and slightly quirky, and I can't wait to see how everyone evolves--if, hopefully, there are more adventures ahead for the magical bartenders.  

Rating:  7/10 for a quirky take on contemporary urban fantasy.  I'll never look at a cocktail quite the same again!  

Available in paperback and e-book.

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Top 7 Log Home Floor Plan Mistakes and How to Avoid them

We’ve all done it at one time or another. Picked something, a car, a piece of clothing or a meal, that we think we are going to love and find that we don’t. We don’t want you to make the same mistake with your log home floor plan. Here are the top 10 most common floor plan mistakes people make and how to avoid them.

Thinking every floor plan is right for you

If you take a few moments to scan Houzz, Pinterest or the latest Log Home Magazine you will find dream homes by the hundreds. Even though we would love to live in many of the homes we see it’s important to pick the floor plan that works for you and your family. Picture your family living in the home on a day-to-day basis. Is going up three sets of stairs to get to your master bedroom going to be exhausting or will the view be worth it? Or, would you prefer everything is on one level in a rancher style home? Think about how you plan to use the space in your home after you have lived in it for three or six months. This will help you see that a particular floor plan may sound like a great idea now but may only cause you frustrations in the future.

Not having the room sized to fit your furniture

Sometimes space can be limited. If you are building any smaller sized rooms or designing a tight staircase it’s important to take in account the type of furniture you have. Sometimes part of the joy of building a new home is all the new furniture you can buy to go along with it and other times you want to keep using what you currently have. For example, if you have a large custom bed, moving it up two flights of stairs may be a bit of a challenge or require some creative thinking. Taking into account any signature or key furniture pieces can help ensure you’re not left figuring out how to get something into a room after the fact.

Not having the right floor plan for your new lifestyle

For many homeowners building their dream log home may cause a shift in their lifestyle. They may start to cook outdoors more or want to entertain more. Consider what changes you might need to make to allow yourself to cook more outside or how your home might feel when it’s fully occupied with company over. Where would the guest room and bathroom be situated? Is it easy for you to transition between the kitchen and the barbeque area?

Building for now instead of the for future

Have you ever purchased a sports car because you either don’t have kids yet or because they just moved out of the house only to realize that a couple years later you’re expecting or have grandkids on the way? The same thing happens with a home. It’s great to think that right now there might only be two of you living in your home but what about five years from now? Will kids or grandkids be on the way? Having that extra guest room may come in handy and save you from having to give up the man cave or office space instead.

Focusing on the décor instead of the floor plan

Sometimes when you’re building your dream home it’s nice to tour show homes to get inspiration for new layouts, features and other ideas. It’s one of the best ways to help you determine if you really like it or just liked the concept in the magazine. One key mistake many people make is that they don’t actually look at the floor plan but instead get caught up in the décor and staging of the home. Don’t get caught up in the décor as your furniture will look much different in the space. Instead, focus on the flow of the rooms, how you transition around the home and how much space there is in each room.

Not asking questions about your floor plan

After you have started to get some clear ideas of what you want your log home floor plan to look like, your design team will start drafting up plans. For many people these plans look like they are written in a completely different language. Don’t be intimidated by this and feel free to ask what certain things mean. Understanding how doors open, what the clearance is and the room sizes will be important for you to have a house that feels like home.

Not aligning your floor plan to your property

We all like to mix things up in our homes. You may have intended for your office to be in one space and your main living room to be in another only to mix it up in a few years. It’s easy for you to mix and match rooms around but you can’t change the location. Selecting a floor plan that complements your property will help you ensure that no matter what you change in the future you will always be happy with the view. A couple of things to consider are road and streets that might not be busy now but in 5 or 10 years will development in the area increase the traffic? If you have wide open spaces around you will they potentially turn into subdivisions and change your view? Or does the sun shine right into your home year round, if so this could warm up certain areas of your house making them harder to keep cool. If your bedroom is sun facing and you have hot summers with no air conditioning you will want to find ways to cool the space.

To help you avoid any potential mistakes with your floor plan it’s important to ask your designers as many questions as you have, look at tons of ideas and to be open to new layouts and designs. Check out our log home floor plans and log home galleries for some inspiration as well.

from Artisan Custom Log Homes http://ift.tt/29sSb1D

Why teachers should seek feedback from their students

Teachers are given a great deal of trust in giving feedback to students. Feedback is crucial to supporting students grow and develop in becoming lifelong learners able to take on the responsibility of making a positive contribution to society and the environment. Feedback that students receive from teachers is not just about their academic progress, it is often more than that. As educators, focused on a holistic education, feedback given to students will often include comments regarding both individual and collaborative behaviour, particularly motivation and effort, along with other learner attributes.

Yet, while we so often give students feedback, how often do we seek feedback from our students? During my time working in schools, I have seen only a small percentage of teachers, both formally and informally, invite feedback from students. In recently suggesting to a a colleague that they ask their students for some feedback, the teacher replied that “the students will only give me nice answers, which is not very helpful.” Over the years, I have heard similar responses from teachers who do not wish to seek meaningful feedback from their students. Which is why, I believe, we need to push this a bit more in our schools.

I think it is important, however, that as education leaders we seek feedback ourselves, so that we model the way for teachers to embrace the need to get feedback to support professional growth and development. This could be either in creating avenues for teachers to give us feedback about our leadership, or, if the schedule allows, take a class and demonstrate how feedback can be collected from students and utilized to improve learning for those students in that class.

It does, however, take courage to seek feedback because there is the risk that one will receive comments that they do not like or do not agree with. This, however, is not reason enough to avoid soliciting feedback. The fact that we wish to improve the education that we provide for our students should be reason enough to put our personal insecurities aside.

In fact, one of the most powerful moments that I had as a teacher was when students of one particular class, back in 2002, gave me some really honest feedback, which allowed me to reflect on my behaviour towards a small group of students in that class. While most of the feedback that I received was very positive, some students pointed out that I became frustrated with 3 or 4 less motivated students in the class and they felt that that I did not make myself as approachable to those students as I did to the other students in the class. This struck a chord with me, as they were right. Upon reflection, while I did not intentionally set out to make myself less approachable to this small group of students, this possibly was a ‘blind spot’ for me and I most likely carried an air of frustration towards them. I learned from that one piece of student feedback that every student mattered in my class and that I needed to persevere with them and find the necessary means to try to understand the students I teach to better support them.

As educators we need to remember that to improve learning, feedback cannot just be a one-way process from teacher to student. We need teachers with courage and dedication to ask their students what they thought of a lesson, a course, and, most importantly, what they think of their teacher.

Connect with me @richard_bruford

Originally posted on the Ed Leader blog

from Connected Principals http://ift.tt/29F2PVp

Side-By-Side Learning

Using 30 second video reflections has become one of my favourite ways to share on Twitter.  There are a few reasons why I see this as powerful:

1. It forces you to focus on what you are wanting to share because of the 30 second time limit.
2. You become more conscientious of what you are going to share because you know that anyone in the world can see it.
3. The ability to hear voices and see faces, brings a certain amount of “humanity” to see who is behind the tweet.

It is a very powerful reflection tool, and this quote resonates through this process:

This past weekend, I worked with a group of administrators from the “Texas Association of Secondary School Principals”, focusing both on their learning and leadership.  It was a tremendous opportunity for me to not only share my learning, but to learn from them as well.  I truly believe that the more connected we become, the smarter we all are. We can all learn from each other, no matter our experience or expertise.

One of the people who attended, was Dr. Kenneth Gay.  He is just an awesome person, and he shared his own fear of “jumping in”, and that he wanted to learn more.  So trying to help him see the opportunities, while understanding his own reluctance, we did a video reflection together, side-by-side. Check it out below:

I’m with my friend Kenneth who is signing up to Twitter and is a principal at #TASSP16ELR http://pic.twitter.com/qS2LedOKdY

— George Couros (@gcouros) June 18, 2016

Sometimes the best way to model the power of certain learning opportunities, is to do them together. And I appreciated this comment from Cindy Kirby.

@gcouros excellent teaching strategy…walk the path, side by side — Cindy Kirby (@CindyKirby05) June 18, 2016

What was awesome, was as the weekend went on, Kenneth saw the power of connecting through this medium, and ventured out to share on his own.

Here is my reflection #tassp16elr2 http://pic.twitter.com/ld7JfunhEb

— Dr. Kenneth Gay (@DrKennethGay) June 19, 2016

Throughout this weekend, as with any learning opportunity, there are people at all different levels in the room. What is important is not that they are learn the same thing, but that they learn. As stated in “The Innovator’s Mindset“,

Effective leadership in education is not about moving everyone from one standardized point to the next but moving individuals from their point “A” to their point ”B.”

What is imperative though is that that movement from point “A” to “B” is always the choice of the learner.  Sometimes standing in front and sharing ideas is one way to create this movement, but as Cindy stated, sometimes the best way to learn, is to do it “side-by-side”.

from Connected Principals http://ift.tt/29wBUrW

Soy-Ginger Meatballs with Fried Rice

These Soy-Ginger Meatballs are going to be your new favorite meatball recipe. Serve them with zucchini and snow pea fried rice for a complete and delicious seasonal meal.

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Blue Apron. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you for continuing to support the brands that make My Baking Addiction possible.

Can we chat about meal planning? I’m fairly certain that I am the absolute worst at it. I have a cute meal planning notepad and colorful pens to match, but regardless of how great that notepad is, it doesn’t cook our meals or do the grocery stopping. So, my plan usually stops after I’ve spent a good hour predicting what we’ll want to eat the next week.

Not only am I the worst meal planner, I kind of stink as a grocery shopper too.

(more…)

The post Soy-Ginger Meatballs with Fried Rice appeared first on My Baking Addiction.

        

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TBR Pile for July: A Bit of This, a Bit of That

I've had that awful realization many times in the past few weeks:  that one where I settle into bed at night and it dawns on me that I haven't read more than 2 pages in one of my many books all day.  No wonder I was getting crabby by the end of the day.  

This is unacceptable. 

So how do I fix it?  Do I stay up until all hours, trying to squeeze in more reading?  Of course this means I won't be awake during my work day.  Do I go to bed early, and get up earlier to read for a bit before I go to work?  Or do I just keep plugging along all week, trying to carve out time where I can read for more than five minutes before I fall asleep?  There isn't really a good solution.  Life is just crazy right now, and the one thing that keeps me calm is being squeezed out.  

I figure this is just a temporary issue, and sometime this summer I will be able to go for long periods of time reading and regaining my harmony with the world. I'm probably overly ambitious, but this is what I'm planning on reading and reviewing for the month of July:

A little bit of magic, a little bit of romance, a little bit of history.  And who could resist a novel about bartenders who keep the world safe from monsters by drinking the perfect cocktail?  Not me.  I'll never look at a screwdriver the same way again.  

Stay tuned for reviews! 










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