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It has been almost 30 years since Dr. Edward M. Hallowell and Dr. John J. Ratey wrote the seminal book on ADHD, Driven to Distraction. In ADHD 2.0 they review what we have learned about ADHD in the last 3 decades. It is an insightful and helpful review and relook at the way a specific…
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Art work created by AISJ ES art teacher Richard Baldwin The last months of last school year were among the most difficult of my career. The tragic illness and passing of my dear friend and colleague Barbara Rynerson was both a personal loss and a loss felt throughout the international teaching world. She was a…
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I recently participated in No Tosh’s Leading from the Middle cohort 2. The big take away is just do it! (to quote Nike). The course revolves around a design sprint. The intention is to quickly identify a problem of practice, apply some of their scaffolds to crystalize your thinking and draft an actionable next step. …
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Snapshot of data As we worked to improve our Tier 1 literacy instruction discussed in my previous post, we also expanded on our data collection and data analysis procedures. We recognized that we were missing certain data points that could be helpful in tracking student progress. Most importantly, we needed to be more intentional in…
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What are our Goals? At the start of the 2020 school year, despite the ongoing difficulty managing the changing COVID landscape, or perhaps because of the urgency to address the literacy needs of our students within that landscape of interrupted learning, we were determined to stay focused and move our work forward. As discussed in…
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In the previous post, I discussed the questions and investigations we explored to consider our literacy progress and instruction. At the same time, and even starting the year before, our ES Learning Support team began to investigate our tiers of support and our referral processes. In this post I will outline that process and in…
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Our school is about to start the second year of our focused work in rebalancing our literacy program and refining our Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. In this series of posts, I will outline and document the discussions, decisions, learning, planning, and implementation process. I know many schools are having these conversations and I hope that…
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Finding the twinkle lights of joy in a dark year.
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“It is possible that persons with bits of these traits are more creative, or possibly even geniuses. If science eliminated these genes, maybe the whole world would be taken over by accountants” (p. 428) In honor of Autism month, I am resharing this post I wrote many years ago on a previous version of this…
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AISJ ES inner courtyard for International Mother Language Day 2021 When moving into my new position as K12 Learning Support Coordinator at the American International School of Johannesburg last year, I created a Whats App group called Laura's EAL Support Team. You know who you are - THANK YOU! I recognized that building a strong…
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In my last post, I wrote about one of the keynotes from the virtual SENIA 2020 conference, This month, I will return to that inspiration as well. Norman Kunc and Emma Van der Klift spoke about their own experiences navigating school and life with a disability. They made powerful and provocative points that have continued…
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Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality. Our maps are still maps, approximating the landscape of truth from the territories of the knowable — incomplete representational models that always leave more to map, more to fathom, because the selfsame forces…
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Tales from the Covid-19 Lockdown, remote learning reality If you are like me, and so many others around the world currently, you are trying to continue to do your job remotely over zoom, GoogleMeets, and other virtual platforms, which is strange and challenging enough, on its own. IF, you also happen to be a parent,…
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At this the new year, one often takes the time to consider the year that is closing and consider the year we are about to begin. For me, professionally and personally, the past year has been filled with tremendous transition. After 15 years, my family and I moved from Prague to South Africa to work…
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All human conflict emerges from violations of dignity or perceived violations of dignity.Donna Hicks From Paul Bloomberg's work at AISJ September 2019 We had the great fortune at AISJ of working with Paul Bloomberg from the Core Collaborative this past week. He began his work with us by focusing on building a culture of dignity.…
Tales of La Tortugita returns Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to…
In honor of Autism month, I am resharing this post I wrote many years ago on a previous version of this blog. As I reread it, it connects so much with the inspiring words of Norman Kunc and the Right to be Disabled that I wrote about in a previous post.
NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman In this comprehensive, well researched, thought provoking book on the history, legacy, and current understanding and hopes for Autism, Steve Silberman shatters the myth that there is an epidemic of Autism. By digging deep into case files, scientific and artistic history, and medical records of many individuals previously identified as childhood schizophrenics…
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Tales of La Tortugita 