Professional Development or Cupid (aka, Jack Parke)?

Dear Nicole (Parke),

I know you couldn't be with us today, but I just wanted to let you know that the Reading Specialists here in Springfield thought today was almost as good as this darling picture of your new son Jack.
Here were the "Plus" remarks:

• We loved the all-in-one-day approach with time to debrief and reflect deeply at the end of the day.
• We liked the smaller groups - we felt more comfortable .
• There was more time to problem solve around difficult students and teaching approaches
• We were reminded that we are not alone. We share common problems and can share ideas with our colleagues.
• This was a great use of human resources and didn't cost lots of money for travel and other expenses. We utilized and shared our expertise within our department!
• It was inspiring! I have ideas that I can use tomorrow!

Our "Deltas" were constructive:

• Don't pick a week with only 4 days - we do need to be with our students!
• Scheduling was tricky, but most of us were able to work it out.
• Give us more room to write the great things we are observing in each lesson!
• We would love to see other models used in our district: Kindergarten Interventions, more Guided Reading Plus and Comprehension Focus Groups - especially the writing component in the last two.
• We need updating of our Small Literacy Group training - at the beginning of the school year so that we can apply the new learning immediately!

I have to brag on our teachers...they are so smart and full of great, positive thoughts! So...since we weren't able to kiss those sweet chubby cheeks of Jack's today, I guess we did have a great day anyway. As one teacher put it, "I really enjoyed the cluster visits. It was really nice to spend the day learning with new friends. I felt like it was an informal way to learn with little stress (the best way to learn) and great information! I learned a lot!"

For more information on Springfield's version of "Cluster Visits," contact Sherre Marek at smarek@spsmail.org . For a chance to kiss Jack's chubby cheeks, contact nparke@spsmail.org - good luck!

Does Our Brain Have a Switch that Makes Everyone an Einstein?

I subscribe to a free newsletter from the Dana Foundation (http://www.dana.org/). It's called Brain in the News. There's a great variety of interesting articles on current brain research each month - like It's Never Too Late to Grow Your Brain, The Sounds of Shapes Allows Blind People to 'See' Again - you get the idea. The articles are based on scientific research reports and represent a compilation of published research from well-known sources.

The essence of the Title article is questioning whether keeping our minds active can increase problem solving skills.

As teachers and administrators in public schools, we are all looking for the quick fix, silver bullet, stun gun approach to leaving no child left behind. I was particularly drawn to the idea that "challenging your brain can have positive effects." "Brain plasticity" is a big topic among computer software companies (like FastForword - http://www.scilearn.com/) which claim to "strengthen brain processing efficiency for learning and reading success." (Be sure to read carefully through their list of references.)

However, the truth according to other researchers (Cohen, Andreasen, Beeman) is that "extravagant claims about ways of improving your brain on the basis of evidence from MRI machines are likely to be snake oil." So, to those of you thinking we can just press the Easy Button, sorry...it still takes good teaching and good teachers.

The article continues to discuss What Makes Genius? I love the idea that we can all have those moments of inspriation or insight - but "we don't really know what we are seeing when we watch the brain work (on the MRI)...It may be 300 years before we can do things like enhance our creativity...some say in 20 years we can make you smarter, but I'm a pessimist." And I could be dead by then!

The article ends with "There's going to be a lot of snake oil on the market in the decades, if not centuries, before we can come up with any more solid prescriptions to save our highest creative selves from brain rot." So in the meantime...let's work on our teaching skills and help the children that are struggling to read.

Postscript: test your brain out at http://www.brainmetrix.com/ or go to http://www.sharpbrains.com/ to get "high-quality, research based information and guidance to navigate the brain-training and cognitive-fitness market." Or, better still, read a good book!