We need teacher educators who are hungry to learn about and implement contemporary approaches to teaching and learning in their own classrooms and who are reflective about their work with their students.

Sometimes educators suffer from the "I already do that" syndrome. In those cases, we feel inadequate if we admit we have a distance to go as learners of our craft.

We're teaching a generation of students who've been schooled to produce quick, right answers on demand. They are not comfortable with ambiguity. The implications of that in the long term are discomforting.

We need teacher educators who regularly spend a great deal of time in classrooms so they have a deep understanding of where they students will teach.

We need to develop a robust set of tools - strategies and routines - that help us address student variance. It's easy to come to rely on two or three "trusty" instructional strategies like worksheets and lectures. Those are of little help in planning for a variety of student needs. As we develop a better toolbox, we're empowered to meet students where they are.

We need to understand where are students are at any point during a unit - in other words, what each student actually knows, understands, and can do at a given time based on the content goals we've established.

A gifted teacher has an unfailing eye for magical classrooms & loses sleep over anything less than the highest quality.