top of page
Search
Kristin Phillips
Jul 27, 20225 min read
Make Every Moment Count: 14 Ideas to Create a Productive Sense of Urgency in the Classroom
As a principal I frequently visited classrooms. Sometimes a classroom visit flew by, but at other times I watched the clock. What makes...
28 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Oct 17, 20203 min read
Teaching in Covid Times – exactly the same and totally different
I am planning to teach an online “zoom” class. It feels like everything I know about teaching will work in this milieu and everything I...
7 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Mar 8, 20194 min read
Five Equity Moves
My daughter has a significant reading disability. As a parent I found it difficult to imagine how hard school was for her since it had...
23 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Jan 25, 20194 min read
Making a “quarter turn” in your teaching practice: little changes that have huge impact
The year my daughter, Frankie, turned 12 she discovered cheesecake. Frankie’s first 15 attempts at baking cheesecake were dismal...
14 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Jan 20, 20193 min read
The label isn’t the individual
A colleague, Jason, has been experimenting with teaching grade 9 applied and academic math in a combined class*. It has been going well...
6 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Jan 8, 20193 min read
Self-regulation does not mean being good when you are bored
When I am in a meeting (and I go to lots and lots of meetings) and there are challenges to solve, or the speaker is entertaining and has...
12 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Aug 21, 20174 min read
Hook your students into learning from the first day of school
Which day of the year will you have all eyes on you? The keenest students? The least amount of student misbehaviour? The first day of...
105 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Feb 11, 20172 min read
What can’t you ask Siri?
I can remember going to the library if I needed to know something. We didn’t have Siri. I can remember taking out a pad of paper to...
14 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Jan 27, 20173 min read
The “Best-Teacher-Ever” Feeling is the key to changes in practice
I love data – I’m a little geeky that way. And for many years, as a school administrator, I believed that if teachers could just look at...
33 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Oct 23, 20163 min read
Teachers change their practice when their students are successful
I’ve been going to a lot of conferences lately, and watching a lot of video clips, about how leaders can influence change in teacher...
3 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Sep 25, 20164 min read
Go ahead and “teach to the test”; Assessment should be fair to kids
I do not like parallel parking and I avoid it at all costs. However, when my kids were learning to drive, I taught them all how to...
3 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Sep 16, 20163 min read
Where did that teacher go? Helping students become independent thinkers
I was looking at some of the EQAO (Ontario’s standardized test in grades 3, 6, 9 and 10) questions in an attempt to understand why many...
8 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Sep 10, 20163 min read
Changing the culture of implementation
Change is cultural. We’d like to think that school change was about adding a new program, or providing new resources, or even hiring the...
6 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Jun 24, 20164 min read
Thinking about the first day of school already-or not!
I have posted this, or something similar, at the end of June before, but I always think it is a good time to think about it. Or at...
4 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Jun 20, 20163 min read
Sticky Learning
I recently gave a TEDx talk about this topic but for those of you who like to read…. Tradition and intuition play a big role in how we...
27 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Jun 10, 20163 min read
Failure is NOT an Option-whose responsibility?
Failure is NOT an option. I think that our collective vision would be a school in which that was true. We all aspire to have classrooms...
7 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Jun 2, 20162 min read
How do you know if your School Improvement Plan is working?
For the last three years, our grade 7-8 school has had the same School Improvement Plan. We have worked hard to learn about...
3 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Apr 29, 20163 min read
Classroom cultures that support, not just teach, social skills and well-being
While we know that we are responsible for the 3Rs and other curriculum stuff, we also know that teachers have a role to play in shaping...
6 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Apr 21, 20165 min read
What’s the hardest thing a teacher does?
I have always said that assessment is one of the hardest things a teacher does, and I still think that. But a conversation with one of...
2 views0 comments
Kristin Phillips
Apr 15, 20164 min read
A Day in the Life of a Student at Your School
A group of teachers was talking the other day about the pros and cons of prep periods at the end of the day. There was talk about having...
11 views0 comments
bottom of page