1) Telling stories, growing as a leader

What can you learn from the stories school leaders shared with each other in monthly meetings over three years? How can reflective storytelling be harnessed as part of a systematic process that helps leaders clarify their values, understand and solve problems, and improve decision making?

Join Fred Brill as he explores the roles and challenges of school leadership through the stories of administrators in his new book, Leading and Learning. As the facilitator of an innovative induction program for new administrators, Fred serves as both storyteller and listener, researcher and practitioner. He shows you how to create structured opportunities for leaders to make sense of their professional practice and learn from and with colleagues.

Drawing from over 200 leadership narratives, Leading and Learning provides a portrait of how administrators tackle the roles of system builder, enforcer, instructional leader, and equity promoter. You'll learn how leaders responded to dozens of common dilemmas and gain new insights into effective decision making, the role of emotions, and forging your identity as a leader.

Leading and Learning will arrive in our warehouse in late October. You can preview the entire text and pre-order online now:

http://www.stenhouse.com/0766.asp?r=n148w

Leading and Learning
Effective School Leadership Through Reflective Storytelling and Inquiry
Fred Steven Brill • Foreword by Roland Barth
184 pp • $19.00 • Available in late October
http://www.stenhouse.com/0766.asp?r=n148w

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2) Author Conversations: Kathy Collins

In our latest podcast, Kathy Collins, author of the new book Reading for Real, paints a portrait of reading clubs in primary classrooms. "I think of reading clubs as partnerships," she says. "I find it easier for little ones to manage themselves when they're working with one partner rather than in a group of four." Listen as Kathy gives an example of how reading clubs work in the context of a character study:

http://www.stenhouse.com/html/collinspodcast.htm.htm?r=n148w

And you can preview the entire text of Reading for Real online:

http://www.stenhouse.com/0703.asp?r=n148w

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3) PD Corner: Oh, the things you can do with educator blogs!

I believe that teaching is a noble calling and that teachers need encouragement and practical advice. I also believe that teachers should blog in order to promote a better exchange of best practices.
—Vicki Davis

The award-winning Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis is a must-read for teachers new to blogging. Check out "The Power of a Newbie" and follow it with "10 Habits of Bloggers That Win" (both under "Most Valuable Posts" in the right column):

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com

Why blog as an administrator? How do you set up an education blog? What are some good examples? Get answers from Iowa State education professor Scott McLeod's Moving Forward wiki, which offers dozens of links to K-12 blog resources and examples of teacher, administrator, and classroom blogs:

http://movingforward.wikispaces.com/Blogs

How do you get started—and keep going—with classroom blogs? Gresham Brown, a fourth-grade teacher in Greenville, South Carolina, shares his experience connecting his classroom to the outside world in this guest post on the Stenhouse Blog:

http://www.stenhouse.com/rdgbrown.htm?r=n148w

Drop in on Australian teacher Jo McLeay's blog, The Open Classroom, and see how she shares her students' writing about The Secret Life of Bees. McLeay's blog chronicles her learning life as a Web 2.0 educator as well as her work with students:
http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/

What happens when an entire school begins to blog? Chet Creek Elementary in Duval County, Florida, is finding out. Drop in on some of their classroom blogs to find teachers from all grades posting weekly updates, daily discoveries, and other content for students and parents:

http://www.duvalschools.org/cce/default.htm
(Click the "Webpages, Blogs, & Wikis" link on the left side.)

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4) How's your teaching of editing working?

Some of my colleagues were giving their students a steady diet of editing practice—little test prep sheets. I tended to ignore those in favor of allowing more time to write. But we all had one thing in common—our students were not editing their writing. The truth was incontrovertible: the way we were teaching editing wasn't working.

See how Jeff Anderson, author of Everyday Editing and Mechanically Inclined, integrated editing with writing and revising in writer's workshop. Jeff developed "The Express Lane Edit" to help students identify what to edit and make the process quick and manageable (NCTE Voices from the Middle, May 2008):

http://www.stenhouse.com/html/news_95.htm?r=n148w

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