My son graduated from high school last Friday and I said I would write a blog post about it. As I started thinking about what to write I looked back at what I wrote when my colleagues and I posted back in the fall about our kids starting the school year. Here’s what I said:

My youngest started his Senior year and will graduate early, so in six short months our lives will change in ways I have long planned for but still can hardly imagine. Both of my boys will be up and out in the world and all of us will find new freedoms and challenges to chase. Braydon’s school life has not always been a positive experience. Seeing him here, having navigated this stretch, makes me proud, relieved, and excited about his future plans and the possibilities that lie ahead for him.

Continue reading “High School Graduation Means beginning of Endless Possibilities”

The Dallas Center-Grimes Community school district in Iowa is making strides in reaching important district and building goals by having collaborative teams of teachers learn together about how to conduct formative assessments of student learning. The entire district leadership and teaching force is focused on this effort and four years into the commitment, this focus appears to be improving teacher practice, and in turn, improving learning outcomes for students.

Read about the process, challenges, and benefits of the district’s work in All Aboard! published in the April edition of Learning Forward’s Journal of Staff Development (JSD), Co-authored by Deb Hansen, senior policy analyst at West Wind.

At my in-law’s annual reunions of the offspring of Danish immigrants who settled in northern Iowa, one can learn a lot about life by listening to the stories about farming. Last year, I heard a retired farmer reminisce about the time he loaded the grain silo on Thorvold’s farm with chopped hay. Because he waited too long to load his crop into the silo, the hay had become so dry that it molded and caused the whole silo to overheat. He had to unload tons of smoldering ash, one shovel full at a time for hours.  Grueling work! Time lost! Crop lost! Continue reading “Silos”

May is Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage month. We were in the midst of our customary recognition of cultural heritage months, which we hold every month, when we ran into a wrinkle that we just couldn’t smooth out on our own and we’d like your help.

At West Wind we honor each cultural heritage month recognized by presidential proclamation. We do so in a couple of ways, one of which is to create a special banner each month for our website. In deciding the design of the banners we always look at a variety of images that could represent the group and deliberate which images to use. We take this seriously and really wrestle with the task. Our discussions invariably include the following points of consternation: Continue reading “May 2013 Cultural Heritage Recognition”

In recognition of the day, some of us at West Wind want to share about teachers from our K-12 years who we remember and appreciate.

BY DEB HANSEN—I have been thinking lately about my High School German teacher, Frau (Mrs.) Chua. At the time I thought she was very strict, and I was a bit intimidated by her, but now that I am an educator, I realize she used great instructional practices. She provided theory, always demonstrated what she wanted us to learn, gave us daily time to practice, and coached us on our usage. As a teenager, I thought we had a lot of quizzes and assignments, but I suspect she using formative assessment to inform her instruction. Surely, my German teacher is long since retired, but maybe not — when you are 15 everybody over 25 looks old. She would have been pleased to hear me speaking German, as I traveled through Austria last summer. Of course, I was rusty, but a bit of review with audio tapes refreshed my skills enough that I could chat with new friends in Viennese cafés. Continue reading “May 7, 2013 Teacher Appreciation Day”

On Saturday I attended an apple grafting workshop. Though I have no particular inclination to learn how to graft apples, I do have a passion for small-scale sustainable farming and orchards are almost always included as part of the design of sustainable homesteads. So, I went to the workshop and came home with six tiny trees, which if I learned well and the grafts grow, will kick-start my someday orchard. Continue reading “What Teachers Really Do for All Those Apples”