California ASCD
Teaching With Clarity: How to Prioritize and Do Less So Students Understand More
with presenter: Tony Frontier, Ph.D.
When: April 24 and May 1, 2023
Time: 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. (Pacific Time)
Institute Description:
If doing more in our schools and classrooms were the answer to better meeting the needs of every child, then we’d have met every goal and closed every gap by now. We don’t need more activities, resources, initiatives, projects, or meetings. We need more clarity. Clarity emerges when we prioritize our efforts to do less with greater focus. With this focus, we empower our students to prioritize their strategy and efforts to develop deep understanding of the most important skills and content. Drawing from his book 'Teaching With Clarity: How to Prioritize and Do Less So Students Understand More' (ASCD, 2021) Tony Frontier will explain a practical framework and action steps that can be used to prioritize, and align, teachers' and students' strategic efforts to support responsive learning in every classroom. Participants will learn:
Teachers, Instructional Leaders, and Administrators will learn:
- How to identify and address the problem of curricular clutter, and the clarity paradox, to more effectively support teachers and learners.
- The three value statements present in systems with a clear purpose.
- The three value statements present in systems that align purpose and process among administrators, teachers, and students.
- The predictable benefits, (and challenges), to teachers and learners in systems that balance (or fail to balance) autonomy support and shared constraints.
- How to identify evidence in your own department, school, or district for characteristics of systems that choose clutter vs. systems that choose clarity.
- How to prioritize, and begin to plan to implement, action steps related to the six critical elements of systems that choose clarity for teaching and learning.
Praise for ‘Teaching with Clarity’
“Teaching With Clarity would be an important book at any time, but it is especially timely today. As the education world emerges from the pandemic’s grip and looks to establish a “new normal,” the long-existing problems of clutter and lack of clarity have been starkly exposed. Tony Frontier properly addresses these as systems’ problems, including a lack of clarity about priority goals resulting in an overcrowded curriculum and inconsistency in the assessment of all important outcomes. The book’s value lies not only in its analysis of these systemic problems, but in the specific solutions it offers for prioritizing the curriculum, clarifying success criteria, and establishing systems to eliminate the clutter.
If you read one book to guide your thinking about constructing the “new normal,” let it be this one.”
Jay McTighe,
Educational author and consultant
Co-author, Understanding by Design®
About the Presenter
Tony Frontier is the author of Teaching with Clarity: How to Prioritize and Do Less So Students Understand More (ASCD, 2021) and co-author of the ASCD books Five Levers to Improve Learning: How to Prioritize for Powerful Results in Your School (2014) with Jim Rickabaugh; Effective Supervision: Supporting the Art and Science of Teaching with Bob Marzano and David Livingston (2011), Making Teachers Better, not Bitter: Balancing Teacher Evaluation, Supervision, and Reflection for Professional Growth with Paul Mielke (2016). Tony is also co-author of Creating Passionate Learners: Today’s Classrooms for Tomorrow’s World (2015, Corwin). Frontier is a frequent contributor to Educational Leadership, and facilitates workshops on school improvement, student engagement, curriculum design, formative assessment, and standards-based instructional practices at international conferences and in schools and districts around the country. As a former classroom teacher in Milwaukee Public Schools, an Associate High School Principal, and the Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the Whitefish Bay School District, Frontier brings a wealth of experience as a classroom teacher, building administrator, and central office administrator to his workshops, writing, and research.
IF YOU ARE JUST REGISTERING A PARTICIPANT(S) AND NOT ATTENDING YOURSELF, PLEASE DO NOT ENTER YOUR INFORMATION. YOU WILL BE LISTED AS AN ATTENDEE AND THE INVOICE WILL REFLECT A FEE.
After registration you will receive an email with further instructions.
Contact cascd@cascd.org if you have any questions.
