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Continue reading →: About assumptions: Being Wrong Isn’t Always Bad
There is an event that every principal anticipates with varying degrees of trepidation. It is something students are excited and nervous about as well: the year-opening school letter telling kids who their teachers are going to be. Students are eager to know who their new teachers are and which friends…
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Continue reading →: About an ordinary life: Encyclopedia Part IIRemembering Dates I share a birthday with Ludwig van Beethoven, December 16. That’s probably why, when I want to play classical music on my Amazon Echo I normally ask, “Alexa, play my Pandora Beethoven station.” Of course Beethoven is awesome, but I lean towards the German master composer largely because…
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Continue reading →: About Learning: On a snow dayRecently Long Island experienced a heavy, snowy blizzard so we had a snow day. Everybody loves snow days! After a huge breakfast of pancakes and bacon (a snow day tradition at our house) I decided we would have a digital version of the current events forum.
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Continue reading →: About a hero: Detective Steven McDonaldThe world lost a true hero recently, Detective Steven McDonald of the New York City Police Department. Detective McDonald was an amazing man who, in his words and in his life, embodied character and a belief in the inherent goodness of people. In my career as an educator, I was…
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Continue reading →: About energy: Loving the mannequin challengeAny middle school teacher knows that one of the most exciting but challenging aspects of the job is the frenetic pace of life with the kids here. The executive function portion of the adolescent brain, the part that slows things down so we don’t make poor decisions, hasn’t fully developed.…
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Continue reading →: About EdCamp, Friends and FamilyYou’ve all been to conferences. You sign in. Get a name badge that was printed for you in advance. Everyone has a neatly prepared badge — with their name — title — school district — all proudly displayed on their badge, neatly protected in a plastic case — hanging –…
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Continue reading →: About envy: Using mentor textsWe guide students to use “mentor texts” in their development as writers. Ralph Fletcher explains that mentor texts are, “…any texts that you can learn from, and every writer, no matter how skilled you are or how beginning you are, encounters and reads something that can lift and inform and…
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Continue reading →: About spelling: Could you do it?
Follow my blog with Bloglovin Check out this video from the spelling bee today… Look what middle school kids can do!
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Continue reading →: About “developing”: Teacher evaluationI’m a life-long fan of the New York football Giants. We’ve had season tickets in my family since 1963 when my dad and my uncle bought a pair of tickets to see them play at Yankee Stadium. My brothers and I grew up taking the subway to games with my…
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Continue reading →: About professional development: EdCamp is the better way!
Here’s a confession, I’ve been responsible for some pretty horrible professional development (PD). When I think about the faculty meetings I ran when I was a new principal, I am embarrassed. Often, my faculty meetings were the Don Gately Show. I like to think it’s a pretty good show (my…
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In the middle of learning - by Donald F. Gately 
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