Be a doer! Be unconventional!

Tales from Classroom
6 min readApr 15, 2021

By Jon Hinthorne

I remember my first professional development day in 2007 like it was yesterday, when our Principal and two teacher leaders led us through an Understanding by Design workshop.

“Don’t try to implement all of this tomorrow!” they said to us to try to get us to not be overwhelmed by the new methodology we were learning about. Grant Wiggins and Jay Mctighe are noted leaders in the education field around this Understanding by Design framework. It certainly made my planning of units and lessons more purposeful and connected to authentic learning experiences for my students. Begin with the end in mind is such a powerful mindset when planning out units and lessons.

HERE and HERE are two online planning tools to help you plan effective units and lessons using Understanding by Design (UbD) and making awesome performance tasks.

While I love UbD and that training that day was monumental in helping shape how I plan my projects now in Project Based Learning (PBL), I think those trainers that day had it both right and wrong.

Sure, take little “bites” of entirely new methods of teaching you learn about and like. But, don’t be afraid to jump right in and go full speed ahead with things you absolutely love!

This was my experience three years ago! I attended the California Language Teachers Association (CLTA) annual conference in the Los Angeles area in 2017 and that conference changed the way I taught probably forever.

I was sitting in a training I had chosen as a default because I needed to choose one in a rush and the training was not what I was seeking at the time. I got up politely and left the room to find another place that might offer a tool or method more related to who I was as a teacher.

I walked the hallways and scoured the conference app and was not finding anything; when all of the sudden, I saw a room that was literally overflowing.

Of course, when you see a room like that at a conference you know what is going on inside the room is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And boy was I right.

I found the last seat in the lecture hall and weaved my way into the seat. I looked at the people to my right and left to say hello with no real…

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Tales from Classroom

Official Medium page for the Tales from the Classroom project, examining how educational policy really affects our schools, kids, teachers, and administrators.