I’m catching up on my CLE blogwork while I have some time to review previous posts.

I just listened to your radio interview Jeff - very cool! I am so appreciative of the compassionate tone you set and how well you spoke of teachers. You were humble, enthusiastic and just plain great!

Here’s what I heard about CLE and the programs that help improve teaching and learning while also encouraging involvement from the greater Lorain County community:

CLE is “All about quality for the sake of our children” – solving problems, offering advice, promoting best practices, assisting teachers with investigation and innovation

Lesson Sharing - encouraging teachers to share what works, stimulating creativity and collegiality

Universal Design for Learning – increased access to learning for all students

Learning Style Assessments - increasing student engagement and metacognition

Informing the public about the “Value Added” process

“There is more to life than Proficiency Test Scores…” School contributions to helping foster responsible child development - Nice!

Teachers are “Heroes” – championing the valuable work of teachers and validating the challenges faced each day

Reminders of the expectations of parents – to do the best that we can to educate their children – this is our responsibility and our duty

Promotion of educational technology as a powerful tool to increase student achievement

Great work, Jeff! Thank you.

Jeff, thanks for the explanation of Universal Design for Learning. Your example of Indian cooking and then transfering that to the classroom in studying the Civil War is a good one.

All interested (and all teachers, principals, curriculum directors and education coaches should be) should go to http://www.CAST.org.

I also strongly suggest reading Mel Levine’s book A Mind at a Time and looking into the Schools Attuned training at http://www.amindatatime.org or http://www.schoolsattuned.org