Over a 30 year period, Kim Marshall served as a teacher, policy advisor, speechwriter, director of the curriculum, and a principal for Boston schools.
After that incredible career, Marshall began chapter two of his professional life with the publication of the Marshall Memo.
Marshall’s weekly publication is widely known in education circles and for the past 17 years, the “Marshall’s Memo” has been emailed out weekly to educators around the world.
In Episode 127 of Class Dismissed, Marshall talks about which ideas in education have had decades of lasting power and Marshall told us that he thinks teacher teams may be the “secret sauce” to successful schools.
Marshall says that when schools create groups like the algebra team, the 4th-grade team, or the kindergarten team they get results.
Marshall says these teams should be sitting down planning curriculum units together and then looking at the actual student work that comes out of their classrooms on a day-by-day basis or from assessments and sharing the most effective ideas.
Marshall says this needs to happen because teaching is contextual.
“Any middle school teacher will tell you they can have a lesson that’s going really brilliantly the first lesson and then the same lesson in the second lesson doesn’t go as well,” Marshall says this is because teaching is so hard and so complex.
Marshall just released a new book encapsulating the “Best of the Marshall Memo” and he and his co-author, Jenn David-Lang, are offering a free chapter on time management to anyone that emails them to requests it.
Those interested can email Marshall at kim.marshall48@gmail.com
You can listen to the full interview with Kim Marshall on your favorite podcast app or iTunes.