Peter DeWitt

Jan 19, 2025 | edweek.org | Michael Nelson |Peter DeWitt

A new year. 2025. The beginning of each calendar year usually signals the start of the hiring process for vacancies in school and district leadership positions. Excitement abounds as applicants seek new leadership opportunities and districts anticipate the possibilities that new leaders bring. Prospective leaders are filled with what they hope will be innovative ideas that catch the attention of an interested district.

Nov 25, 2024 | edweek.org | Peter DeWitt |Michael Nelson

Many years ago, I (Peter) wrote this blog explaining why so many educators were joining Twitter, now X. In the blog post from 2011, I wrote,Many educators are intrinsically motivated to find their own professional development. They read websites and blogs and are members of organizations that send them journals. They read more educational material than they read books for fun.

Nov 17, 2024 | edweek.org | Peter DeWitt |Michael Nelson

Data and evidence. Those are two words that leaders and teachers often hear and are certainly not new to the educational vernacular. Recently, we posted a short video on our Instructional Leadership Collective Instagram page focusing on using data as a flashlight and not as a hammer, which you can find here. One of the comments we received was: “Data does not drive anything. Influence, inform? Humans make decisions not data.

Oct 29, 2024 | edweek.org | Peter DeWitt

Have you ever engaged in a self-reflection activity during a professional learning session that provided you with such clarity it changed your perspective immediately? One of us (Michael) remembers a jarring moment during a session that provided such clarity for him. At that time, he was a building principal sitting in a workshop, and the presenter asked the participants to take out their calendars. It was the late ‘90s, so many of the participants were using a paper calendar of some sort.

Oct 2, 2024 | edweek.org | Peter DeWitt |Michael Nelson

It was an unusual way to begin our leadership-team retreat. District leaders and principals were quickly divided into groups of five when they walked into the room. They were asked to select a team leader, pick out a large gift-wrapped box, and find a fairly large work spot in our high school library. Each work location had various tools, but no two work stations had the same ones. The teams were told they could not talk to each other from this point forward, even though they were in the same room.