Dr. Barbara Blackburn has dedicated her life to raising the level of rigor and motivation for professional educators and students alike. What differentiates her 12 books are her easily executable concrete examples based on decades of experience as a teacher, professor, and consultant.

In this podcast, Dr. Blackburn talks about the challenges faced by school leaders to create schools that are rigorous and provide all students with the support necessary to be successful.

Did you know that the first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882? We bet your students didn't know! It wasn't until almost 10 years later, on June 28, 1894, that Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.

Labor Day is much more than the end of summer. It is special because it honors the everyday worker. Do your students know the story behind this holiday? 

Persuasive writing has been very popular in ELA classrooms in recent years. During a persuasive writing unit, students are typically asked to write a letter or essay convincing someone to do or believe something. Students are taught persuasive techniques such as bandwagon, glittering generalities, and snob appeal.

Now the Common Core is moving teachers from persuasion to argument. This shift might be confusing to people who see “persuasion” and “argument” as the same thing. However, the Common Core’s authors draw a distinction between the terms.

The following blog post was written by Barbara Blackburn and Ronald Williamson. To read more newsworthy blog posts from Eye On Education, subscribe to our Insights eNewsletters.

Today’s students face a future that will require them to deal with complex social, economic, and environmental problems. America’s schools must provide students with a rigorous and challenging academic experience that will prepare them for that future and help them develop the skills to be successful.

Making Good Teaching Great: Everyday Strategies for Teaching with Impact by Annette Breaux, and Todd Whitaker, is filled with 180 daily activities and strategies designed to integrate seamlessly into any day of the school year.This tip, from Day 1, outlines the importance of making the right first impression on the first day of school!

In The Principal as Instructional Leader (3rd ed.), Sally Zepeda writes, “Principals are in an advantageous position to identify professional development needs and to provide the follow-up support that will allow teachers to incorporate new skills into their daily practices.” To recognize professional development needs, the principal can use a variety of methods including formal and informal discussions with teachers, surveys, and classroom observations.

We have asked the members of our panel: How do you decide what the focus will be for professional development in your school? What kinds of research, data, or evidence guide your decision?

The first day of class can be tough for your students, especially if they are not familiar with each other. What better way to help your students get to know each other than by using a few ice breakers the first week of class? Here is a list of fun activities that will get your students interacting with each other in no time!

In Awakening Brilliance in the Writer's Workshop: Using Notebooks, Mentor Texts, and the Writing Process, Lisa Morris shares her secrets of success with writer's workshops. In this tip, she discusses the importance of a predictable writing schedule, and outlines an eight-step timeline for a typical writer's workshop.

Here are our TOP 5 favorite educational tweets of the week, which were retweeted and/or clicked on the most by you — our loyal Twitter followers! These tweets were originally tweeted by @eyeoneducation and some of our other favorite Tweeters. If you're not yet on Twitter, join today!

The following guest blog post was written by PJ Caposey, author of Eye On Education's upcoming book Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders, publishing in November, 2012. PJ is the principal of Oregon High School, an adjunct professor in the educational leadership department for Aurora University, and he is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree through Western Illinois University. He can be found on Twitter @principalpc, and he is a guest blogger for many websites such as ASCD, Edutopia, and Test Soup.

Differentiation Is an Expectation: A School Leader's Guide to Building a Culture of Differentiation, by Kimberly Kappler Hewitt and Daniel Weckstein discusses how to promote and design differentiation in your school or district. One of the most important aspects in achieving differentiation is using differentiated teacher evaluations.

In Writer's Workshop for the Common Core, Warren Combs aligns the development of a writer's workshop with the Common Core State Standards for writing. This tip outlines six key practices to help teachers increase their students' range of writing, by guiding their time, topics, and expectations.

 The following tip, from The Principal as Instructional Leader (3rd Edition): A Practical Handbook, by Sally Zepeda provides school leaders with several helpful guidelines for conducting efficient and effective informal classroom observations.

The primary tool for preobservation conference is some type of conference form. However, conducting a classroom observation requires other preparation as well. Effective supervisors arrive at the teacher's classroom ready to work. Here are some additional tools they use for a classroom observation.

Here are our TOP 5 favorite educational tweets of the week, which were retweeted and/or clicked on the most by you — our loyal Twitter followers! These tweets were originally tweeted by @eyeoneducation and some of our other favorite Tweeters. If you're not yet on Twitter, join today!

This activity, from 100 Games and Activities for the Introductory Foreign Language Classroom, by Thierry Boucquey et al, allows students to identify body parts, use verbs associated with the five senses, and review any previous vocabulary in the target language.