America After 3 PM
The hours after school offer opportunities for academic and personal growth outside of the classroom, but many students lack access to quality after school programs. The report, America After 3PM, written by the Afterschool Alliance spans a decade of data. It highlights the trends of afterschool program participation, documents the benefits associated with participation in afterschool… Read More ›
Stanford Experiments with Virtual Reality, Social-Emotional Learning and Oculus Rift
This article describes the experiments conducted by Stanford graduate students at two California schools to harness new virtual reality technology to build student’s social emotional skills (SEL). At San Jose’s Alpha Public Schools, students are testing out Emoti, a virtual reality (VR) mindfulness exercise developed with a grant from inspirED, a partnership between Facebook and… Read More ›
Beware the Iconography Trap of Personalized Learning: Rigor Matters
In this thought-provoking article, Betheny Gross, Senior Analyst and Research Director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), shares a key lesson learned from the organization’s multi-year, multi-method study to learn how school districts and regional partners can support the successful implementation, expansion, and sustainability of personalized learning. This article is the first in… Read More ›
Personalized Learning, Maine Style
This article in Education Leadership discusses Maine’s move to proficiency-based graduation requirements and the consequent move to increase personalized learning across the state. Mary Bellavance, President of Maine ASCD, and elementary instructional strategist in district RSU #57 in Waterboro, shares the story of her district’s approach to roll out personalized learning approaches with buy-in from… Read More ›
Student-Centered Learning Can Modernize Schools
In this commentary, Nellie Mae Education Foundation (NMEF) President and CEO, Nicholas Donohue, begins by stating that our education system is not broken, but outdated. He notes the system in fact does just what it was designed to do 100 years ago, cull out the best students and leave the rest to work in factories… Read More ›
How Can Schools Prioritize For The Best Ways Kids Learn?
This video and corresponding article from the former English teacher Will Richardson’s presentation at the 2016 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is on the need to match our beliefs and the research about how kids learn best with the reality of teaching and learning practices. Mr. Richardson looks to the types of learning students do… Read More ›
Can Students Click Their Way to a Better World?
In this article, Chris Berdik, science journalist and author, explores why technology could be the key to better civics education for young people today. He argues the national trend of low levels of civics proficiency is the result of an outdated approach to teaching civics. Instead, teachers should use technology to engage students. The article… Read More ›
Boston STEM Week
Boston STEM Week is an innovative, hands-on STEM learning experience that will be run in Boston middle schools during the week of October 3 – 7, 2016. During this week, classrooms will be transformed into learning labs where regularly scheduled classes will be replaced by hands-on STEM curriculum developed by MIT and a number of… Read More ›
College, Career & Technology Academy Toolkit
This toolkit was designed as a resource for practitioners seeking to prepare off-track, out-of-school youth for postsecondary success. Located in the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District, Texas, CCTA is a dropout recovery school where young people experience themselves as college students rather than high school dropouts. Students take a specific set of courses designed to… Read More ›
Deeper Learning Micro-Credentials
This website allows teachers and educators to earn micro-credentials through submission of their competence. Micro-credentials, an emerging professional development strategy, allow educators to demonstrate and gain recognition for skills developed throughout their careers and used in practice. To earn a micro-credential, a teacher submits evidence of their competence, such as examples of student work and… Read More ›
Try: A Little Word Becomes a Big Gift
In this article, a school administrator discusses a simple strategy to encourage personal and professional growth. Recent research indicates the importance of a growth mindset. The author encourages fellow educators to get practical with this research by asking themselves when they last tried something new and took a risk. She describes her experience taking on… Read More ›
Teaching the Whole Child: Instructional Practices That Support Social-Emotional Learning in Three Teacher Evaluation Frameworks
This research-to-practice brief explores teaching practices that promote social-emotional learning (SEL) and positive learning environments. The author begins with an overview of SEL and discusses action steps policymakers and educators can take to support it. Next, the brief provides an overview of 10 teaching practices that encourage the development of SEL. These practices were identified… Read More ›