Five Resources to Help You Learn About Social-Emotional Learning in the Classroom
In this article, Kate Westrich from KnowledgeWorks shares five resources on social-emotional learning. She suggests watching or reading the resources together to gain background, and provides short descriptions of how each resource can benefit the reader: Social-Emotional Learning: What It Is and Why It Matters “When Social and Emotional Learning Is Key to College Success” Spring… Read More ›
Atlanta Educators Reflect on Lessons From Personalized Learning Initiative
This article shares the experiences of educators implementing personalized learning in Fulton County School District in Georgia. It explores the teacher’s five-year journey to find the approach to personalization that worked for them and their students. Key lessons learned include: The importance of support for teachers throughout implementation The need to have a common language around… Read More ›
High-Impact Strategies to Provide Access to All Students
This article offers practical strategies for creating an educational environment that embraces the ideas of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL is a research based framework that provides more flexible and broad learning options to give all students, especially those with disabilities, access to important learning experiences. The author offers teaching strategies with varied examples,… Read More ›
Helping English Language Learners Meet their Full Potential
The United States has always been, and continues to be, a nation of immigrants. These immigrants are not only raising our youth, but in many cases they are our youth. And they bring important skills with them. But when it comes to educating students for whom English is not primarily spoken at home (English Language… Read More ›
How to Integrate Growth Mindset Messages Into Every Part of Math Class
This article discusses the research around teaching and learning mathematics conducted by Catherine Good, a professor who studies social psychology and growth mindset. Good found that growth mindset—the idea that one can improve understanding and performance by building neural pathways through repeated work—is especially important for students studying math. Teaching growth mindset may protect against stereotype threat—the perception… Read More ›
The Student-Centered Learning Research Collaborative: Collaboration, not Isolation
I need to confess something: I never read educational research when I was a middle school teacher. My day-to-day focus was on the practical and immediate—my students, my lessons, my classroom. Looking back, I realize now that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and my ignorance led to some problematic decisions in the classroom.… Read More ›
Fire Up Your Class With Student-Interest Surveys
This practical article gives advice on how to keep content fresh and relevant and nurture student voice in the classroom. The author, an experienced teacher, suggests that the best way to stay up to date with students’ interests and motivations is to ask students and ask them often. To gather feedback, she suggests free online… Read More ›
Effective (Teacher-Centered) Coaching
This blog, written by a math teacher and coach, and a member of the Better Math Teaching Network, discusses the importance of coaching for teachers in order to drive student success in math. The blog–a reflective essay of sorts– creates a compelling argument and call to action to transform math classrooms. The author discusses learner-centered models… Read More ›
Why ‘Unlearning’ Old Habits Is An Essential Step For Innovation
This article explores Beaver Country Day School, a private 6-12 school in Massachusetts’, experience with the idea of “unlearning”– creating new ways to think in the face of established practices. Using both large and small scale examples, like grading models and teacher’s instruction, the article explores what it really takes to change habits in a school.… Read More ›
Why School Leaders Must Support and Encourage Student Voice and Activism
Summer 2014. My students from The Met High School in Providence, RI, were getting ready for their sophomore year, enjoying (or suffering through) the heat of July, when they saw video of Eric Garner being strangled by police in Staten Island. Then in August, as they were getting haircuts and new school clothes, they read… Read More ›
New Hampshire Teachers Build New Ways to Measure Deeper Learning
This article explores the successes of a pilot group of New Hampshire districts, as they move from standardized testing to a more performance-based assessment system. New Hampshire is at the forefront of moving schools to a competency-based model, and the article highlights the advantages for students and educators. The author shares classroom examples of project-based… Read More ›
Training Teachers for Competency-Based Learning Classrooms
This article, written by the founder of Matchbook Learning, a non-profit charter school operator in Detroit and Newark, shares best practices for designing teacher professional learning to support a competency-based model. He discusses how they created effective teacher trainings based on three design principals that mirror the competency-based experiences they want to provide students: Deliver training through a… Read More ›