#RealTalk: Providence Students Raise Their Voices
Megan Harrington is a Communications Associate at the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. You can reach her on Twitter at @NellieMaeEdFdn. On a sunny Wednesday afternoon in April, over 100 high school students gathered at the Providence Career and Technical Academy cafeteria, talking with friends, setting up tables with sheets of paper and markers, and… Read More ›
An Open Letter from the Providence Youth Caucus
The Providence Youth Caucus (PYC) unites youth leaders from six of Providence’s strongest youth organizations, including Providence Student Union, New Urban Arts, RIUDL, H20, Young Voices, and Youth In Action. We have been working together for the past year, meeting with the Mayor, Superintendent, and district staff to push for changes in our schools, including… Read More ›
Making the Shift from Community Engagement to Community Collaboration
This article explores how leaders are helping to pilot a new way of working with the community that embraces collaboration in an effort to shift the tide. Over time, community engagement has largely become a one-way mechanism for districts to push out information about initiatives and programs into the local community. Along the way, a… Read More ›
Matching Edtech Products With Neurological Learning Goals
This post can help you make a list of what you want from edtech digital tools that will best suit your goals and are most consistent with neuroscience research correlations about how the brain most successfully processes information. The word edtech refers to educational technology that includes online learning activities through games, websites, computer-assisted instruction,… Read More ›
School Superintendents Association Calls for Shift to Personalized Learning in Public Policy Agenda
This article elucidates the public policy unveiled by the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents for 2016, reflecting its vision of schools that teach students to demonstrate mastery and receive more funding from the state. The organization identified three themes to advocate in 2016: equity, excellence, and innovation, with an emphasis on seeing a shift… Read More ›
Developing a Sense of Agency
This post explores how giving students a sense of agency can transform the way you impact your classroom. Students’ desire to help solve meaningful problems is too often an untapped resource hidden by the assumption that the teacher needs always to be in control of the classroom. When educators shift the paradigm from controlling to empowering,… Read More ›
The Difference Between Blended Learning and Personalized Learning, and Why it Matters
This article is about ending one-size-fits-all education. At LEAP Innovations, personalized learning is defined as learning anytime, anywhere—that is focused on, paced for, and led with the learner, and designed around each individual learner’s needs, strengths, interests, and goals. Blended learning is defined as teaching and learning infused with technology to better inform and direct the… Read More ›
How Cross District Collaboration is Driving Personalized Learning in Rhode Island
Over the past two decades, schools across the country have joined a national movement to integrate digital and face-to-face personalized learning — also known as blended instruction–into their curriculums. At the Highlander Institute in Rhode Island, we help schools and districts make these transformations and provide learners with the support they need to thrive… Read More ›
When Celebrating Learning Differences is at the Heart of School Culture
This article explores how Individualized Education Programs (IEPS), typically created for special education students, can be a used as a model for all students and make personalization on a large scale easier and more accessible to all students. When special education teachers create IEPs for students with learning differences, a variety of professionals come together with… Read More ›
Blended, Project-Based, and Social Emotional Learning at Thrive Public Schools
This article explores how Thrive Public Schools in San Diego is creating a student-centered learning environment for its students. Thrive, a 200 student K-8 school, has a makerspace where students build stuff and work out marble trajectories, and gives a glimpse into the future of learning—blended, personalized, and competency-based. The article includes tools, ideas for implementation… Read More ›
Can an Increase in Empathy Lead to a Drop in Suspensions?
This article by EdWeek, takes an in-depth look at the findings of a study by Stanford University researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The researchers worked with 31 math teachers in five diverse middle schools spread over three California districts, administering two online professional-development exercises… Read More ›
How do students learn best? — Reflections from Deeper Learning 2016
Last month, a few members of the Students at the Center Hub team attended the Deeper Learning 2016 conference at High Tech High (HTH), located in San Diego, CA. The conference was filled with engaging conversations with a variety of participants from the field of education, including teachers and school leaders. One of the most memorable… Read More ›