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"The end of the school year presents us with an opportunity for reflection at Envision Schools. We take a final measure of students' progress throughout the school year, celebrate the many Envision graduates that will be heading off to college in the fall, and consider how we can incorporate those lessons into improving our own work to best enable, encourage, and ensure student learning."

"In the fall of 2006, Clarence R. Edwards Middle School ("the Edwards" as it is known locally within Boston Public Schools) became one of the first schools in the state of Massachusetts to implement the Expanded Learning Time (ELT) Initiative. The reasons why were simple: we were not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and we wanted to make significant academic gains with our students. As it turned out, making our school day longer was one of the best things we could have done to help reform our school model and improve student outcomes. Our statewide exam scores, student enrollment, daily student attendance rate, community and family engagement, and time for team teaching/collaboration all improved as a result of ELT. "

Karin Hess - DOK - Learning Progressions Resources

"Talk to technology people at school districts, and nearly everyone wants to take their community in the same direction. The most progressive districts today are moving away from teacher-focused education and toward student-centric learning." "Teachers really need to understand this instructional shift," she says. "They must become 21st-century learners before they can be 21st-century teachers."

"By setting up ways to get frequent feedback from students' works in progress, we can find out what they need-before it's too late. Several years ago, I decided that if I were going to spend time writing comments on my students' writing work or on assignments connected to their in-class reading, those comments had to do more than justify a grade. They had to give targeted feedback that would show students how to improve the quality of their work. I'd been finding the hours I spent writing feedback on students' work discouraging. For one thing, students didn't pay attention to my comments, and, for another, the quality of their work wasn't improving. A change in how I responded to their work was necessary. If I wanted my comments to fuel improvement, I realized, I had to build in time for learners to revise their work after receiving my suggestions. Not only did I change the timing of my feedback, but I also streamlined my process of writing comments, allowing myself more time to shift instruction in response to what I'd learned from reviewing work"

"This year, most of my classes are maxed out at 34. When there are this many students in each class, the idea of conducting classroom conferences can be onerous and may even feel daunting at best. But there are ways to ensure class time is indeed spent talking to students about their learning with minimal out of class commitments. Much of how it will work is about planning. As with most important learning experiences in school, the organization has a lot to do with the success of the project and if we treat a round of conferences like a project, we can set up a timeline to efficiently speak with every child about his/her learning."

"Just look at the fourth- and fifth-grade students at Dater Elementary School. They participated in a "Global Progressive Story," collaborating with students from 200 schools in 21 states and eight countries on 18 stories that are featured on the website writeyourstory.wikispace.com."