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This is going to be SLA’s seventh year. In those seven years I’ve had seven superintendents. [Laughter, applause.]

And what is driving all of the decisions right now in cities all over this country? It’s this question: ‘How good are your test scores?’

For example, in this state [New York], the state-wide English Language Arts Regents exam was a high-stakes test for students and for teachers. It determined students promotion. It determined whether or not teachers would keep their jobs. It determined whether or not schools would stay open. There was question about a talking pineapple. And again, Adam referenced this earlier. But again, the amazing thing was that they claimed that they took it from this children’s author. They interviewed the children’s author. He said they got it wrong!

do you know who made the test? Anybody? Pearson. Not educators. Not state officials. Not the way that it used to be, when at least these tests were designed by people who did not have a financial stake in the game. Instead, this test was designed by a company that was deeply, deeply concerned that it be financially profitable.

educators have more stuff thrown at them than they’ve ever had to think about before. I am the child of a lifelong teacher and a union lawyer, so all of these ideas are incredibly derivative and I take them from my parents

we wonder why so many teachers push back as we say, ‘Oh and by the way, you’ve got to learn Twitter and Edmodo and this and that and the other and all of these tools.

powerful question: Is school relevant? And behind that is the question that many of us as teachers are asking: Am I relevant?

t if you ask her, ‘Who are you?’ the first thing she says isn’t ‘Oh, I’m a publicist.’ But if you ask a teacher, ‘Who are you?’ they are going to say, ‘I am a teacher.’ Who we are is wrapped up deeply in what we do and what do is under attack and changing rapidly, and that uncertainty is very difficult to deal with.

Johnny Learned to Read. Johnny went to the Store. Johnny went to the Park. Johnny killed himself because learning was boring! [Laughter.]

I respect what Deven Black said about the idea of ‘get out of school before the school kills the joy of creativity and kills that joy of learning that you have’ I also believe that school can be amazing places of learning. Schools can teach us how to learn, more than any fact or figure that we can get in a classroom. What schools should teach us is how learn, that metacognitive practice of figuring out, ‘How do I learn best? How do I make sense of our world?’ And when I do that, schools can help us learn to live.

Spanish 4 class at Science Leadership Academy. Now, what the kids had to do was to write an essay about hwo they were. Identity is a frequent theme at SLA. The essay was of two parts: One, what was visible about them and, two, what was invisible about them.

Schools can help us learn to live.

The incredibly reflective moment they were going through was, ‘How could we have prevented this as teachers? What are we doing wrong, that these are the students we are creating? These are the citizens we are creating?’

I think that when you are told the whole purpose you are learning this stuff is so you can work for somebody someday and that you can be part of the global economy. I think that’s an isolating feeling. I don’t think that builds community or gets us where we need to go.

we need to start talking about ‘the global citizen.’ We need to start talking about community

We would instead make sure that every child had a deep and powerful understanding of statistics before they left formal education

We’re creating a profoundly innumerate society and solving problems that we face today are going to need people who understand numbers.

but school belongs to our best, most powerful democratic instincts as a society. And what we are seeing right now, is a lot of people saying that schools need to be just like business.

If not that corporate model, then what model?

there’s a profound difference between these two statements: ‘I care about kids, and I care for kids.

We need to stop saying, ‘I teach math. I teach English. I teach art.’ We need to start saying, ‘I teach kids.’ And then we build systems and structures that reflect that.

we’ve got to understand that an inquiry-driven education is the most powerful way to learn

By the way, there is one questions that every teacher should ask a bazillion times a day that they don’t know the answer to. That question is, ‘What do you think?’

Want to see a really amazing thing with a group of kids? Read a book with them freshman year. Have them write their reflections on the book. Read it with them again in their senior year. See what the book holds for them now. Teach them that ideas and answers can change. And that that’s good.

It’s called the Dialogic Curriculum. It’s by a woman named Patricia L. Stock.

This isn’t just about talking. What I see in a lot of classrooms when I visit schools is people talking and listening—but not really. I see in a lot of classrooms debate, where kids are listening for the thing they can disagree with. So that way they can make their point. Right? We’ve all had that experience where the teacher says, ‘Wait a second, I’ll get back to your comment in a minute.’ Three or four more kids have said the thing and the kid says the exact same thing that they were going to say four questions ago, because they didn’t listen to the four things that the other kids said. We need to teach kids that we can argue and we can discuss to learn.

Teach kids to build their ideas off of others. Teach them not just to disagree, but run a classroom where no one is allowed to talk until they first express their idea, before they first echo back what they’ve heard from someone else. What did I learn from what you just said? ‘Well, I understand that you just said this, and I thought that this was really interesting. And where I found disagreement or disharmony was here.’ But first I’ve got to acknowledge the things that you said. First I’ve got to acknowledge that you said that with which I can find common cause. Teach kids to build, not just tear down.

What they’re selling to us as personalized learning is, ‘everybody does the exact same content, only at your own pace.’ That’s not personal!

If someone shows up and says, ‘We’ve got a great new personalized learning system. You put the kids on the computer and they all go at their own pace.’ Say to them, ‘That’s not personal. When do they get to do the things they care about?’

This is two of our students competing in a kinetic sculpture contest. Think about that. And what’s cool about it is that they built this device in their engineering classroom. Our kids in our engineering classrooms have built a solar water heater, and Engineers Without Borders took the actual thing that the kids built, shipped it to Sierra Leone, where what our kids built is now being used to heat water in order to sterilize instruments in a hospital for amputee victims. Our kids have built flow-process biodiesel generators, and they have then released the designs to anyone who wanted to use them, under a Creative Commons license. What we found out was that students in Central and South America built what are kids designed and are using it to take their schools ‘off the grid’ by powering their own schools.

Ask powerful questions. Seek out answers. Build real stuff. That’s inquiry-driven project-based learning.

world

What we are really trying to do is help our kids change the

Project-based learning is when the kids own head, heart and hands—when the work that they do, that matters to them, is the most important thing in a classroom—is the highest form of work that gets done. That’s true project-based learning.

In every single class at SLA, for all four years that they are there, every quarter has what we call a benchmark project in each class that that allows every child to build something that serves as the signpost of their learning every single quarter.

nquiry—what are the questions we can ask; Research—how do we find the answers to those questions; Collaboration—how do we work together to make those answers deeper, better and richer; Presentation—how do we share what we’ve learned; and Reflection—

You must build systems and structures to allow kids to do real stuff, and then get out of their way. By the way, once they have, you’ve got to let them share it.

You can share stuff in the physical world, you can share stuff in the virtual world, but kids have got to understand that they can be expert voices in the world. Create the space for them to do it. You don’t have to tell them how.

She said, ‘I just expose them to a whole bunch of different ideas and then said, go learn the stuff you need to learn.’

you have to share what you know

Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) is the founding Principal of the Science Leadership Academy (SLA)

honored by the White House as a Champion of Change for his work in education reform. In June 2010, Chris was named as one of the “30 Most Influential People in EdTech”

Only about six percent of teachers are ineffective, she continues. For the remaining 94 percent, the emphasis should shift from ratings to learning.

And what do we know about professional learning? That it requires: • Active intellectual engagement – That is, self-assessment, reflection on practice, and on-going conversations; • Trust – “Fear shuts people down,” says Danielson. “Learning, after all, entails vulnerability. The culture of the school and of the district must be one that encourages risk-taking.” • Challenge – “The culture must include an expectation that every teacher will engage in a career-long process of learning,” she says, “one that is never ‘finished.’ Teaching is simply too complex for anyone to believe that there is no more to learn.” • Teacher collaboration – PD and supervisory suggestions rarely drive classroom improvements, says Danielson. “Overwhelmingly, most teachers report that they learn more from their colleagues than from an ‘expert’ in a workshop… or being directed by a supervisor to read a certain book or take a particular course.” Most often, classroom improvement comes from working with colleagues analyzing student work and planning curriculum.

a new system should include: -   An emphasis on professional learning in a culture of trust and inquiry; -   A career ladder from probationary to continuing status after about three years; from that point on, the main emphasis becomes professional learning; -   Differentiation in the evaluation system, with novice teachers getting support from a mentor and being evaluated every year; -   Career teachers assessed periodically to ensure continuing quality; -   Teacher leadership positions (mentor, instructional coach, team leader) for which experienced teachers in good standing are eligible to apply; these come with training and support, extra compensation, or released time during the regular school day; -   The ability to identify seriously underperforming teachers, support their improvement, and if sufficient progress isn’t made, deny them tenure or continuing employment.

“Former service members tend to be committed to their students and tenacious in their efforts to improve,” say Parham and Gordon. Some early studies suggest that over time, veterans are stronger in classroom management, instructional practices, and student results.

Veterans who have had life-and-death combat experiences “tend to have low tolerance for petty politics in schools or for initiatives that seem unrelated to educating students. Former service members may sometimes seem overly assertive in discussions with colleagues.”

Veterans entering the classroom may feel like novices and have to adjust to their students not snapping to attention when given an order.

Veterans who are used to explicit operating procedures have to decode the unspoken expectations on how to relate to colleagues, handle student discipline, deal with parent concerns, get supplies, and get help.

“Discussions of shared experiences, shared values, and shared goals can help veterans and other teachers begin to build relationships.”

This might consist of a well-chosen mentor (similar to their “battle buddy” in the military), a support team (perhaps a grade-level or subject team that meets regularly), and a support network with other veterans in the school or district.

Veterans need an especially thorough briefing as they enter a new setting, including policies, procedures (copying machines, grading, and more), formal and informal rules, and a map of the school.

up to speed on teaching priorities, curriculum breadth versus depth, dealing with student differences, lesson planning, instructional materials, and, of course, discipline.

Support for this common challenge can come from peer coaching, observing expert teachers, workshops, articles and books, and seminars.

Rather, the mastery of new concepts happens in fits and starts. “Content should not be kept from students because it is ‘developmentally inappropriate,’” says the report. “To answer the question ‘is the student ready?’ it’s best to consider ‘has the student mastered the prerequisites?’”

Effective teachers make content explicit through carefully paced explanation, modeling, and examples; present new information through multiple modalities; and make good use of worked problems.

Effective teachers assign tasks that require explanation or require students to organize material in meaningful ways. Stories and mnemonics are also helpful in getting students to impose meaning on hard-to-remember content.

we shouldn’t push skeptical students to say, “Natural selection is one of the most important ways species came to be differentiated.” Better for them to say, “Most scientists think natural selection is one of the best explanations.”

Practice is essential to learning new facts, but not all practice is equally effective.

Frequent quizzes with low stakes, and students testing themselves, help establish long-term retention through the “retrieval effect.”

Each subject has basic facts that support higher-level learning by freeing working memory and illuminating applications.

Good feedback is specific and clear, focused on the task rather than the student, explanatory, and directed toward improvement rather than merely verifying performance.

To transfer learning to a novel problem, students need to know the problem’s context and its underlying structure.

Explicitly comparing the examples helps students remember the underlying similarities. With multi-step procedures, students need to identify and label the sub-steps so they can apply them to similar problems. It’s also helpful to alternate concrete examples and abstract representations.

Motivation is improved if students believe that intelligence and ability can be improved through hard work, and if adults respond to successful work by praising effective effort rather than innate ability. It’s also helpful for teachers to set learning goals (e.g., mastering specific material) rather than performance goals (competing with others or vying for approval).

Intrinsic motivation leads to better long-term outcomes than extrinsic motivation.

It’s difficult to gauge one’s own learning and understanding. That’s why students need to learn how to monitor their own learning through assessments, self-testing, and explanation.

Students will be more motivated and successful when they believe they belong and are accepted.

Teachers need to recognize and dispel a set of incorrect beliefs about teaching and learning: -   Misconception #1: Students have different “learning styles.” -   Misconception #2: Humans use only 10 percent of their brains. -   Misconception #3: People are preferentially “right-brained” or “left-brained” in how they think. -   Misconception #4: Novices and experts think in all the same ways. -   Misconception #5: Cognitive development progresses in age-related stages.

having students work in groups for 30-45 minutes coming up with test questions that might be used (or reworded) in the actual exam. This is a two-fer, says Lang: it not only gives students a sense of control over their learning but also serves as an effective review session.

Open assessments – This involves leaving 10 percent of the syllabus for an assignment that students create with the instructor.

Class constitutions – Having students collectively come up with ground rules for a course gives them a collegial sense of working together toward a shared purpose.

“Teaching evolutionary theory is not in and of itself religious indoctrination.” That’s because evolution is not a religion. “How could a religion have no beliefs about the supernatural? No rituals? No moral commandments?”

ask students to learn about evolution without insisting that they believe it.

Students learn new ideas by linking them to what they already know.

“It turns out children are better able to cope if they understand what they’re going through is normal, that it affects everyone, and that it will pass,” comments Adam Gamoran of the William T. Grant Foundation. “How we think about a stressful situation influences how we feel and how we perform.” Studies like this, he says, “show how deeply intertwined are cognition and emotion.”

use of Twitter in his middle-school science classroom

Connecting students to reputable, relevant scientific people and organizations in real time

Twitter as authentic audience – Students constantly tweet ideas, assignments, projects, suggestions, and photographs to each other, broadening the reach of their thinking.

Twitter as embedded literacy – Students get plenty of practice with succinct writing as they share analyses and observations.

Managing students’ encounters with objectionable material from the outside world, including occasional use of profanity and sexually suggestive follower requests.

Comparing services – Proportional reasoning, equations, creating and analyzing graphs, and number sense; -   Planning a budget – Organizing and representing information and number sense; -   Determining the costs and payoffs of higher education – Percentages, compound interest, and rates; -   Playing the Stock Market Game – Ratios, proportional reasoning, reading and analyzing reports and graphs, and algebraic thinking (e.g., gains and losses).

“The term generally refers to using a wide variety of hands-on activities (such as building, computer programming, and even sewing) to support academic learning and the development of a mindset that values playfulness and experimentation, growth and iteration, and collaboration and community. Typically, ‘making’ involves attempting to solve a particular problem, creating a physical or digital artifact, and sharing that product with a larger audience. Often, such work is guided by the notion that process is more important than results.”

So far, says Sternberg, all the ways we’ve tried to measure raw intelligence haven’t worked.

No existing IQ or other test can separate past opportunities from test performance.

“If you understand the child’s knowledge and cognitive skills in a domain that is really meaningful to the child,” says Sternberg, “you will learn what the student is capable of doing in other domains, if only motivated to pursue those other domains.”

you cannot cleanly separate out measurement of intelligence from measurement of reading (obviously, a verbal skill). The same holds for other content domains.”

The coach’s role, she says, “is not to fix lessons or teachers but to support teachers’ abilities to meet students’ needs.

Let the teacher “drive” the process.

the coach’s job in goal-setting is to search for points of agreement with the teacher and to direct her in ways likely to produce positive results.”

“The coach also needs to respect the teacher’s autonomy by offering feedback only on agreed-upon goals,” adds Finkelstein. “As tempting as it can be for coaches to identify areas for improvement, unsolicited suggestions can arouse defensiveness.”

“Improvement starts with volume. Volume suffers if I have to grade everything. Grading doesn’t make kids better. Volume, choice, and conferring makes kids better.” This helped Tovani realize that she didn’t have to assess every piece of student writing, which allowed her to grade less and assess more: “I don’t have to always write the perfect comment or give a grade,” she says. “[W]hat’s most essential to improving the quality of students’ work is collecting feedback for ourselves from that work and noticing patterns in students’ skills (or lack thereof) that we can use to determine our next instructional moves.”

This view is critical to mitigating teacher resistance to feedback, which most teachers expect will be evaluative.” A smart strategy is to focus on what students have learned rather than the teacher’s skill executing lessons. “Collaboratively examining student performance can provide an effective third space for this kind of non-evaluative feedback,” she says.

“It is the coach’s responsibility to dispel any perception that her job is easier or more relaxed than the teacher’s.” This means writing lesson plans, citing standards, teaching lessons, collecting books and materials, helping with assessments, doing grading, and helping with other paperwork.

At the same time, the coach needs to think strategically about the teacher’s growth and development and ultimate independence.

“Coaches also walk the walk by using their access to authority in schools to advocate for teachers,”

Communicate clearly and transparently. Right from the start, coaches need to spell out key details of the partnership, including: -   The goals and time frame; -   When, why, and how the coach will observe in the classroom; -   What non-evaluative feedback will look and sound like; -   With whom the coach will (and will not) share feedback.

“Coaches must be particularly sensitive about writing down anything while visiting a classroom,”

There are plenty of reasons for resistance to being “helped” by an instructional coach, she says, often manifested in shallow acquiescence, avoidance, or overt hostility: -   Teachers believing (not without reason) that they’ve been singled out as deficient; -   Fear of being judged and exposed as ineffective with students; -   Fear that deficiencies unrelated to the presenting issue will be revealed; -   A belief that the instructional coach may report on them to the principal; -   Worries about being admonished by the principal; -   Discomfort examining their own practice; -   Anxiety about having to change.

Spend less time writing comments. -   Modify instruction based on what’s learned from students’ work. -   Build in time for students to revise their work based on feedback and self-assessment.

“Students compare my criteria of success with their performance,” she says, “and reflect on how my responses are alike or different from theirs.” If students do poorly on one of her quizzes, she’ll go over items in class, giving students a chance to add points by showing improvement.

share with the teacher any notes taken during observations.

Exit tickets – At the end of class, students jot one thing they figured out and one thing they’re wondering about. Tovani spreads these out on a table and draws conclusions about the next day’s lesson. “I don’t waste time writing comments,” she says. “I simply look for patterns, and when I’ve figured out a few, I throw the tickets away.”

Response journals – In individual composition notebooks, students reflect on their learning for the day. Tovani reads a third of these each day during her planning period, takes a third home, and reads the rest the next morning. “I limit my comments and challenge myself to identify patterns,” she says.

While commenting, she records her observations in four columns: students’ use of skills and strategies; confusing vocabulary; students’ questions related to the reading; and how skillfully students are dealing with a genre or text structure. She gives feedback or a quick correction to individual students or to the whole class.

“If pre-assessments simply demonstrate to students how little they know, this exercise may negatively affect their disposition toward the upcoming event,”

Teachers’ messaging needs to emphasize that a pre-assessment won’t count against students and the purpose is to help make lessons more effective and fun, highlight what’s going to be learned, and allow students to set goals.

To avoid giving pre-assessments that add little value, teachers should use them only when necessary, keep them short, using multiple-choice questions where possible, and limit questions to areas where the teacher genuinely doesn’t know how students will perform.

A thorough unit pre-assessment might well reveal four levels of student preparation in a single classroom: students who know the intended outcomes up front; students who have partial knowledge; students who have little or no knowledge; and students who have significant misconceptions. Trying to differentiate for all these students is a classroom management nightmare for even the most creative teacher. Guskey and McTighe suggest a compromise, with some highly engaging whole-class presentations and then significant decentralization and choice with frequent checks for understanding.

When possible, teachers should gather pre-assessment data with individual student dry-erase boards, clickers, or other methods that allow for rapid student input and teacher analysis and decision-making.

three guidelines to ensure that pre-assessments are practical, provide useful data, and enhance student learning:

Teachers should be clear about the purpose, both for themselves and their students. What new and helpful data will be gathered? Do students know why they are doing the pre-assessment?

Decide how the information will be used.

Possible follow-ups include reviewing essential knowledge and skills with the whole class, addressing misconceptions, providing targeted instruction, linking content to students’ interests, and differentiating for individuals or groups.

They’re not necessary for every new unit, say the authors – only when they can really add value and only if they’re short and can produce data that can be assessed quickly.

Taking three or more related courses in one career area boosted students’ chances of graduating from high school on time by 21 percent.

A more helpful way to think of toughness is resilience, says Brooks. “The people we admire for being resilient are not hard; they are ardent. They have a fervent commitment to some cause, some ideal, or some relationship. That higher yearning enables them to withstand setbacks, pain, and betrayal.

strategies that build connections with boys.

“In every school I have visited, social competition and hierarchy, bullying and maltreatment, peer policing, and the marginalization of less-preferred types of boys characterize cultures that even wonderfully committed faculty and staff cannot control.”

These teachers report that, “contrary to the stereotypes of young men as diffident, disruptive, or dangerous, most boys care deeply about being successful and simply long for instructors… capable of connecting personally with them and believing in them, even when they may not believe in themselves and struggle with behavior, effort, or attention problems… Relationship is the very medium through which successful teaching and learning is performed with boys.”

If people today are less tough or resilient, Brooks concludes, it may be because they lack purpose. “If you really want people to be tough,” he says, “make them idealistic for some cause, make them tender for some other person, make them committed to some worldview that puts today’s temporary pain in the context of a larger hope

Acknowledge a common characteristic.

Maintain high standards.

Respond to a student’s personal interest or talent.

Share a common interest.

Accommodate a measure of opposition.

Change should be collective.

Be willing to reveal vulnerability.

“Mediation provides teacher and student with ways to listen and understand each other’s perspectives, restore goodwill, and develop positive plans to move forward,” she says. “The process boosts social, problem-solving and communication skills – all of which are important for students’ resourcefulness should problems arise in the future.”

the characteristics of an ideal academic team: -   There is frequent, easy communication. -   Assessment is an integral part of the culture. -   Changes are identified and readily implemented. -   New ideas are frequently discussed. -   Limitations in professional knowledge and skills are recognized and addressed. -   Professional development is seen as essential and it happens regularly. -   Improvement is continuous.

Don’t just tell them they’re wrong.

People with incorrect beliefs can become even more entrenched when presented with facts that contradict their beliefs. To change people, you have to reach their hearts, and you can do that only by building relationships.

Evidence alone won’t work.

Listen

If you want to effectively address forces that resist positive change, you need to genuinely listen first.”

Be indirect. Use suggestive rather than declarative language. Let your colleagues come to their own conclusion and, better yet, think it’s their own idea.

Have one-to-one conversations.

Identify your allies.

Demonstrate mastery of subject matter.

Identify the mission.

Choose your battles.

Focus on your personal goals.

Be patient, hopeful, and persistent.

If change happens, expect things to get worse before they get better.

“Research suggests that individuals are prone to automatically make assessments about the competence and social status of others based on features of their physical appearance. These features may include facial cues, ethnicity, clothes, and body language… [I]ndividuals are likely to base their impression of others on limited information and then fill in the rest accordingly.”

“Children described by teachers more negatively in terms of their appearance had worse academic adjustment… Students described by teachers as appearing poorly dressed, tired, sleepy, or hungry were rated by teachers as being less competent academically, less engaged, and as having a poorer relationship with these teachers.

“These results suggest that some students may be experiencing difficulties in school because they appear inadequately physically prepared for the classroom,”

As a staff, if we said, ‘Here’s our first chance to engage parents,’ then surely open houses… would be a much warmer, much more collaborative event and linked to learning.”

Consider having a general orientation for parents before the beginning of school – more of a mini-fair, with fun activities and a chance to get to know school staff. This is distinct from the open house in mid-September, which is more academically focused. -   Encourage teachers to make a positive phone call to each family early in the year so that calls on behavior problems are not the first time parents hear from the school.

  Give parents and guardians name tags and a chance to socialize with family members of other students.

Have students be leaders of the open house at the classroom level: students prepare a PowerPoint presentation on what they are learning and what the plan is going forward.

Include actual learning activities for parents.

The bottom line: family members should leave the open house excited about the school year, clear about three or four things their child will know by the end of the year, and feeling part of a team that will help students accomplish those key learnings.

Relevance: the information's level of importance to a particular reading purpose or explicitly stated need for that information Accuracy: the extent to which information contains factual and updated details that can be verified by consulting alternative and/or primary sources Bias/Perspective: the position or slant toward which an author shapes information Reliability: the information's level of trustworthiness based on information about the author and the publishing body

Verify and refute online information Investigate author credentials Detect bias and stance Negotiate multiple perspectives

Cross-checking claims between multiple sources (see Figure 2) can help adolescents: Recognize ideas they might otherwise ignore Weigh the usefulness (and reliability) of these ideas against what they previously believed to be true Consider that new ideas may actually be more accurate than their original thinking

To that end, I will close with a list of strategies to use or adapt to fit your students’ needs as they refine their ability to think critically while conducting online research: Is this site relevant to my needs and purpose? What is the purpose of this site? Who created the information at this site, and what is this person's level of expertise? When was the information at this site updated? Where can I go to check the accuracy of this information? Why did this person or group put this information on the Internet? Does the website present only one side of the issue, or are multiple perspectives provided? How are information and/or images at this site shaped by the author's stance? Is there anyone who might be offended or hurt by the information at this site? How can I connect these ideas to my own questions and interpretations?

and she was trained to highlight strengths

Showing empathy was important

The trainer stressed the importance of avoiding teen patois and not making typos, which undermine authoritativeness.

Having all three factors present in a school can compensate for their absence in the family, community, or peer group. And a school with these factors can be resilient as an organization in the face of challenges and traumatic events it may face.

But in practical terms, text messaging affords a level of privacy that the human voice makes impossible. If you’re hiding from an abusive relative or you just don’t want your classmates to know how overwhelmed you feel about applying to college, a text message, even one sent in public, is safer than a phone call.

What’s more, tears go undetected by the person you’ve reached out to, and you don’t have to hear yourself say aloud your most shameful secrets.”

All people have the capacity for resilience, she says, and there are three factors that tap and nurture that potential: (a) caring relationships, (b) high expectations, and (c) meaningful opportunities for participation and contribution.

The advantage of using texting for a crisis hotline is that teens who are willfully uncommunicative when speaking are often forthcoming to the point of garrulous when texting, quite willing to disclose sensitive information.

The three factors help develop children’s social competence, problem-solving ability, sense of self and internal locus of control, and sense of purpose and optimism about the future – all of which are key to dealing successfully with adversity.

This is all about providing a sense of connectedness and belonging, “being there,” showing compassion and trust.

Teachers make appropriate expectations clear and recognize progress as well as performance. They also encourage mindfulness and self-awareness of moods, thinking, and actions. Principals orchestrate a curriculum that is challenging, comprehensive, thematic, experiential, and inclusive of multiple perspectives. They also provide training in resilience and youth development, and work to change deeply held adult beliefs about students’ capacities.

Teachers hold daily class meetings and empower students to create classroom norms and agreements. Principals establish peer-helping/tutoring and cross-age mentoring/tutoring programs and set up peer support networks to help new students and families acclimate to the school environment.

Resilience is a process, not a trait. It’s a struggle to define oneself as healthy amidst serious challenges.

Several personal strengths are associated with resilience – being strong cognitively, socially, emotionally, morally, and spiritually.

In classrooms, open channels of communication are essential. Nothing should inhibit, embarrass, or shame students from asking questions during a lesson.

a person who displays bad judgment is not ‘forever’ a bad person.”

To help others, educators need to take care of themselves. An analogy: on an airplane, people need to have their own oxygen masks in place before they can help others.

“The admissions process can counteract a narrow focus on personal success and promote in young people a greater appreciation of others and the common good.

ome have pointed out that the report applies mostly to a small percent of students, and what colleges say they value may be a challenge to game the system.

Julie Coiro (University of Rhode Island) takes note of a large international study by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), which found that computers were having no significant impact on students’ proficiency in reading, math, and science.

In many countries, the study found, frequent use of computers actually made students’ performance worse. “Although these findings may relate to differences in professional development or implementation,” says Coiro, “it was clear that drill-and-practice software had a negative effect on student performance.”

Technology is not critical for learning to be personal; all that’s needed is space and time to actively reflect, collaborate, and engage with personally meaningful ideas.

“What students can learn,” says Stygles, “is how to manage their time, select books reasonably, and justify their reading choices. When students understand their capacity – what they can do successfully – they not only protect themselves from shameful failure, but also become stronger readers through repeated experiences of success and pleasure.”

when blended learning is implemented in a balanced way, “teachers and students use a range of human and digital resources to improve their ability to think, problem solve, collaborate, and communicate. A delicate balance of talk and technology use keeps us all grounded in conversations with other people about what really matters.” Coiro has four suggestions for striking this balance:             • Build a culture of personal inquiry. Students have regular opportunities to pursue topics relevant to them, using a range of texts, tools, and people (offline and online) to get emotionally engaged.             • Expect learners to talk. Students engage in literacy experiences involving face-to-face and online collaboration, conversations, arguments, negotiations, and presentations.             • Encourage digital creation. Students create original products that share new knowledge and connect insights from school, home, and the community.             • Make space for students to participate and matter. “Through participation, individuals assert their autonomy and ownership of learning,” says Coiro. “In turn, their inquiry becomes more personal and engaging.”

Once students are empowered to direct their own learning pathways, technology can open the door to a range of texts, tools, and people to explore and connect ideas

“Unlike participation in sports,” says Stygles, “the choice to abandon reading to pursue other talents is not an option. Kids really have no escape from the struggles they face during the learning-to-read process, especially in light of frequent assessment or graduation through levels.”

“Measurement must be replaced by early and frequent positive transactions between reading, teacher, and texts,”

We should share with students what intimidates us about reading, how we find time, and how we focus… If we show our readers realities of reading, maturing students will see reading as less burdensome.”

“Shamed readers do not believe they improve or can improve,” says Stygles

“A good exit ticket can tell whether students have a superficial or in-depth understanding of the material,” they write. “Teachers can then use this data for adapting instruction to meet students’ needs the very next day… Exit tickets allow teachers to see where the gaps in knowledge are, what they need to fix, what students have mastered, and what can be enriched in the classroom…

The key to differentiation is that you have high expectations for all students and a clear objective.

If you know what you want students to master, differentiation allows you to use different strategies to help all students get there.”

Each of these tools allows students to contribute individually to shared creations involving inquiry, peer feedback, and collaborative composition.

Google Docs

Padlet

Coggle

VoiceThread

Prioritize balance in the school schedule. This means building in time for teachers to prepare, think, meet with their colleagues, eat lunch, and pay an occasional visit to the bathroom. It’s also important not to burden teachers with unnecessary meetings.

We should show our students, through the examples of our own lives, that they can lead healthy, multifaceted existences and not be slaves to their careers.”

The more screen time teens have (up to 6.5 hours a day), the worse they perform academically.

It sends a powerful message to students that someone in authority is taking the time to observe and notice with a view to making improvements in the school for their benefit.

Give students a minute at the beginning of class to check phones. -   Then have them silence their devices, put them face down on desks, and pay attention. -   Every 15 minutes, allow students to check their phones for a minute. -   Gradually increase the interval to 20, then 25, then 30 minutes. -   If students violate the protocol, they forfeit the next phone break. -   Naturally there are times when phones can be used legitimately as part of a learning experience.

it’s unproductive to confiscate students’ phones; this can cause great anxiety and needless conflict.

the time-honored practice of displaying samples of exemplary student work may be a turn-off for many students.

when students are exposed to truly exceptional work, they use it as a reference point and realize they are not capable of such exceptional quality. It can lead to decreased motivation and eventually quitting if you believe the exceptional work is actually typical.”

noticing another student multitasking electronically harms the learning of the viewer.

Many teachers need PD on framing good critical thinking questions, modeling high-level thinking themselves, and revising their lesson tasks and assessments so they spur critical thinking.

“Critical thinking should not be limited to one group or one age level of students.”

Teachers need to integrate a variety of thinking questions throughout the curriculum (analyze scenarios, interpret graphics, evaluate quotes) and make sure students are seeing test questions for the first time.

If students can produce a quick verbal answer when a question is fired at them in class, it’s probably a lower-level question. Better to let students ponder good questions and discuss them with a classmate before being asked to respond.

it appears that study techniques that have recently emerged from cognitive science are helpful to a broad range of students with special needs. Here’s a fuller list of those approaches: -   Breaking up study time into chunks; -   Studying material from more than one subject in the same session; -   Varying study environments; -   Retrieving material from memory by testing oneself and restudying what wasn’t recalled (this is especially helpful when the material is beginning to fade, resulting in a productive struggle to recall it).

When is online professional learning a better choice for teachers than in-person experiences?

To study a topic that’s not offered within the district in a particular year.

            •  A particular expert is not available in the school or district.

  • Singleton teachers can reach out to similarly isolated teachers in other locations.

• Online resources can fill immediate needs, facilitating higher-quality in-person work.

• Online PD can be significantly less expensive and more feasible than in-person PD.

“Learning of any kind is best done collaboratively with supportive colleagues and facilitators who can push thinking, provide accountability structures, and ensure a quality learning experience. Relying on online professional development becomes dangerous when the learning is too independent and isolated.”

when teachers go online for resources, they often gravitate to those that are immediately useful rather than looking at material that challenges them and helps them grow professionally. “School-based collaboration is still necessary,” conclude the authors, “maybe even more necessary, in an environment where teachers are participating in independent online learning activities.”

“Use online learning to meet your personal needs, but find ways to take that learning back to your school.”

five maxims in reference calls:             • Agree with the candidate on a comprehensive and relevant list of references to call. This should include former bosses, peers, and subordinates in previous jobs. Narrow the list by thinking about the specific characteristics of the job you’re trying to fill.

“[I]t’s easier to solicit the whole truth when you can hear hesitation or emotion in a person’s voice or see it on their face.” And emphasize that all comments will be completely confidential.

Help the reference avoid common biases. If you start by asking an overly general question (“What can you tell me about Carol?”), Carol’s employer will usually trot out her best characteristics – and will then feel the need to be consistent with those positive comments when answering subsequent questions.

Ask about the candidate’s social and emotional competence.

Check values and cultural fit. Will this candidate fit in and succeed in your organization and work collaboratively with you and your colleagues?

Probe for downstream qualities. Will the candidate keep learning, adapting, and growing?

“Ask for examples of situations in which the person has shown the hallmarks of potential: curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination,” says Fernández-Aráoz.

The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount, and that's that. I call this a “fixed mind-set.”

These experiments were an early indication that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success.

The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. They want to learn above all else.

During these discussions, emphasize her strengths and affinities, and do not simply focus on her weaknesses and difficulties. Express optimism about her development and her future.

Remind your child that she can indeed learn, but that she learns in a unique way that requires her to work hard and participate in classes and activities that are different from those of her peers and siblings.

Draw on learning struggles and challenges that you faced and outline the strategies you used.

Print Facebook Twitter Instagram Pinterest A parent once called my special education school to request an admissions visit for her and her son, who was struggling mightily in school. She asked a strange question in her initial phone call: “Does the school have any signs or posters displayed that identify the program as a school for kids with learning disabilities?” I asked her why she wished to know this. She replied, “My son doesn’t know that he has a learning disability, and we don’t want him to know.” He knows, Mom. Believe me, he knows.

Demystify your child’s daily struggles.

Look for and take advantage of teachable moments.

Then Project Aristotle began looking at group norms – the culture of unwritten rules that guide people when they collaborate – and hit pay dirt. It turned out that two group norms were shared by virtually all of Google’s most effective teams: -   Equal air time – In teams that got the best results, members participated roughly the same amount during meetings. “As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,” said Google researcher Anita Woolley. “But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.” -   Interpersonal sensitivity – Effective team members had the ability to intuit how colleagues felt by their tone of voice, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues. The members of less-effective teams were less tuned in to their teammates’ feelings.

The behaviors that create psychological safety – conversational turn-taking and empathy – are part of the same unwritten rules we often turn to, as individuals, when we need to establish a bond. And those human bonds matter as much at work as anywhere else. In fact, they sometimes matter more.”

In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.”

He believes there are two “ubiquitous features of conventional school environments” that trigger and reinforce the psychological factors noted above, augment the disadvantages with which minority students enter school, and feed the peer pressures to disengage from schooling – all of which creates a self-reinforcing downward spiral of achievement. The two features are: -   Students being given work that is too difficult for their current academic level; -   Students getting low grades on their work rather than frequent, individualized, objective feedback.

“The hypothesis,” say Yeh, “is that the conventional school system is inadvertently structured in a way that fosters disengagement, thereby reducing effort, which depresses achievement and grades, causing demoralization, which further reduces engagement and achievement.” The process kicks in around third grade, when struggling students begin to view themselves as intellectually inferior because their grades are lower than their classmates’, contributing to decreased self-efficacy and increasing passivity; it accelerates in middle school, at which point low grades strongly correlate with eventually dropping out.

What is to be done? Yeh’s theory is that by flipping the two pernicious factors, schools can turn the downward spiral into a virtuous upward cycle of achievement. That involves: -   Adjusting task difficulty for low-performing students to an appropriate level of challenge so that if they apply effective effort, they will be successful. -   Rapid performance feedback with respect to a standard, not other students.

He cites positive research on two programs using this approach – Reading Assessment and Math Assessment – and reports on a systematic study comparing different interventions aimed at closing the achievement gap – charter schools, voucher programs, an additional year of school, various high-quality pre-school programs, full-day kindergarten, class size reduction, value-added assessment, summer school, teacher salary incentives, teacher experience, teacher PD, longer school day, computer instruction, tutoring, and school reform. Rapid assessment is dramatically more successful at raising student achievement than any of the others.

by far the most powerful and cost-effective intervention is to adjust task difficulty and provide students with prompt, objective feedback on their efforts.

“When students engage in project-based learning over the course of their time in school,” says John Larmer (Buck Institute for Education) in this article in Educational Leadership, “there’s an accumulating effect. They feel empowered. They see that they can make a difference.” In addition, they’re more likely to acquire the skills, knowledge, and dispositions needed for college and career success.

the key elements of project-based learning, carefully planned and skillfully managed by the teacher:

A challenging problem or question

Sustained inquiry

Student voice and choice

Authenticity

Reflection

Critique and revision

Public product

four ways that project-based learning can go off the rails and not fulfill its potential: -   Mistake #1: Using materials that aren’t truly project-based; beware of PBL-lite! -   Mistake #2: Providing inadequate training and support for teachers; one-shot workshops are not enough. -   Mistake #3: Over-using projects in the curriculum; basic skills can still be taught in a more conventional format. -   Mistake #4: Implementing project-based learning on an ad hoc basis; to get the long-term effect, students need to engage in high-quality projects on a regular basis through their school years.

AltSchools encourage students to dive into topics they’re passionate about, with teachers tracking everything they do using classroom video cameras and elaborate K-8 databases. The schools make a point of shaping diverse student bodies by giving scholarships to students whose parents can’t afford the $30,000-a-year tuition.

We are raising a generation that will have the sum of human knowledge at their fingertips, for every minute of their life, so clearly education needs to change to accommodate that.”

“Basically, what we have told teachers is we have hired you for your creative teacher brains, and anytime you are doing something that doesn’t require your creative teacher brain that a computer could be doing as well as or better than you, then a computer should do it.”

To a computer measuring keystrokes, a student zoning out because he’s bored is indistinguishable from one who is moved by her book to imagine a world of her own.”

“People are very focused on the algorithm. But equally important is the quality of the materials” – the clarity of the math questions and the worthiness of the readings being presented on students’ computer screens. Willingham also notes that teachers in high-tech classrooms often have to prepare two lesson plans – one that uses the technology and one for when the technology breaks down.

Hire capable, well-matched teachers. Detailed advertisements and postings are important to giving candidates a clear idea of each position, says Clement. She also recommends longer interviews with more candidates, enlisting experienced teachers to take part in interviews, and gathering information on candidates from multiple sources.

Provide continuous professional development. This should include induction that eases new teachers into the demands of the full job – orientation before classes begin, well-matched mentors through the first five years, and ongoing PD specific to rookies’ needs.

Use colleagues to provide feedback. Traditional “gotcha” teacher evaluation has rarely been helpful in supporting new teachers, says Clement. Trained mentors can provide non-evaluative feedback that really makes a difference, perhaps with a firewall between their observations and the formal evaluation process. Of course it’s important that incoming teachers know the district’s criteria for effective teaching and are familiar with how administrators will assess their work.

Understand millennials. “This generation of teachers wants to network and have input,” says Clement. Most have a strong preference for electronic interaction, and administrators and colleagues should meet young teachers where they are tech-wise and provide strong online resources.

• Provide leadership opportunities. “While many new teachers are just surviving, others actively seek an avenue to truly make a difference,” says Clement. To find fulfillment in teaching and stay in the profession, they need to get involved in meaningful roles outside their classrooms. Some possibilities: speaking at induction ceremonies and serving on a welcome committee for the newest hires; leading book study groups; taking part in social service organizations on campus; and serving on curriculum committees

students who read about scientists’ struggles, whether intellectual or personal, got better grades in science after reading the texts. The positive effect was most pronounced among students whose science grades were low before the experiment.

Another finding: both before and after reading the texts, students who had a “growth” mindset (effort, not innate talent, determines success) tended to do better in science classes than students with a “fixed” mindset.

By age 2, children experience some moral emotions — feelings triggered by right and wrong. To reinforce caring as the right behavior, research indicates, praise is more effective than rewards.

A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities to give and share, the children were much more generous after their character had been praised than after their actions had been.

When our actions become a reflection of our character, we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices.

Tying generosity to character appears to matter most around age 8, when children may be starting to crystallize notions of identity.

When children cause harm, they typically feel one of two moral emotions: shame or guilt. Despite the common belief that these emotions are interchangeable, research led by the psychologist June Price Tangney reveals that they have very different causes and consequences.

The ashamed toddlers were avoiders; the guilty toddlers were amenders.

shame emerges when parents express anger, withdraw their love, or try to assert their power through threats of punishment: Children may begin to believe that they are bad people. Fearing this effect, some parents fail to exercise discipline at all, which can hinder the development of strong moral standards

parents raise caring children by expressing disappointment and explaining why the behavior was wrong, how it affected others, and how they can rectify the situation. This enables children to develop standards for judging their actions, feelings of empathy and responsibility for others, and a sense of moral identity, which are conducive to becoming a helpful person.

You’re a good person, even if you did a bad thing, and I know you can do better.”

If you don’t model generosity, preaching it may not help in the short run, and in the long run, preaching is less effective than giving while saying nothing at all

when it comes to producing moral children, we need to remember that action also shapes character.

Neither school leaders nor teachers have had a framework or vocabulary to examine grading and understand its inequities, to recognize the harms of century-old grading practices, and to identify and implement more inclusive and accurate grading.

Our current grading practices were created during the Industrial Revolution, shaped by our country’s early 20th-century cultural dynamics and demographics, and founded on beliefs about teaching, learning, and human potential that have since been thoroughly debunked and disproven.

we believed that humans were effectively motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments—think rats taught to pull a lever by offering pellets or electrifying the cage floor—a belief that underlies teachers’ constant use of “points” to incentivize (and some might say control) student behaviors, such as coming on time to class or completing homework.

intrinsic motivation—the kind of motivation that generates creative thinking and fuels effective learning—is undermined by extrinsic rewards and punishments. In other words, our continued use of points to motivate students is demotivating them from learning.

Teachers also frequently use mathematical calculations that hide student growth and handicap students who struggle.

Averaging his performance doesn’t accurately describe his skills, and it hides all his growth and improvement.

She then sent an open invitation to any teacher who wanted to dig deeper into grading—to research, examine, and imagine ways to align grading to the school’s vision for progressive and equitable education.

Homework can be an important element of learning, but when teachers include students’ performance on that homework in the grade, they incorporate an institutional bias that rewards students with resources and impedes students without resources, effectively replicating intergenerational disparities of race and income.

Teachers use points to evaluate every action or assignment in a class, which creates pressure-cooker classrooms where no accomplishment goes unrewarded and no mistake goes unpenalized.

Effective teacher-student relationships require the opposite: a space to take risks without penalty, to disclose weaknesses without being judged, to feel safe simply knowing that you don’t have to perform perfectly every moment.

But, as many parents, teachers, and school administrators are frequently stunned to learn, many common grading practices are outdated, inaccurate, and undermine student success. In fact, many grading policies—which appear to be an objective, fair, and accurate method to describe a student’s academic performance—often increase achievement gaps by infusing grades with teachers’ implicit biases or by rewarding or punishing students based on their families’ resources.

For example, if homework is indeed an opportunity for students to practice and to make mistakes, then we can’t include their performance on that homework in their grade.

I expect you to take risks and make mistakes and to share with me your academic confusion and weaknesses without fear that your grade will be lowered because of those mistakes.

tracking each earned or forfeited point for every activity or behavior reduces teachers to point-tabulators and accountants rather than supportive mentors and guides for students’ paths to success.

the way teachers graded often contradicted the school’s commitment to academic excellence as well as equity.

Our traditional practice of grading everything students do inadvertently sows distrust, shame, and deceit—which leads to students copying homework to earn points, not suggesting an answer if it might be wrong, rote note-taking only for the notebook check—thereby weakening the teacher-student relationship qualities that support learning.

grades must be accurate, validly reflecting a student’s academic performance; bias-resistant, preventing our implicit biases and subjectivity from infecting grades; and motivational, helping students strive for academic success, persevere, accept struggles and setbacks, and gain critical life skills.

This pilot group was also trained to use more equitable grading practices, which include employing a 0–4 point scale rather than a 0–100 percentage, incorporating retakes and redos, and ensuring that grades indicate how well students actually master subject matter than whether students’ behavior or work habits gain their subjective approval.

Students were less anxious and classroom environments felt more relaxed and supportive of learning, and grade inflation decreased because teachers no longer padded grades with points for participation or homework completion.

The teachers continue to track students’ participation and homework, but have expanded how they give feedback on those nonacademic skills: for example, with student conferences or separate reports and calls to parents. The school’s grades give more accurate information about where students are in their learning, and Previna and some teachers are beginning to imagine how their report card could communicate student achievement more accurately and equitably as well.

If we can improve how we grade, we will leverage significant improvements in every aspect of teaching and learning as well as our school cultures.

The rate of students receiving As decreases, and it decreases more dramatically for students from more resourced families. Grades are no longer rewarding students for just “doing school,” which disproportionately benefits students with more privilege, but grades instead reflect students’ actual academic performance. At the same time, the rate of students receiving Ds and Fs decreases, and does so more dramatically for vulnerable and historically underserved students (African–Americans, Hispanics, and students from low-income families). Grades are less susceptible to teachers’ biases and no longer filter students for privilege. There is a statistically significant increase in the correlation between students’ teacher-assigned grades and standardized assessment scores, suggesting that teachers’ grades more accurately describe their students’ performance. This correlation is particularly strengthened for students from lower-income families, suggesting that those students were more likely to have their performance misrepresented by traditional grading practices. Teachers and students report less stressful classrooms and stronger student-teacher relationships. Teachers find that learning and implementing these grading practices improves their work as educators and has led to improved student learning.

By not correcting grading practices, schools risk undermining other initiatives aimed at improving equity and make our schools less inclusive and supportive of every student.

In short, every child starts out with a natural interest in art, but for most it is slowly drained away until all that’s left is a handful of teens in eyeliner and black clothing whose parents worry they’ll never move out of the basement.”

As of 2015, only 26.2 percent of African-American students have access to art classes.

Gregory has a startling suggestion: take the “art” out of art education and replace it with creativity education. Why? Because creativity is something that almost everyone agrees is vital to success.

We need to make sure that the kids of today (who will need to be the creative problem solvers of tomorrow) realize their creative potential and have the tools to use it.

A total of 21 percent of students said they had been bullied in the following ways: 13 percent made fun of, called names, or insulted; 12 percent subject of rumors; 5 percent pushed, shoved, tripped, or spat on; 4 percent threatened with harm; 5 percent purposefully excluded from activities; 2.5 percent told to do things they didn’t want to do; and 2 percent had their property purposefully destroyed. Girls reported more online harassment (16 percent) than boys (6 percent). These were the locations where students said the bullying occurred: -   42 percent in hallways or stairwells (similar for boys and girls); -   34 percent in classrooms (perhaps mainly during entry, transitions, and exit); -   22 percent in cafeterias; -   19 percent outside on school grounds; -   12 percent online or by text; -   10 percent on school buses; -   9 percent in bathrooms/locker rooms.

hallways and stairwells, taken together, are nearly twice as likely to be the source of the problem as the cafeteria, playground, or buses and bathrooms. Supervision and vigilance in those fluid spaces between classes is likely to benefit vulnerable students disproportionately.”

dance, gesture, and other forms of movement can improve motivation, engagement, and learning.

students in classrooms that integrated movement were “significantly more excited by, engaged in, and focused on the lessons” than they were with conventional teaching methods.

Dancing to memorize information

Moving among stations

Applying movement to assessments

Forming lines, rows, or other groupings – Each student gets a card with a punctuation mark or a word and students silently arrange themselves to form a complete sentence.

Representing terms or ideas with actions – After reading a book about emotions, students stand and act out furious, satisfied, courageous, and other words.

– The teacher gives each group of students sets of fraction cards and they take turns moving to another group in search of equivalent fractions, bringing possible matches back to their group to see if they’re correct.

– To test knowledge of synonyms and antonyms, pairs of students jump straight up and down three times, then choose to land on either their right or left foot; if both land on the same foot, they must come up with synonyms for a word on the board; if they land on opposite feet, they must name antonyms.

– Doing a dance skip-counting numbers (5, 10, 15, 20…) to the “Macarena.”

Many teachers assigned tasks with complex instructions and procedures, but little higher-level thinking was required of students

How many of these do schools teach? Just three, say the authors, even in schools where students get high state test scores: application, recall, and (sometimes) analysis.

a synthesis of the skills they believe adults need for successful lives: Cognitive skills: -   Recall -   Application -   Analysis -   Evaluation -   Creative thinking Interpersonal skills: -   Communication -   Cooperation -   Empathy -   Trust building -   Service orientation -   Conflict resolution -   Negotiation -   Responsibility -   Assertiveness -   Advocacy Intrapersonal skills: -   Flexibility -   Adaptability -   Appreciation of diversity -   Valuing learning -   Cultural appreciation -   Curiosity -   Forethought -   Self-regulation -   Self-monitoring -   Self-evaluation

Most teachers presented students with complex content, but the tasks students were asked to perform were simple recall and application

interpersonal and intrapersonal skills almost never showed up.

These exceptional instructors created “a harmonious environment,” say the researchers, “demonstrating an understanding that doing so is a prerequisite to academic learning.”

It was the teacher, not the subject. This level of intellectual and affective demand cropped up in different subjects, grades, and classes with different student achievement levels. The variable was the teacher.

In a 10th-grade honors humanities class, for example, students were asked to invent questions to guide their study of Western imperialism in China (having just finished a unit on the colonization of Africa). Guided by the teacher, students brainstormed possible questions, decided which were most important, and edited questions until the questions were intellectually stimulating and open-ended.

These outliers managed to weave rigorous instruction of content across the cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal domains, putting to rest the notion that content- and skill-focused instruction precludes higher-order thinking – and vice-versa.

Teachers adapted their teaching to the moment.

to teach a deep and broad range of skills while also addressing disciplinary knowledge – requires intelligence and years of practice.”

Instruction was tied to complex assessments. Often designed by the teachers themselves, these checks for understanding stood in contrast to the test-prep oriented assessments in other classrooms.

Teachers built strong relationships with students.

First, Nehring, Charner-Laird, and Szczesiul suggest that schools need complex, high-level assessments to make all classrooms accountable for teaching the full range of adult skills. Second, “excellence requires highly skilled teachers with finely tuned radar and improvisational ability.” And third, “good teaching is about caring relationships, a parental affection that gives and receives, that honors the fundamentally human nature of our work as educators.

Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) stresses the importance of professional development starting with clear outcomes.

Polly details the 5E approach, in which students spend most of a lesson exploring mathematical tasks with limited support from the teacher, and some students get individual or small-group support: -   Engage – The class is given a math task or activity. -   Explore – Students have time to work on the task with their partner or a small group, with the teacher giving only instructions and circulating, sometimes posing questions to support students’ exploration. -   Explain – The class comes together to discuss the problem and how different students solved it. The teacher facilitates the discussion, perhaps choosing a main focus based on what was observed during the work time, and provides direct instruction as needed. -   Elaborate/extend – For the rest of the class, the teacher gets students working on activities, math games, and small-group activities that deepen understanding of the concept and zeros in on students who seem confused or off track. -   Evaluate – Students solve a final task or participate in a discussion of concepts, allowing the teacher to assess learning and plan for future lessons.

“Looking beyond the intended goals to the broader array of possible outcomes is an important aspect of evaluation and vital to judging effectiveness,”

What sparks robust discussions in PLCs is looking at variations in students’ responses to individual items on common assessments and writing prompts.

“The primary purpose of this collaborative data analysis,” says Guskey, “is to guide these teachers’ professional learning experiences so they can improve the quality of their instruction and help all students learn well.”

One additional cautionary note: PLCs tend to jump into “debating new ideas, techniques, innovations, programs, and instructional issues,” says Guskey. “While these are important issues, we must remember that they are means to an important end that must be determined first. Our journey always begins by deciding our destination… Ninety percent of essential questions in any evaluation are addressed in the planning process, before the journey begins.”

“When a teacher models and provides direct instruction at the start of a lesson, it rarely enables students to explore mathematical tasks or engage in productive struggle,” says Drew Polly (University of North Carolina/Charlotte) in this article in Teaching Children Mathematics.

researchers have found that if students grapple with a task before the teacher explains and models it (and receive appropriate follow-up), they’re more engaged and learn better.

What student learning outcomes do we aim to accomplish? -   What evidence will tell us if we met the goal? (ideally more than one source of data) -   What unintended consequences might occur, positive or negative?

“[T]he size of a person’s vocabulary is one of the strongest predictors of his or her reading comprehension,” say Tanya Wright (Michigan State University/East Lansing) and Gina Cervetti ((University of Michigan/Ann Arbor) in this article in Reading Research Quarterly.

Students who enter school knowing fewer words are likely to continue with relatively small vocabularies and struggle with text comprehension throughout school. Students who start with larger vocabularies, on the other hand, have broader general knowledge, need to spend less time accessing memory of words (which frees up working memory to grasp the meaning of a text), read and enjoy their reading more, and build stronger vocabularies – a reciprocal relationship that tends to widen the achievement gap.

Teaching word meanings almost always improved comprehension of texts containing the words taught. • Teaching word meanings doesn’t seem to improve comprehension of texts that don’t contain the target words.             • Instruction involving students in some active processing was more effective than dictionary and definition work at improving comprehension of texts containing the words taught. One caveat: researchers don’t know how much active processing is enough.             • Teaching one or two strategies (e.g., context clues or morphology) for solving word meanings doesn’t seem to improve generalized reading comprehension.