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we keep talking about the 21st century skills our students need to acquire. One day soon, I trust someone will come up with a new way to reference these skills that does not connect them to the century in which we live. Someone might simply and boldly state that these are just 'skills’ which every educated person needs to own in order to be a productive member of society.

With each unit of study, I made sure to incorporate an active simulation, ranging from mock press conferences and trials to murder mysteries and dinner parties, from spy dilemmas to mock Survivor games.

When a student adopted that character's thinking and point of view in one of the simulations, passion and purpose soared.

Even the quietest, most introverted student, given the opportunity to play a personality from history, can step up and into the opportunity to speak from that person's perspective

I generally keep an agenda for my training sessions and then make sure that I provide a brief video highlighting each topic.

I provide the teachers with a playlist highlighting the more advanced tools, such as widgets, embedding videos, and inputting a variety of multimedia.

By providing faculty with additional tools and information that may be more challenging, they have the option to accelerate their professional development according to their comfort level and individual needs.

Note that I'm using the term "facilitator" to mean the person who plans and designs agendas as well as who guides a team through processes outlined on an agenda

The purpose of the meeting and desired outcomes are articulated and connected to the school's vision, mission, and big goals

a variety of structures or protocols to meet the desired outcomes.

more than 35 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on “process” (consisting of personal effort and effective strategies) rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.

Why do some students give up when they encounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn? One answer, I soon discovered, lay in people's beliefs about why they had failed.

Technology is tempting to embed in the classroom en masse. It piques kids’ interests and it is fun to explore. But does it lead to achievement and help students grow as learners? We need to ask ourselves these types of questions if we want to realize the impact that connected education can have on students

Sherry Turkle, a scientist from MIT, found that empathy can be reduced by up to 40% in college students when they prioritize online relationships over in person conversations (Turkle, 2015).

Reasons include more distractions on a screen, such as multimedia enhancements and advertisements, and the “difficulty to see any one passage in the context of the entire text” (Jabr, 2013). These factors can lead to decreased comprehension and understanding.

It’s never too early to learn smart strategies to focus in on priorities and tune out what’s not immediately necessary.

Neuroscience has shown that multitasking — the process of doing more than one thing at the same time — doesn’t exist.

Multitasking is also stressful for the body. When people try to do several things at once, like drive and text, the brain uses up oxygenated glucose at a much faster rate and releases the stress hormone cortisol.

The most effective creative process alternates between time in groups, collaboration, interaction, and conversation... [and] times of solitude, where something different happens cognitively in your brain,

Unequal participation is perhaps the most common complaint about group work.

a handful of practices that educators use to promote equal participation. These involve setting out clear expectations for group work, increasing accountability among participants, and nurturing a productive group work dynamic.

if these children want to attend an elite college, their best bet by far is to spend their adolescence in a school where the experience of being Black is, for many, a painful one.

Among the posts from more recent students, what’s striking is that several kinds of experiences were related over and over: the expectation that Black kids would be excellent athletes (and possibly weaker students); insulting assumptions about Black students’ family backgrounds; teachers repeatedly confusing the names of Black students; other students constantly reaching out and touching Black girls’ hair; and non-Black students using the N‑word. Read collectively, these posts are a damning statement about the schools.

Private-school parents have become so terrified of being called out as racists that they will say nothing on the record about their feelings regarding their schools’ sudden embrace of new practices. They have chosen, instead, anonymous letters and press leaks.

Every person of color has a similar story where an elder takes time to talk about the way their physical appearance is interpreted by white people. Do white people talk about how to make themselves appear more culturally aware in interviews?

Every time a white teacher says, “I don’t see color,” you abandon a child in an educational void by refusing to recognize them for who they are. Additionally you fail to prepare them to enter a world who will see their color as a factor to their success and abilities.