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Among the formats successful for this purpose are songwriting, choreography, and artistic renditions such as painting, sculpture, collage, and graphic art.

Other formats that cross over disciplines include comic books/graphic novels and documentary making

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.

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.

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.

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?’”

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.

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

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.

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

“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.”

What can be done to bring more students into the mainstream and alleviate feelings of marginalization?

If the first message that students get about their work is what is wrong or how it is deficient, they are less likely to invest themselves in revision, and less likely to work hard in the future.

If students hear what is interesting, special, or unique about their work, they will more likely be open to suggestions for improvement.

Create rituals that help everyone laugh and be willing to pause the action to appreciate each other. Congratulate a class when they complete a large project.

When Keltner works with up-and-coming executives, he counsels them to remember and repeat the virtuous behaviors that helped them rise in the first place and develop three essential practices: empathy, gratitude, and generosity.

The alternative mindset is that people can grow professionally and managers can change the way people perform through effective coaching, management, and intrinsic rewards like personal development and making a difference.

“From Silicon Valley to New York, and in offices across the world, firms are replacing annual reviews with frequent, informal check-ins between managers and employees.”

One observer called the traditional performance evaluation a “rite of corporate kabuki” that restricted creativity, generated mountains of paperwork, and served no real purpose. It was also an incentive to put off bad news until the end of the year, at which point both manager and employee may have forgotten what the problem was.

There’s one more reason: once-a-year reviews focus on past performance rather than encouraging current work and grooming talent for the future.

employees, especially recent college graduates, learn faster from frequent, detailed feedback from mentors and superiors. Second, companies realized they needed to be agile to survive and thrive in the competitive, ever-changing marketplace and real-time performance monitoring and feedback led to more rapid adaptations. And third, managers saw that teamwork was key to innovation and productivity and moving from forced annual ranking to frequent individual accountability was more conducive to teamwork and better results.

Studies of the workplace show that the time employees spend helping others is as important to their evaluations and chances of promotion as how they do their jobs. And Grant’s own research on “givers” (who enjoy helping others) and “takers” (who are focused on coming out ahead) shows that givers consistently achieve better results.

on the most difficult part of his exams – the multiple choice section – if a student was unsure of an question, he or she wrote down the name of another student who might know the answer – like asking for a lifeline on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” If the classmate had it right, they both earned points; one person’s success also benefited a classmate. Grant reports that this made a big difference – more students joined study groups, the groups pooled their knowledge, and the class’s average score went up 2 percentage points compared to the previous year. Why? Because one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else, and that’s what was going on in the groups.

There was something else going on in the lifeline idea: transactive memory, or knowing who knows best and taking advantage of their knowledge. It’s easier to get help if you know where to look.

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Ellen Boucher (Amherst College) says the “pressure of perfection” is causing lots of stress for students in their teens and twenties, contributing to the rising suicide rate in this age bracket.

The burden of multiple obligations can seem insurmountable.”

Sociologists have shown that students from less-privileged backgrounds often have trouble understanding the unwritten rules of college life – the so-called hidden curriculum… [A]sking a professor for an extension doesn’t always come naturally. It might not even occur to them as an option.”

all students can elect to take a two-day grace period on any paper, with no questions asked.

“Since changing my policy, I’ve seen higher-quality work, less anxiety, and fewer cases of burnout.

Rebrand. A more inviting name for these perennial meetings is “progress conferences.” This is more positive and doesn’t seem to exclude foster parents and guardians.

Finesse the childcare issue. “To pay a babysitter to watch your three younger siblings so a parent can attend a conference is not going to happen,” says Ohio high-school teacher Allison Ricket. She invites parents to bring along other children and provides crayons and paper in an area at the back of her classroom where they can entertain themselves during conferences.

Accommodate. Some parents need an interpreter (children shouldn’t be asked to translate) and support with disabilities.

Change the dynamic. It makes a difference if a teacher sits side by side with family members and doesn’t hold a clipboard or pad of paper; open hands suggest an open mind.

Involve students. Progress conferences are much more helpful when students are at the table reporting on their progress, challenges, and goals. Advisory group meetings focus on preparing students to lead parent conferences and lobby their parents to attend.

• Listen. “Parents usually come in having an idea of what they want to talk about, so I like to be open and ready for whatever they need,” says Ricket. Although she has students’ grades and portfolios on hand, she lets parents go first and is careful to empathize with any concerns they have.

“mathematics is better taught when everyone shares in consistent language, symbols and notation, models and schema, and rules that support developing learners. The idea behind this comprehensive agreement is not unlike a schoolwide behavior management policy – whereby children hear the same phrases, share identical expectations, and experience practices that are common and consistent year after year across classrooms and throughout the school.”

Language – Moving from less conceptual language – borrowing, carrying, reducing fractions, the “Ring around the Rosie” property – to more mathematically appropriate language – regrouping, simplifying fractions to the lowest terms.

Symbols and notation – For example, writing fractions with a slanted bar 3/8 may confuse students who think the bar is the numeral 1 and think it’s 318.

Models and schema

Number lines or graphics should be consistent through the grades, for example, a graphic showing two parts next to one whole.

Rules

“This unified approach is particularly helpful for students who struggle,” conclude Karp, Bush, and Dougherty, “as it provides a recognizable component to new content. Additionally, all learners in a school can make connections among ideas in a unified and collaborative culture that promotes stronger learning in mathematics.”

something about writing things down excites the brain, brain imaging studies show.

laptop note-takers tested immediately after a class could recall more of a lecture and performed slightly better than their pen-pushing classmates when tested on facts presented in class.

Any advantage, though, is temporary. After just 24 hours, the computer note takers typically forgot material they’ve transcribed, several studies said. Nor were their copious notes much help in refreshing their memory because they were so superficial.

those who took notes by hand could remember the lecture material longer and had a better grip on concepts presented in class, even a week later. The process of taking them down encoded the information more deeply in memory, experts said. Longhand notes also were better for review because they’re more organized.

The problem is a typist’s tendency to take verbatim notes. “Ironically, the very feature that makes laptop note-taking so appealing—the ability to take notes more quickly—was what undermined learning,” said Dr. Kiewra.

consider Werberger's questions for thinking about final products: Will students love what they have created? Where will this go when it's done? Will it make the world a better or more beautiful place?

As a resource to help with your own project remodeling, think about the teaching and learning strategies you notice in the film, such as Socratic seminars, authentic deadlines, and an emphasis on public exhibitions. Do you see ideas you might want to borrow to improve your next project?

How will your next project help students learn to think more analytically and creatively to design solutions to complex problems? How might you remodel a project to help students get better at monitoring and directing their own learning?

Theorists from Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi to Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori have argued that students should learn by playing and following their curiosity.

The study found that when the subjects controlled their own observations, they exhibited more coordination between the hippocampus and other parts of the brain involved in learning and posted a 23 percent improvement in their ability to remember objects. “The bottom line is, if you’re not the one who’s controlling your learning, you’re not going to learn as well,” says lead researcher Joel Voss, now a neuroscientist at Northwestern University.

A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a problem.

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.

15. Did I take advantage of spontaneous learning opportunities when students’ interests had obviously shifted, or did I maintain an inflexible mindset and vow to never deviate from an archaic lesson plan?

17. Was our class set up to promote creativity and collaboration or memorization and silence?

19. Were 21st Century skills embedded within daily assignments?

22. Did I gain professional wisdom by speaking to my collegial mentor?

25. Did I avoid professional negativity by declining to gossip at work?

24. Was the technology in my classroom used in an authentic manner? (Shannon Reed)

26. Did I manage my stress level by enjoying time with my family and friends, by exercising several times a week, by zoning out while engaged in a hobby, and by simply chilling out every once in a while?

28. Did I laugh often with students and colleagues?

31. Did I allow students to co-write their own project-based, learning contracts?

34. How many colleagues did I observe in-action in their classrooms this past school year?

did I remember the names of all co-workers?

39. How balanced were the assignments this year in terms of requiring creativity, practical thinking, and analysis? (Adam Johnson)

40. Did I participate in a professional learning community outside of my school via Twitter?

46. Did I consistently blog as a form of professional self-reflection?

47. Am I a stronger teacher today than when I first stepped into the classroom at the beginning of the school year?

Maker projects, however, are not intended to substitute as STEM programs. They frequently accomplish Criteria #2 and #3 and touch on other criteria to some degree. But their goals and focus differ from STEM.

“This requires slowing down, checking to be sure we understand correctly, and sharing back what we hear.”

Meeting anger or frustration with genuine, compassionate interest builds trust.

Changing course based on input is a sign of integrity, not weakness.”

A key value she worked to communicated was about listening to dissent and changing course if necessary.

Fiarman found that making quick visits to classrooms every day communicated respect and made her far more knowledgeable about instruction.

it engenders trust when your boss can speak to the specifics of your work.”

for practice to be an effective tool for improvement, students need to be pushing the limits of current performance and getting continuous feedback – very difficult to orchestrate for 30 students working in their bedrooms. Second, as soon as teachers give grades for practice work, the incentive is for students to play it safe and not push into challenging or unknown territory.

Here are their ideas on making feedback less threatening and more productive:             • Separate coaching from evaluation.

“Coaching sessions should include no rubric scoring or other evaluations,”

Be thoughtful about receiving criticism. “The person getting the feedback has the power to decide whether it’s on target, fair, or helpful,” say the authors, “and to decide whether to use the feedback or dismiss it.”

When feedback rubs you the wrong way, it’s also important to dig deeper to understand what’s really going.

Be noisy about the importance of improving your school’s feedback culture – for students, for teachers, for parents, and for yourself.”

In this article in All Things PLC, consultant/author Douglas Reeves confronts these widely espoused misconceptions about grading:

if grades were effective motivators, homework completion, classroom engagement, and overall diligence would be sky-high. Not so!

“Asking such questions helps me counteract my unconscious bias,” says Fiarman. “Recognizing the pervasiveness of bias is an important first step. Acknowledging that I might make mistakes because of this bias – then actively working to counter it – builds trust.”

the only feedback that matters is that the work was finished on time and correctly.

it’s unfair and demotivating for students to have their final grade pulled down for practice work.

Myth #3: Grades drive future performance. True, there’s a correlation between good grades and college success, and between poor grades and dropping out of school, but Reeves questions whether grades cause success and failure.

While it is possible that intelligence and work ethic forge the path from kindergarten to Ivy League and Wall Street, it is also possible that zip code, tutors, and connections – all artifacts of family socioeconomic status – are the underlying causes.”

Teachers giving zeros for missed assignments and refusing to accept late work lets students off the hook – and starts a spiral of doom with their final grades.

Averaging grades through a semester punishes students for early failures versus rewarding them for using early problems to improve final performance.

“Rather than using the last two months of the semester to build momentum and finish strong,” says Reeves, “because of a punitive grading system, they are doomed to failure well before the semester is over. There is nothing left for them to do except cut class, be disruptive, or ultimately, quit school.”

“grading policies are matters of equity, with disparate impacts on students, particularly based on ethnicity and gender. Boys and minority males receive lower grades just as they are more likely to be more severely disciplined for an infraction. Girls receive higher grades for the same level of proficiency. If racial and gender disparities of this sort took place in any other area of public life, the consequences would be swift and sure.”

Instead, he suggests replacing each statement of fact – Punishment deters unwanted behavior – with a testable hypothesis – If I penalize students for late, incomplete, and absent homework, then student achievement will improve – and conducting real-time experiments within the school.

He’s found that non-evaluative comments are “easy to receive, easy to give, and easy to act on.”

Teaching sentence stems can be helpful: I’m not sure I understand the opening of this piece… I’m not sure why you did this; can you explain it more?

Be specific.

Prior to peer feedback, the teacher should introduce a rubric and lead the class in a group critique of an exemplar paper, focusing on suggestions that will make a difference.

The teacher might also display samples of feedback statements and have students break into groups and rank them from helpful to unhelpful, taking note of sentence starters and phrases they can use in their own feedback conversations.

Be timely. One of the greatest advantages of well-orchestrated peer feedback is that students can get comments on their work immediately, rather than waiting days, perhaps weeks, for the teacher to wade through piles of papers.

“Unfortunately,” Eden concludes, “by second-guessing teachers’ judgments about how to maintain order, policymakers and district administrators are likely harming the education of many millions of well-behaved students in an effort to help the misbehaving few.”

“[T]hey are encouraged more than ever to present themselves as ‘sexy’ – not about being attractive or beautiful, but a very narrow, commercialized idea of sexy. What’s particularly complicated is they’re sold that idea [of sexiness] as being a source of personal power. There is a complete disconnect between that image of sexiness and an understanding of their bodies, their own wants, needs, desires, and limits, what those might be, having those respected.”

young women “are almost conditioned, starting in middle school, to have their bodies publicly commented on by young men, [and] they don’t think they have any power to really stop it.” In schools, she says, the “everyday chipping away of girls’ self-worth by reducing them to their bodies is completely ignored.”

We tend to silo conversations about sex as if it is not about the same values of compassion, kindness, respect, mutuality, and caring that we want our children to embody in every other aspect of their lives.”

The Internet – “Unfortunately,” says Orenstein, “the first thing kids Google is porn. The average age that kids today are exposed to porn, either intentionally or not, is 11. We have to ask what it means that kids are learning about sex from that realm before they’ve even had their first kiss and how that’s shaping them, their attitudes toward sexuality, and their expectations of sex.” Parents and schools need to explicitly teach kids to apply a critical lens to what they’re seeing, and shape values that will help them safely and wisely navigate this very challenging era.

“If you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.” He quotes education-to-work expert Heather McGowan: “Stop asking a young person WHAT you want to be when you grow up. It freezes their identity into a job that may not be there. Ask them HOW you want to be when you grow up. Having an agile learning mind-set will be the new skill set of the 21st century.”