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community including students, teachers and families. For our teachers, it was an especially emotional transition.

Any change in a school’s daily schedule impacts the entire school

One of the most enjoyable parts of our journey was when we piloted the new schedule for a week in February 2018, seven months before our permanent launch date. While this pilot highlighted some of the schedule’s flaws, it also assured those who were not yet on board that this was a good move.

Teachers have reported that longer class periods are elevating the use of multiple modality instruction and allow now students time to go deeper into discussions and projects, or even begin homework during class time.

ence of learning to rethink their daily schedule is truly the next frontier.

I never heard anyone of them say “we love our daily schedule.” For many school leaders, leveraging research in the sc

It has been emotional, and it is a process that makes school systems, administrators, teachers, students and parents think deeply about their priorities and what student-centered truly means. But it is worth it because we now know more about how the brain learns, works, thrives and changes, and we can use that understanding to create a daily schedule that allows each student to be more challenged, creative, healthy and engaged.

increased competition to get into college meant well-off parents began heavily scheduling their kids’ after-school lives.

What time allotment will be given to the project? Will this project be conducted during the entire school day or during dedicated blocks of time? How many days will be devoted to the project?

Also, allow students to go in new directions, but guide them when they appear to digress from the project.

Facilitate the process and the love of learning. Teach the students how to work collaboratively. Designate fluid roles for group members. Have students choose their primary roles, but assume responsibility and interactivity for all group roles. Remind them that every part of the process belongs to each individual and needs each student's total involvement. Provide resources and guidance. Assess the process by creating team and project rubrics.

Team rubrics state the expectations of each team member: Watch the group dynamics. How well are the members participating? How engaged are they in the process? Assess the outcome. Project rubrics, on the other hand, ask these questions: What is required for project completion? What is the final product: A document? A multimedia presentation? A poster? A combination of products? What does a good report, multimedia presentation, poster, or other product look like? Make the requirements clear to the students so they can all meet with success.

Discovery Education (13) offers a great resource; a collection of assessment rubrics and graphic organizers (14) that may be helpful to you as you create your own.

When a student's assessment and the teacher's assessment don't agree, schedule a student-teacher conference to let the student explain in more detail his or her understanding of the content and justify the outcome.

devise a plan that will integrate as many subjects as possible into the project.

Rather than trying to do everything at the same time, the most productive people prioritize and block off their schedules to focus on one task at a time.

the basic principle of focusing in on one task at a time holds true for anyone.

“When they’re doing something, they’re really doing it,” Levitin said. “They get more done because their brain isn’t half somewhere else.”

“People who take regular breaks — and naps even — end up being more productive and more creative in their work,” Levitin said.

“You need to give your brain time to consolidate all the information that’s come in, to toss it and turn it.”

The brain has a natural way of giving itself a break — it’s called daydreaming. “It allows you to refresh and release all those neural circuits that get all bound up when you’re focused,”

“Children shouldn’t be overly scheduled,” Levitin said. “They should have blocks of time to promote spontaneity and creativity.”

Daydreaming and playing are crucial to develop the kind of creativity many say should be a focal point of a modern education system.

The world has changed much more quickly than the genome can keep up with, which means schools have a responsibility to help kids develop the skills to sift through the overwhelming stimuli.

It can be hard to focus on one thing when there’s a long, nagging list of things that need to get done in a day, both personal and professional. Levitin recommends writing all those things down on notecards, externalizing the memories into digestible bits that can be shuffled as priorities change. “My brain knows I’ve written it down and it stops nagging me,” Levitin said of his method.

he hyperactive child might be able to help develop a more creative set of ideas, while the more focused child knows how to take that idea

to fruition.

because poor districts had lost more ground, their progress was not nearly enough to outpace wealthier districts, widening the gulf between them.

“We seemed to have lost the urgency in this crisis,” said Karyn Lewis, who has studied pandemic learning declines for NWEA, a research and student assessment group. “It is problematic for the average kid.

“But it’s an unevenly felt recovery,” Professor Reardon said, “so the worry there is that means inequality is getting baked in.”

When looking at data available in 15 states, researchers found that in a given district — poor or rich — children across backgrounds lost similar ground, but students from richer families recovered faster.

Even when schools offered interventions to help students catch up, lower-income families might have been less able to rearrange schedules or transportation to ensure their children attended. (This is one reason experts advise scheduling tutoring during the school day, not after.)

Take Massachusetts, which has some of the nation’s best math and reading scores, but wide inequality. The recovery there was led by wealthier districts. Test scores for students in poor districts have shown little improvement, and in some cases, kept falling, leaving Massachusetts with one of the largest increases in the achievement gap.

In states like Kentucky and Tennessee that have traditionally had more middling test scores, but with less inequality, poor students have recovered remarkably well.

Self-determination Theory (SDT) as described by Ryan & Deci (2000) and as discussed in Daniel Pink’s (2009) work on motivation reveals three drives that help us engage and maintain enthusiasm. Autonomy or a sense of control is a part of this triad and although we may not be able to decide which tasks we complete or not we can probably determine the order they are approached. Scheduling tasks which give us a boost of energy early in the day might help us move through the challenging middle period while finishing with a task we enjoy can be a positive ending. Putting off the tasks we enjoy least, those which offer the leas rewards until the end of the day is a recipe for disaster.

The other two drives identified by SDT are purpose and mastery. These too are linked to time and shape our perception of a task as a positive or negative experience. The perceived purpose of a task, the degree to which a task is important to us, the intrinsic enjoyment that a task has play an important part in how we value the time we spend on it. If a task is closely connected to our core purposes it is likely to be valued and time spent on is hardly noticed.

Within SDT the desire to master a task is the third drive. Mastery in most instances takes time and situations which prevent us from achieving mastery can lead to negative feelings. Being realistic with our mastery goals and recognising that true mastery is only achieved after significant time may reduce feeling of anxiety when confronted by situations where mastery is the goal but success is difficult to achieve.

His time management matrix shows a correlation between a task's perceived importance and its urgency with tasks deemed important but not-urgent being the ones which allow us to produce our best work. This concept is similar to the idea of wait time or thinking time and the ideas are linked together in Ritchhart’s writing.

Collaborative planning, reflection, problem identification and solution are areas that demand our best thinking but are not always given the time they demand. What this reveals is that the problem many schools face is not one of quantity of time but rather allocation of time.

By talking about how we use time, where we need more time, how we may better distribute our use of time to signal importance and provide opportunities for students and teachers to achieve their best with the time they have we begin to move things forward. Being open to new solutions, breaking with tradition and valuing time as we value money are steps towards a better model for time management in schools, one that has benefits for all.

For emails that will take longer than two minutes to read or respond to, schedule time on your calendar, or add this as an action on your To-Do List , to do later. Most email programs allow you to highlight, flag, or star messages that need a response, so utilize this handy feature whenever you can.

Gmail, allow you to establish "Rules" that sort email into a particular folder as soon as it comes in.

If you regularly receive email such as newsletters, blogs and article feeds, you could re-route these to another email address, or use rules, so that they're instantly delivered to a particular folder.

For instance, if certain team members regularly send you long, drawn-out emails, let them know. Tell them gently but firmly that because of the demand on your time, you'd appreciate emails no longer than a paragraph or two. Anything longer than that should warrant a phone call. Alternatively, they could drop by your office for a discussion.

Angela Duckworth (1), an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, studied (among others) the performance of West Point cadets during basic training. She discovered that the most powerful predictor of success -- acceptance into the academy -- was grit. Duckworth calls grit "the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals."

Every Friday, my students cap a week of learning with self-rating journal entries like "Something New I Learned" or "This Week's Memorable Moment." To test their grit, I've added a new prompt: "Something I Struggled With."

Finally, create a forum for class-wide discussion about grit at community meetings. These are scheduled, relaxed opportunities for students to sound off on issues affecting their class and their world

hould we ever stymie collaboration among our students? We live in a collaborative world. It is rare in a job, let alone life, that individuals work in complete isolation – with lack of assistance or contributions from anyone else. Perhaps as educators, it’s time to reassess how we want students to work.

what if we incorporated collaboration into our lessons and our assessments?

Using tools such as Google Drive, students can more easily collaborate across distances and with conflicting schedules. Better yet for me as their teacher, I can actually view their collaborative efforts using the “revision history” function of Google Drive (Go to File → See Revision History). This allows me to see who contributed what and when. This way, I can track not only quality, but quantity.

We have all heard students complain that a member of the group has “contributed nothing.” Now there is a method to verify and follow up this complaint.

If you can Google the answer, how good is the question?

Perhaps instead of focusing our concerns on technology as a wonderful aid to plagiarizers, we should focus on its ability to foster creativity and collaboration, and then ask ourselves (we are the clever adults here) how we can incorporate those elements into our formalized assessments.

Unfortunately, yes, there will always be those students who want to cut corners, find the easy way, and cheat to get out of having to do the hard work. (See my post on combating plagiarism.) But a significant majority of students are inherently inquisitive: they want to learn and do better by engaging and thinking, not memorizing and fact checking. It’s up to us to appeal to that inquisitiveness.

Step 4: Evaluate Your Goal

Step 5: Find the Habits to Achieve Your Goal

Step 6: Assess Time Needed for Specific Habits

Step 7: Calendar Your New Habits

7a. Schedule Large Habits

7b. Aggregate Smaller Key Habits

Step 8: Set Up Visual Cues and Trigger Environments

Step 9: Enlist a Support Group

Step 10: Adapt and Reset

Count the Cost and Resolve to Change

Recommended Reading Problogger (19) by Darren Rouse and Chris Garrett The War of Art (20) by Stephen Pressfield Manage Your Day-to-Day (21) by Jocelyn Glei Platform (22) by Michael Hyatt Teach Like a Pirate (23) by Dave Burgess Fred Jones Tools for Teaching (24) by Fred Jones The Power of Habit (25) by Charles Duhigg

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.