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But when kids see the horrific race-, religion-, and gender-based attacks committed in the real world by members of online extremist groups, they must wonder why adults can't stop these hate crimes.

Ultimately, hate speech is an area where sharing your own family's values -- around compassion and tolerance, appropriate communication, and empathy toward other -- sets a stable path forward for your kids to follow even in unsettled times.

How would you feel if you were a member of the group targeted by cruel language?

Does it matter if you're exposed to it a lot or a little? Are people with different social statuses -- for example, a popular kid vs. a loner type -- affected differently?

What's the difference between hate speech and cyberbullying? If someone is trying to hurt someone, or knows that they're hurting someone, and does it repeatedly, that's cyberbullying. When someone expresses vicious views about a group or toward an attribute of a group, that's hate speech.

Birmingham Covington’s unique bee project, like much of the coursework prioritized at the school, was driven by student interest.

“Science literacy is teaching our kids to be curious about the world around them, with the problems they identify,”

“Kids need to learn teamwork-based skills because every other class in any other subject that they have—third through eighth grade—requires them to work in different sized groups accomplishing different tasks,” Heckman explains.

The school’s voluntary Teacher Labs—facilitated by an instructional coach and organized around a clear, written protocol—enable teachers to reflect on their craft with support from their peers. Through the labs, small groups of teachers observe each other’s classes and then offer constructive feedback around a stated objective.

They put these skills to use in Thinkering Studio, an elective class where they design their own independent learning projects, and Engage, a class focused on design thinking—a system of solving problems that follows the steps of inquiry, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

In Engage, teachers Roy McCloud and Mathew Brown guide students to work on various self-directed, team-oriented projects like designing a new sport for third graders or building a roller coaster. Their support and feedback direct students toward the right resources while encouraging them to dig deeper: Did students ask the right questions? Did they get the right information? Did they go to other groups for feedback?

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.

The percent of teachers given the top rating ranged from 73 percent in Tennessee to 8 percent in Massachusetts and 3 percent in Georgia.

Many districts are drawing important distinctions between good and excellent teaching, but there is less differentiation among good, fair, and poor performance.

Why do so few teachers receive below-proficient ratings, despite the fact that school administrators estimate that more than a quarter of their teachers aren’t up to par?

The daunting workload involved in giving low ratings

Being merciful – Some principals said they were hesitant to give low ratings to rookie teachers out of kindness and a desire not to discourage (or lose) a teacher who had potential for growth.

Personal discomfort

Principals knew that teachers could lose their jobs as a result of a low rating, and were upset when teachers cried.

Her policy: use e-mail for non-urgent questions and texts when time is an issue.

2013 Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study, which asserted that it’s possible to accurately evaluate teachers by triangulating data from student surveys, value-added scores, and classroom observations.

Google, General Electric, and other corporations shifted from rating and ranking employees to providing real-time supervisor and peer feedback and coaching aimed at fostering professional growth to meet stretch goals. This rethinking was inspired by three findings from educational research: -   Performance ratings tend to foster a “fixed” versus a “growth” mindset. -   Numerical grades or ratings lead recipients to ignore detailed feedback. -   Extrinsic rewards can discourage the behaviors they aim to improve.

A 2012 initiative in Cincinnati suggests a different approach. Mid-career teachers who were observed four times by peers and given detailed feedback showed marked improvements in performance and student results. The key elements were frequency, credible observers, formative feedback, and a simple, low-stakes process with no direct ties to promotion and retention decisions.

Studies point to the following levers for continuous improvement:             • Peer collaboration – Veteran teachers continue to improve their skills if structures are in place that get them working with colleagues in focused, results-oriented instructional teams.             • Teacher evaluation – The key is detailed, valid feedback on classroom practices and support for improvement from knowledgeable and well-trained administrators or peers.             • Tailored on-the-job training – Most PD is ineffective, but intensive coaching focused on the specific needs of individual teachers and sustained over time can make a positive difference.             • Organizational supports – These include an orderly, disciplined school environment, services available to address students’ social and emotional needs, and positive parent engagement. • Leadership – “Hiring principals who have the talent to identify organizational weaknesses, establish schoolwide systems to support teachers and students, and galvanize collective buy-in from teachers is a central lever for improving the teaching and learning environment,” conclude Papay and Kraft.

Not having access to books in June, July, and August results in a two-month loss each summer for poor children compared to a one-month gain for more-advantaged children, and that accumulates over the years into a crushing achievement gap. Getting low-SES children reading over the summer is the most effective way to change that dynamic, but what works?

a home library is as important as parental education and twice as important as the father’s occupation in predicting educational outcomes;

Establish virtual office hours. Tucker tells students at the beginning of the year the dates and times when she’ll be available for a Google chat or Google Hangouts screen-sharing session. She has colleagues who tell students they can e-mail between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. and any e-mails received after that will be answered the next day.

Limit communication channels.

Other reasons – These included racial concerns (for example, if a disproportionate number of minority teachers might receive low ratings); burdensome dismissal procedures; principals making deals in which teachers agreed to leave the school in exchange for a higher rating; and concern about ineffective replacement teachers.

Make information available online.

Set up a space where students can connect online. Tucker has a private Google+ community where students can share information, ask questions, and support one another.

Protect unplugged time at home.

Not every disagreement is a call to arms.

How and when I use my voice matters. “As I see it,” says Gannon, “my job requires that I advocate for both faculty members and students, and for both teaching and learning. Sometimes that means speaking truth to power; other times it means speaking truth to colleagues.” This is especially important with issues of gender, race, and bullying.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

“It’s all too easy to let the minutiae detract from the larger goal… I’m not useful to anyone I serve if I’m overcommitted.”

Support, affirmation, and collegiality are more important. For me, leadership has become a matter of knowing and respecting my colleagues all over the campus, appreciating the work they do, and letting them know it… There’s no daily quota on thank you’s.”

At their best, they promote academic achievement, stronger student connections to education, and improved initiative, teamwork, and social skills.

Has a well-thought-out coaching philosophy aligned with the school’s educational, athletic, and programmatic goals – Winning isn’t the main goal, says Gould. Rather, “coaches work hard to help student-athletes learn important life lessons from their sport experiences.”

Shares decision-making with students and provides rationales for coaching actions

effective coaches meet their athletes’ need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in an atmosphere where students feel they belong.

Builds strong coach-athlete relationships in a caring, supportive climate – Each athlete is known as an individual, made to feel welcome, and knows that bullying and belittling others isn’t tolerated on or off the field.

Is a knowledgeable and effective teacher – “Research reveals that coaches who give positive versus degrading and punitive feedback or no feedback at all have athletes who are more motivated, feel better about themselves, and achieve more positive developmental outcomes from sports participation,” says Gould.

Is intentional in fostering positive youth development – This includes attention to leadership, teamwork, and a work ethic.

What these parents didn’t understand, says Jones, is that “You are either consistent, or you are inconsistent. There is nothing in between.”

“The irony of consistency,” says Jones, “is that the closer you come to being consistent before you fail, the worse off you are. If the parent cracks easily, the child does not need to be a world-class yammerer in order to succeed. But, if the parent does not crack easily, the child must learn to play hardball.”

How does this apply to classrooms? Teachers must set clear, reasonable expectations, says Jones, and then be absolutely consistent in enforcing them.

Never make a rule that you are not willing to enforce every time.

If you are consistent, you can use smaller and smaller consequences to govern misbehavior. But if you are inconsistent, you must use larger and larger consequences to govern misbehavior.

“it’s extremely unlikely you can greatly improve your reading speed without missing out on a lot of meaning…

“If you want to improve your reading speed, your best bet – as old-fashioned as it sounds – is to read a wide variety of written material and expand your vocabulary.”

you can’t take in words you don’t see, and you have a set-point for processing language that can be changed only by long-term improvements in vocabulary and knowledge.

when it comes to reading for deep comprehension or enjoyment, there are no shortcuts.

  1. Why is it so difficult to improve the teacher-evaluation process?   2. Another look at the Measures of Effective Teaching study   3. Conditions for the continuous improvement of teaching   4. Counteracting summer reading loss   5. Using Reading Recovery techniques in guided reading groups   6. Keeping our technology use under control   7. Advice for leaders   8. The qualities of an effective high-school athletic coach   9. Consistency with classroom discipline 10. Are speed reading courses effective? 11. Short items: (a) World population growth animated; (b) Two centuries of U.S. immigration animated; (c) Common Core math sequence; (d) Survey on teacher evaluation

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.

Providing some limitations, guidelines, restrictions can actually make us more creative, as we have to figure out how to make things work with what we’re given.

Giving them a little bit of guidance and limitation still providing plenty of room for creativity and imagination.

We have to find a balance between open-ended, free range exploration and guided learning in our makerspaces.  It can be tricky to figure out sometimes, but it’s worth putting the effort in.  A well-crafted design challenge can inspire amazing creativity.  Free-range learning gives students opportunities for imaginative play.  Both are crucial for creating an environment where students can discover, learn and grow.

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.

The best part of this approach? That both genders would benefit from changes that would be made if educators more closely considered the needs and interests of males in the learning process.

Offering appropriate challenges, lots of choice, reasonable accommodations, and opportunities to be active are strategies that allow for all learners to be more successful and less frustrated with school.

Cooperative learning creates what Daniel Goleman calls "cognitive empathy," a mind-to-mind sense of how another person's thinking works.

The better we understand others, the better we know them -- pointing toward (among other virtues) greater trust, appreciation and generosity.

Dispatching students into "groups" with the hopes they'll become more empathetic carries the same potential for success as trying to hit a dartboard while blindfolded

o harness the power of cooperative learning as a tool for building empathy, teachers need a specific strategy, a best practice that works

Created in 1971 by psychologist Elliot Aronson (1) to defuse his volatile fifth grade classroom, the jigsaw method (2) has a long track record of successfully reducing classroom conflict and increasing positive educational outcomes. As an empathy builder, it also opens doors of opportunity.

The fluid movement, flexible groupings and redistribution of responsibility force kids to be more actively engaged in what and how they learn.

jigsaw learning flows freely between group members. Familiar roles change, too.

Teachers re-outfit themselves as sideline reporters, monitoring, questioning and analyzing the action, while the quickest and slowest students suddenly discover themselves in supporting and leading roles they never quite imagined.

Creating points of contact between students who would otherwise not interact delivers a humbling but elevating awareness of the "other."

the hard currency is active listening, or the art of thinking about what the other person is saying.

And because each student has a purpose (a teaching role) and something valuable (new and necessary information), every learner is regarded as an asset, not a liability

To have value beyond a teacher's blog or Twitter feed, digital badges need to have both rigor and market worth.

A system filled with "junk" badges will have far less integrity than one filled with micro-credentials awarded by reputable organizations.

Research shows that teachers who earn a Master's degree don't necessarily see an increase in student achievement (3), and yet current salary structures and professional development models are often tied directly to those macro-credentials.

Building micro-credentials that have rigor and market worth could be the first step toward updating our current paradigm of how we credential learning. If we truly want to build school-wide cultures that empower learners to grow as individuals, we need to provide personalized learning opportunities for all of our learners -- including our teachers.