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Jill Bergeron

Students Are Making a 'Surprising' Rebound From Pandemic Closures. But Some May Never Catch Up. - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Elementary and middle-school students have made up significant ground since pandemic school closings in 2020 — but they are nowhere close to being fully caught up, according to the first detailed national study of how much U.S. students are recovering.
  • Overall in math, a subject where learning loss has been greatest, students have made up about a third of what they lost. In reading, they have made up a quarter, according to the new analysis of standardized test score data led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard.
  • Still, the gap between students from rich and poor communities — already huge before the pandemic — has widened.
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  • 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.
Gayle Cole

Faculty Collegiality - 0 views

  • the most important factor in determining whether a school is a setting in which children grow and learn is whether the school is a setting in which adults grow and learn.
  • school buildings were designed to enable the supervision and orderly movement of students. The egg-carton model of school architecture and organization prevails even today. Individual classrooms are adjacent to one another with parallel doors facing a hall (not unlike prison cellblocks).
  • The major hurdle is the history and ethos of the teaching profession. "Teaching is a very autonomous experience," says Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, author of The Good High School. "But the flip side of autonomy is that teachers experience loneliness and isolation." In too many schools, teachers close their classroom door and spend the majority of their working hours with children, only talking hurriedly with other adults over a break, during lunch, or while standing at the copying machine. This is not terribly surprising since many educators chose to enter the profession to work with students, not with other adults
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  • What can school leaders do to ensure that their faculty members, including themselves, continue to grow and learn? It is the responsibility of school leaders to create a setting in which adults learning with and from one another becomes the norm.
  • Collaboration focuses only on the product; collegiality focuses on the product and what the participants gained from their collaboration.
  • "Many studies have shown that social connections with co-workers are a strong predictor — some would say the strongest predictor — of job satisfaction. People with friends at work are happier at work.
  • the goal of school leaders is to create a setting in which everyone grows. When this takes place, happiness will follow.
  • the work of Roland Barth. As a metaphor, he cites the instructions that are given to passengers about how to proceed when using an oxygen mask on an airplane. We are always told, he notes, that the adults should place the oxygen mask on their own faces before tending to a child or an elderly person. While this sequence is counter-intuitive to our desire to take care of those who need our help, the reality is that without giving ourselves oxygen first, we will not be able to help anyone else
  • If collegiality is not the norm, a school cannot achieve its potential.
  • Teachers talking together about students.
  • Teachers working together to develop curriculum
  • one another teach. This occurs rarely, even in the best schools
  • observing
  • One way to address this anxiety is to "ask teachers to observe a peer with the goal of finding one thing they like and one idea they'll use,
  • In a collegial setting, teachers share their expertise with colleagues and further everyone's learning.
  • an elderly person. While this sequence is counter-intuitive to our desire to take care of those who need our help, the reality is that without giving ourselves oxygen first, we will not be able to help anyone else. We must take care of ourselves in order to be able to take care of others. Teachers teaching one another. This doesn't necessarily mean that a teacher stands in front of peers and imparts expertise. Although that can happen, the interaction that takes place at faculty and committee meetings offers richer opportunities for teachers to teach their colleagues. Sharing what did and didn't work yesterday, reviewing action re
  • Intelligences and Succeedin
  • Teaching a class, laudable as that may be, only satisfies this need if the administrator's teaching responsibilities cause the faculty to view him or her as someone who understands and appreciates teaching, rather than as "an administrator who teaches."
  • leaders must try to position themselves among the group rather than above it."
  • Faculty committees should be a school's R&D department, a place where academic research and development takes place.
  • When teachers serve as leaders of a faculty committee, they also develop their leadership skills.
  • An easy (and fun) way to encourage collegiality is by forming a faculty book group
  • First, participation should be voluntary. That may be hard for school heads to accept, but my experience is that making attendance optional works better. Only a minority of the faculty is likely to join, but because those who are attending choose to participate, the dialogue is far more likely to be open and positive.
  • providing food is always good. Paying for pastries or pizza always sets a nice tone.
  • If students are to grow and learn, their teachers must grow and learn; if teachers are to grow and learn, their administrators must grow and learn as well. School leaders must be learners. We must invest in ourselves, too.
  • must be visible learners
  • It may be difficult to admit that you don't know the answer or that you'd do something differently next time, but it's important to do so. This is part of the Make New Mistakes philosophy noted in Chapter 1. Sharing that philosophy with staff members and parents helps set the expectation that everyone is expected to learn — and that learning can be messy.
  • Listening well includes structuring in designated times when you have to listen and also ensuring that you listen to opinions you don't want to hear. That is neither easy nor pleasant, but it is necessary
  • I have found surveys to be effective in reaching out to parents.
  • "360-degree evaluation for growth." The term "360 degrees" captures the fact that feedback is generated from all sectors of the organization, not just from above. The term "growth" indicates that the data came directly to me, for use in my reflection and growth, rather than to a third party for the purposes of evaluation. Many organizations offer this service, and the format is generally the same. To start, I reflected on my strengths and weaknesses. Then online feedback on the same items was collected from several dozen people whom I nominated, people from all 360 degrees of the school, from trustees to staff to students' parents. A "coach" working for the company that conducted the survey then led me through an analysis of my profile, paying special attention to how my self-perceptions did and did not contrast with how others saw me.
Gayle Cole

The Greatest Middle School Social Studies Blog in the World - 1 views

shared by Gayle Cole on 20 Dec 12 - Cached
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    Good examples of student blogs
Jill Bergeron

Newsela | Nonfiction Literacy and Current Events - 0 views

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    Current Events news that can be read at different lexile levels.
Jill Bergeron

JellyBeanScoop Intro - 0 views

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    Nonfiction news stories about young children or topics that children can relate to. Differentiated reading levels and vocab and comprehension questions.
Jill Bergeron

The Marshall Memo Admin - Issues - 0 views

  • 1. Growth mindset thinking makes its uncertain way into schools 2. A middle-school teacher tries to shift to student-centered math 3. Harnessing adolescent rebelliousness 4. “Firewalks” in a California high school 5. The potential of instructional rounds 6. Fidgeters of the world, unite! 7. Keys to a successful staff retreat 8. Teaching about the election
  • However, 85 percent of teachers said they wanted more professional development to use growth mindset insights most effectively. While the central ideas are intuitive to many educators, it takes time and collaboration for them to filter down to daily classroom practice.
  • Because training is so spotty, there are also some key growth-mindset practices that are not being emphasized enough in classrooms, including: -   Having students evaluate their own work; -   Using on-the-spot and interim assessments; -   Having students revise their work; -   Encouraging multiple strategies for learning; -   Peer-to-peer learning.
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  • Beaubien and her colleagues at the Stanford Project for Education Research That Scales (PERTS – https://www.perts.net) are offering online growth mindset training modules for teachers and encouraging grassroots efforts to spread effective practices.
  • Limit initiatives to those that support the big goal. “As we try to change and grow our practice, whether self-driven or motivated by policy or district-level change,” she says, “we will encounter more ideas than we can possibly implement in a year or even our whole career. It pays to focus on a smaller set of objectives, and for a while, selectively choose initiatives that fit those goals.”
  • Collaboration is key.
  • Within her school, she co-taught, observed colleagues, discussed goals (big and small), monitored students’ progress, and (with some trepidation) invited other teachers to observe her teaching and give feedback.
  • she visited other Connected Math schools and watched lesson videos at http://www.connectedmath.msu.edu and http://www.teachingchannel.org.
  • “The brains of adolescents are notoriously more receptive to short-term rewards and peer approval,” says Amanda Ripley in this New York Times article, “which can lead to risky behavior.” But young people are also very attuned to autonomy and social justice. “There are two adolescent imperatives,” says Rob Riordan of High Tech High in California: “To resist authority and to contribute to community.” Might it be possible to take advantage of these characteristics to bend teenage rebelliousness toward wholesome ends?
  • “What’s really exciting about this study and other work like it is that if you can appeal to kids’ sense of wanting to not be duped, you empower them to take a stand,” says Ronald Dahl (University of California/Berkeley). “If they are motivated, you can change their behavior profoundly.”
  • A big unanswered question is whether the positive behavioral shifts in the experiments will last more than a few hours; after all, almost no obesity prevention programs for adolescents result in long-term weight loss and there is a powerful consumer culture pushing young people in the other direction.
  • What inspires you? Do you have any regrets from the first two years of high school? How have you shown leadership? What are your college plans? What career do you want to pursue? Where do you think you will be in five years? What’s your favorite class? At the end of the ritual, the audience says whether each student is ready to move on. Not every student gets the nod.
  • Rounds are brief observations of a sampling of classrooms within a school by groups of teachers, administrators, or both. Ideally, rounds should foster: -   A common language about and understanding of high-quality teaching; -   A collaborative learning culture versus a culture of compliance; -   A more coherent approach to improving instruction.
  • The purpose needs to be clear, observations need to be carried out in a climate of trust, and everyone involved needs to understand how the observations connect to other improvement efforts.”
  • In short, social networks are themselves a resource that administrators can use to support the development of social capital.
  • In this New York Times article, Gretchen Reynolds has advice for teachers who tell fidgeting students to just sit still: let them tap their toes and jiggle their legs. Why? Because fidgeting is good for their health.
  • he has some advice for those who organize retreats:             • A clear and legitimate rationale.
  • “Retreats go poorly,” says Kramer, “when the reason for the retreat does not match the organization’s true needs.”
  • A better approach would have been to work with key stakeholders to develop the agenda, get buy-in, and engage everyone in an open and task-oriented fashion.
  • No hidden agendas – If trust is an issue in an organization, it’s essential that the conveners are honest about how a retreat will be handled and everything is above board.
  • High-quality facilitation – An effective leader keeps the trains running on time and is efficient, practical, and easy to work with.
  • They work best when every participant has a vested interest in what is being discussed and understands how the outcomes of the session will affect them and their work.”
Jill Bergeron

Strengthening Student Engagement:A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching - 0 views

  • To be effective in multicultural classrooms, teachers must relate teaching content to the cultural backgrounds of their students.
  • Engagement is the visible outcome of motivation, the natural capacity to direct energy in the pursuit of a goal. Our emotions influence our motivation. In turn, our emotions are socialized through culture—the deeply learned confluence of language, beliefs, values, and behaviors that pervades every aspect of our lives.
  • What may elicit that frustration, joy, or determination may differ across cultures, because cultures differ in their definitions of novelty, hazard, opportunity, and gratification, and in their definitions of appropriate responses. Thus, the response a student has to a learning activity reflects his or her culture.
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  • motivationally effective teaching is culturally responsive teaching.
  • Because the importance of grades and grade point averages increases as a student advances in school, it is legitimate to question whether extrinsic motivation systems are effective for significant numbers of students across cultures. We can only conclude that, as long as the educational system continues to relate motivation to learn with external rewards and punishments, culturally different students will, in large part, be excluded from engagement and success in school.
  • It is part of human nature to be curious, to be active, to initiate thought and behavior, to make meaning from experience, and to be effective at what we value. These primary sources of motivation reside in all of us, across all cultures. When students can see that what they are learning makes sense and is important, their intrinsic motivation emerges.
  • We can begin to replace the carrot and stick metaphor with the words “understand” and “elicit”; to change the concept of motivation from reward and punishment to communication and respect. We can influence the motivation of students by coming to know their perspective, by drawing forth who they naturally and culturally are, and by seeing them as unique and active. Sharing our resources with theirs, working together, we can create greater energy for learning.
  • A growing number of educational models, including constructivism and multiple intelligences theory, are based on intrinsic motivation. They see student perspective as central to teaching.
  • Unfortunately, educators must often apply these theories within educational systems dominated by extrinsic reinforcement, where grades and class rank are emphasized. And, when extrinsic rewards continue to be the primary motivators, intrinsic motivation is dampened. Those students whose socialization accommodates the extrinsic approach surge ahead, while those students—often the culturally different—whose socialization does not, fall behind. A holistic, culturally responsive pedagogy based on intrinsic motivation is needed to correct this imbalance.
  • The framework names four motivational conditions that the teacher and students continuously create or enhance. They are: Establishing inclusion—creating a learning atmosphere in which students and teachers feel respected by and connected to one another. Developing attitude—creating a favorable disposition toward the learning experience through personal relevance and choice. Enhancing meaning—creating challenging, thoughtful learning experiences that include student perspectives and values. Engendering competence—creating an understanding that students are effective in learning something they value. These conditions are essential to developing intrinsic motivation. They are sensitive to cultural differences. They work in concert as they influence students and teachers, and they happen in a moment as well as over a period of time.
  • Figure 1. Four Conditions Necessary for Culturally Responsive Teaching
  • 1. Establish Inclusion Norms: Emphasize the human purpose of what is being learned and its relationship to the students' experience. Share the ownership of knowing with all students. Collaborate and cooperate. The class assumes a hopeful view of people and their capacity to change. Treat all students equitably. Invite them to point out behaviors or practices that discriminate. Procedures: Collaborative learning approaches; cooperative learning; writing groups; peer teaching; multi-dimensional sharing; focus groups; and reframing. Structures: Ground rules, learning communities; and cooperative base groups. 2. Develop Positive Attitude Norms: Relate teaching and learning activities to students' experience or previous knowledge. Encourage students to make choices in content and assessment methods based on their experiences, values, needs, and strengths. Procedures: Clear learning goals; problem solving goals; fair and clear criteria of evaluation; relevant learning models; learning contracts; approaches based on multiple intelligences theory, pedagogical flexibility based on style, and experiential learning. Structure: Culturally responsive teacher/student/parent conferences.
  • 3. Enhance Meaning Norms: Provide challenging learning experiences involving higher order thinking and critical inquiry. Address relevant, real-world issues in an action-oriented manner. Encourage discussion of relevant experiences. Incorporate student dialect into classroom dialogue. Procedures: Critical questioning; guided reciprocal peer questioning; posing problems; decision making; investigation of definitions; historical investigations; experimental inquiry; invention; art; simulations; and case study methods. Structures: Projects and the problem-posing model. 4. Engender Competence Norms: Connect the assessment process to the students' world, frames of reference, and values. Include multiple ways to represent knowledge and skills and allow for attainment of outcomes at different points in time. Encourage self-assessment. Procedures: Feedback; contextualized assessment; authentic assessment tasks; portfolios and process-folios; tests and testing formats critiqued for bias; and self-assessment. Structures: Narrative evaluations; credit/no credit systems; and contracts for grades. Based on Wlodkowski, R. J., and M. B. Ginsberg. (1995). Diversity and Motivation: Culturally Responsive Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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    This article offers up four conditions teachers can create in order to foster a culturally responsive classroom.
Jill Bergeron

Using Design Thinking to Embed Learning in Our Jobs - 0 views

  • The telecomm company used design thinking to come up with a different approach: Rather than inject “training” into employees, it studied the job of a retail sales agent over the first nine months and developed a “journey map” showing what people need to know the first day, the first week, the first month, and then over the first few quarters.
  • What this process revealed is that there are some urgent learning needs that must be addressed immediately, and then there are people to meet, systems to learn, products to understand, and many other processes to master over the first year. And of course, much of this involves getting to know customers, product experts, and fundamentals of sales and customer service.
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    I used this article to help me think about how to create more targeted PD for our faculty.
Gayle Cole

Words Their Way: Word Study in Action: Getting to Know Words Their Way - 0 views

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    Good basic introduction to Words Their Way
Jill Bergeron

Beyond Borders - National Geographic Society - 0 views

  • The overall theme of this teacher-tested unit is using maps to understand borders and their impacts in Europe. The materials will help your middle school students to use maps to think about how borders intersect physical and human geographical features, and how those intersections can lead to cooperation and/or conflict.
Gayle Cole

DocsTeach - 0 views

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    Working with the National Archives Docs Teach site. Awesome resources here --> http://t.co/UaFXfeiu #sschat
Jill Bergeron

Teach Kids to Use the Four-Letter Word | Edutopia - 0 views

  • Today's classrooms are notorious for handing students the basic skills to live in the world while denying them the strength of character to transform it.
  • By shifting the focus of our feedback to effort as opposed to outcome, we leave students with the feeling that their best is yet to come.
  • Duckworth’s research is heir to the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck (2) on mindsets. Believing that we can succeed even after suffering repeated setbacks (what Dweck calls a "growth mindset") can actually re-wire our brains -- and rewrite our fortunes.
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  • 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
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