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A broad focus on testing and new standards can lead schools to neglect the individualized needs of students,

unless U.S. schools can better align learning strategies and objectives with fundamental aspects of human nature, they will always struggle to help students achieve their full potential

Researchers classified 31 percent of teachers as “engaged” at work under that index, compared with 30 percent of respondents overall. But, among all occupations tracked in the survey, teachers were the least likely to say that their opinions counted at work.

Joy isn't about a carefree life. It is about a deep-felt sense of wonder, of expectation, of delight, of engagement.

consider classrooms where everyone is both teacher and learner

Every day that first week, even in the first meeting, teach something substantive in the curriculum. Make it something that is brand new, not something reviewed from the previous year. Students are hungry for intellectual engagement after a summer off, and they want to think great thoughts and do great works.

Mix academics with administrative and Get-to-Know-You activities. It should be about 50-50: half engagement with interesting academics, half focused on forms, announcements, or activities meant to build classroom community. Keep the ratio: students will grow impatient and disillusioned if too much time is spent on get-to-know-you activities. It sounds weird, but most students are not looking for continued summer camp experiences so much as they are seeking confidence and engagement.

choose poems related to growing up or modern culture, or read share the lyrics of powerful songs of any generation.

"We don't want to have people say that these findings say these schools aren't doing RTI right; this turns out to be what RTI looks like when it plays out in daily life."

"Students are missing a lot of broader things that are going to make a difference in their ability to put it all together in functional reading."

students with "mild and relatively mild learning problems" are not representative anymore of the students targeted for Tier 2 interventions. "Over time, in many places what's happened is RTI has been deliberately used as a kind of general education substitution for special education. My strong sense is that over time, more and more kids with greater and greater severity of learning problems are being served in an RTI framework."

What made collaborative rule-creation more effective in building a smoothly functioning class?

It never felt as if we were wrestling with the really important issues: Building a functioning community. Safety. Personal dignity. Kindness. Order. Academic integrity. Democracy.

No matter what rules you put on paper, your most important job is role-modeling those practices, not enforcing them

Those factors include integrating technology into intervention classes; setting aside time for professional learning and collaboration for teachers; allowing students to use technology to collaborate; integrating technology into core curricula at least weekly; administering online formative assessments at least weekly; lowering the student-to-computer ratio as much as possible; using virtual field trips at least monthly; encouraging students to use search engines daily; and providing training for principals on how to encourage best practices for technology implementation. Only about 1 percent of the 1,000 schools surveyed by Project RED followed all those steps, and those that did “saw dramatic increases in student achievement and had revenue-positive experiences,” Ms. Wilson said.

During our first meeting of the school year, we jotted down on sticky notes what each of us wanted to accomplish in our weekly meetings. Three main ideas rose to the top and have driven our work together ever since: support for each other, help with pacing an overwhelming curriculum, and detailed plans to implement with our students. Everything we do as a group addresses one or more of these three objectives.

Talking about the issues and pressures of teaching—always in a solutions-focused way, of course—is cathartic itself.

PLCs must find ways to share the workload, not increase it.

asked permission to hire an arts-integration teacher

and that year and subsequent years, the scores on the state assessments improved.

a compendium of 62 research studies that support the powerful positive academic and social effects of learning in and through the arts

$3 billion per year on digital content.

he booming ed-tech industry, with corporate titans and small startups alike vying for a slice of an $8 billion-plus ye

to even the most rural and remote schools.