"AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15.
05.04.15
TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM.
7:00 AM
INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION
Click to Open Overlay Gallery
Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED
SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it.
At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird.
On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about.
Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say.
And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
Stepping Aside: The Art of Working With Student-Teachers\n\nTeacher Leaders Network Although traditional teacher-education programs rely on veteran educators to invite student- or "practice-" teachers into their classrooms, many skilled professionals can be heard expressing some reluctance about sharing instructional responsibilities with green recruits. They may be concerned about their ability to mentor an inexperienced colleague effectively, or simply hesitant to relinquish control of instruction in an atmosphere of high-stakes accountability.\n\nIn a recent post to the Teacher Leaders Network Forum daily discussion group, veteran teacher Vicky expressed some reservations of her own about working with a student-teacher and asked for help.\n\nI may be getting the opportunity to work with a student-teacher. I was wondering about your ideas for starting the year off right, helping the student-teacher, and balancing the load of mentoring the student teacher and teaching the students myself. I'm excited about the possibility, but I'm also a pretty hands-on control freak kind of person, so I want to alternately challenge and excite the intern but not be unfair or scary. Tips?\n\nNancy, a veteran K-12 music teacher, replied:\n\nGreat questions, Vicky. My first suggestion would be adopting the perspective that you will learn as much as the novice teacher-about yourself, your beliefs, and your practice. The first step is probably building a relationship in which the novice teacher trusts you enough to share real information and opinion (and vice-versa).\n\nCreate a safe space to communicate honestly, in both directions. A student teacher who feels comfortable enough to share fears, anxieties, confusion, and frustration-and knows that he or she is not being judged, but honored as a learner by a veteran teacher who also has fears and frustrations-will be a student teacher who can grow.\n\nMy second thought is that from your students' perspective there should be two experts
If you are fearful of Facebook and MySpace then you need to create an Edmodo account. Edmodo was designed specifically for educational purposes. You must be a teacher, student, or parent to gain access. It allows you all the amenities of those other social networking sites but with a lot more security/privacy.
Yes, it is free and you can manage student accounts. It is only open to those you invite in and only educators may obtain an account. You may monitor and moderate all conversations, administer quizes, embed media, etc. The groups feature is very effective and you may grant access to your group to other classes. We just had 700+ students interacting in a global collaboration project, Digiteen.
Students do not need an email address to use Edmodo, so under 13 is OK for CIPA. It looks much like Facebook, so kids love it and parents need some education on it as they fear it at first. Parents can get monitoring access so they may monitor their child's activity. It is a great tool to show parents how social media is used in education.
Teaching Secrets: Communicating With Parents
By Gail Tillery
Premium article access courtesy of TeacherMagazine.org.
You will face many challenging tasks as a new teacher. Dealing with parents is probably among the most intimidating, especially if you are young and in your first career. While communicating with parents can be tricky, a little preparation will help you to treat parents as partners and to be calmer when problems arise.
Here's the first rule to live by: Your students' parents are not your enemies. Ultimately, they want the same thing you want, which is the best for their children. By maintaining respectful and productive communication, you can work together to help students succeed.
Second, whenever problems arise, remember that parents are probably just as nervous about contacting you as you are about returning the contact-and maybe more so. I'll confess: Even after 26 years of teaching, I still get a little frisson of fear in my belly when I see an e-mail or hear a voicemail from a parent. But I have seen time and again that parents are often more nervous than the teacher is-especially if their child doesn't want them to contact the teacher. Indeed, some parents may even fear that if they raise concerns, their child will face some kind of retaliation. Remember that parents' tones or words may reflect such fears. In your response, try to establish that everyone involved wants to help the child.
Here are some practical tips for communicating effectively with parents:
Contact every parent at the beginning of the year. Do some "recon." Telephone calls are best for this initial contact, since they are more personal than e-mail. Ask the parent to tell you about his or her child's strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, etc. Make sure to ask, "What is the best thing I can do to help your child succeed?" Remember to take notes! Once you've gathered the information you need, set a boundary with parents by saying, "Well, Ms. Smith, I have 25 more parent
Over 42,000 spelling words with customizable sentences and
definitions
A REAL person who says each word and sentence
Free home pages for teachers and parents to save lists
Teacher
training videos
Free printable handwriting worksheets
Free teaching resources with lists and lesson plans
Twenty-five games to play online or to print such as
Over
Over
42,000
spelling
words with customizable sentences and
definitions
A
REAL
person
who says each word and sentence
Free home pages
for
teachers and parents to save lists
Teacher
training
videos
Free printable
handwriting worksheets
Free teaching
resources
with lists
and lesson plans
Twenty-five games to play online or to print such
as
:Alphabetical
Order, Unscramble, Parts of Speech, HangMouse, Crossword Puzzle, WordSearch, and Vocabulary Test.
A free forum and newsletters
Over
42,000
spelling
words with
customizable sentences and
definitions
A
REAL
person
who says
each word and sentence
Free home pages
for
teachers and parents to save
lists
Teacher
training
videos
Free printable
handwriting worksheets
Free teaching
resources
with
lists
and lesson plans
Twenty-five games to play online or to print
such
as
:
Alphabetical
Order
,
Unscramble
,
Parts of
Speech
,
HangMouse
,
Crossword Puzzle
,
WordSearch
,
and
Vocabulary
Test
.
A free
forum
and
newsletters
SpellingCity.com has:
- Over 42,000 spelling words and ten learning games!
- A REAL person who says each word and sentence.
- Free home pages for teachers and parents to save lists.
- How To Videos to explain to teachers and parents how to use SpellingCity.com.
- A free forum and newsletter with more vocabulary and spelling resources!
- Ten spelling and vocabulary games to play online or to print.
- Free printables for handwriting practice with your saved lists.
- A Resources Section which highlights features and existing lists for Dolch words, compound words, sound-alikes (their, there, they're), contractions, possessives, and more.
After taking the online spelling test, students can print out a report, retake the entire test, or get tested only on spelling words that they got wrong the first time.
TeachMe spells and displays the word in ways that stimulate memory for visual and verbal learners.
Printable Games include WordSearch, UnScramble, WhichWord?, Sentence UnScramble and MissingLetter.
Printable Handwriting Worksheets for combined spelling and handwriting practice can be created from any saved list (this feature only works if the list is saved). Choices includes three sizes of lines, capitals or small letters, script or cursive, and with directional arrows on or off. How cool is that?
All you have to do is type in the list of words and bam! at least 10 games are generated for the students! It also teaches and tests the students on the words. You can save the lists as a teacher and have students search for your lists or you can have students input their own lists without saving them.
A superb resource where teachers can sign in and input spelling lists for pupils to learn by playing games. Give pupils the link and they don't need to sign in to use it. Site only recognises US spelling when generating example sentences, but you can input your own easily. Free option should be enough for most users, but 'paid for' option is available.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English
The first year of teaching is a difficult challenge. If you are currently in your first year of teaching, the graph above probably applies to you. And you are most certainly not alone! Whether you are currently feeling extremely overwhelmed or abundantly triumphant, other first-year teachers are going through the same thing. The University of California Santa Cruz New Teacher Project has worked to support the efforts of new teachers.
The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing
So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet.
We’ve been working with public school teachers for 10 years; every spring, we see many of the best teachers leave the profession. They’re mowed down by the long hours, low pay, the lack of support and respect.
eople talk about accountability, measurements, tenure, test scores and pay for performance. These questions are worthy of debate, but are secondary to recruiting and training teachers and treating them fairly.
most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment.
"And yet in education we do just that. When we don't like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don't like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources."
You can't be a teacher, if you are not a learner.
This week, I'm fortunate to be at an IB workshop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, training to be an IB workshop leader. Reflecting at the end of the first day, I have some ideas to add my list of ways teachers can learn…
This year, I was asked to attend as a Canadian Teacher Representative, along with Ontario Ministry Officer, Colette Ruduck and our Ontario Deputy Minister of Education, George Zegarac.
the theme of “Trust and Regulation”
my Canadian values of equality, diversity, safety and choice
high degree of trust for teachers, administrators and district decision makers
Our regulations are meant to encourage equality and diversity, choice, opportunity, innovation – fundamental values in our society.
In contrast to many of the other countries represented, our Canadian context was unique in that the regulations (organizations, federations, policies, curriculum) imposed actually tie in Trust and Relationship building and partnerships as key factors to increase capacity building with a wide range of stakeholders.
We need our profession to be respected, which includes paying us well, treating us fairly, supporting us with resources, nurturing our learning and leadership opportunities
systems of education can achieve and can be highly ranked without the use of formalized testing
We need to feel safe to make mistakes because we too are learners, especially in a profession that is changing so drastically in the 21st Century
We need to feel trusted and with that, we want our skills, our education, our talents and our passions to be respected so we -together – can become the creators of our own pedagogies
these passionate and experienced leaders agreed that such tests don’t work when used to rate, or punish teachers
can even sometimes do more harm then good
such tests are not always authentic
First and foremost, teacher voice needs to be heard and respected
As principals, we need to empower our teachers and community
the importance of the teacher/principal relationship came up over and over and over
Trust – allows me to teach in my style, developing my own curriculum
I wonder if there is a correlation between that supportive, trusting principal and the fact that we have incredibly dynamic teachers here, at Van Leer from all over the globe
We too need to think different because change can start with us
We need to make our voices heard by be socially active
By sharing and reflecting our learning openly and even by sometimes being vulnerable and asking for help and challenging the status quo
we need to recognize that our learning environments are changing and are very different from how we were once trained and educated
We need to remind our leaders that we are not just teachers of academics but we teach the whole person
Many of us struggle, without supports – to help impoverished families, students with mental health disabilities, learning disabilities, students that speak a different language, large class sizes, violence, inequalities
The conference in Jerusalem, Israel that Van Leer hosts each year is intended to encourage professional dialogue among educators, academics, representatives of the Third Sector, and policymakers from diverse areas and places in Israel and abroad. This year, I was asked to attend as a Canadian Teacher Representative, along with Ontario Ministry Officer, Colette Ruduck and our Ontario Deputy Minister of Education, George Zegarac.
With the theme of "Trust and Regulation" at the center of our discussions, it did not take long to realize that my context, as a Canadian Educator, a parent, and a student - was one of privilege and opportunity.
the skills students need in the 21st century are not new.
Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been components of human progress throughout history
What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills
Many reform efforts, from reducing class size to improving reading instruction, have devolved into fads or been implemented with weak fidelity to their core intent. The 21st century skills movement faces the same risk.
some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills
Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained
inally, we need new assessments that can accurately measure richer learning and more complex tasks
Skills and knowledge are not separate, however, but intertwined.
In some cases, knowledge helps us recognize the underlying structure of a problem.
At other times, we know that we have a particular thinking skill, but domain knowledge is necessary if we are to use it.
if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
The importance of content in the development of thinking creates several challenges
first is the temptation to emphasize advanced, conceptual thinking too early in training
Another curricular challenge is that we don't yet know how to teach self-direction, collaboration, creativity, and innovation the way we know how to teach long division.
But experience is not the same thing as practice. Experience means only that you use a skill; practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.
We must plan to teach skills in the context of particular content knowledge and to treat both as equally important.
education leaders must be realistic about which skills are teachable. If we deem that such skills as collaboration and self-direction are essential, we should launch a concerted effort to study how they can be taught effectively rather than blithely assume that mandating their teaching will result in students learning them.
teachers don't use them.
Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered method
these methods pose classroom management problems for teachers.
These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses.
constant juggling act
greater collaboration among teachers.
But where will schools find the release time for such collaboration?
professional development is a massive undertaking.
Unfortunately, there is a widespread belief that teachers already know how to do this if only we could unleash them from today's stifling standards and accountability metrics. This notion romanticizes student-centered methods, underestimates the challenge of implementing such methods, and ignores the lack of capacity in the field today.
The first challenge is the cost.
measures that encourage greater creativity, show how students arrived at answers, and even allow for collaboration.
When students first encounter new ideas, their knowledge is shallow and their understanding is bound to specific examples. They need exposure to varied examples before their understanding of a concept becomes more abstract and they can successfully apply that understanding to novel situations.
"Conversation is
key
. Sawyer succinctly
explains this principle: "Conversation leads to flow, and flow leads to
creativity." When having students work in groups, consider what will spark rich
conversation. The original researcher on flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, found
that rich conversation precedes and ignites flow more than any other
activity.1 Tasks that require (or force) interaction
lead to richer collaborative conceptualization.
Set a clear but
open-ended goal
.
Groups produce the richest ideas when they have a goal that will focus their
interaction but also has fluid enough boundaries to allow for creativity. This
is a challenge we often overlook. As teachers, we often have an idea of what a
group's final product should look like (or sound like, or…). If we put
students into groups to produce a predetermined outcome, we prevent creative
thinking from finding an entry point.
Try not announcing time
limits.
As teachers we
often use a time limit as a "motivator" that we hope will keep group work
focused. In reality, this may be a major detractor from quality group work.
Deadlines, according to Sawyer, tend to impede flow and produce lower quality
results. Groups produce their best work in low-pressure situations. Without a
need to "keep one eye on the clock," the group's focus can be fully given to the
task.
Do not appoint a group
"leader."
In research
studies, supervisors, or group leaders, tend to subvert flow unless they participate as an
equal, listening and
allowing the group's thoughts and decisions to guide the
interaction.
Keep it
small.
Groups with the
minimum number of members that are needed to accomplish a task are more
efficient and effective.
Consider weaving
together individual and group work.
For additive tasks-tasks in whicha group is
expectedtoproduce a list, adding one idea to another-research suggests that
better results develop
Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that requires all high school students to take some online classes to graduate, and that the students and their teachers be given laptops or tablets. The idea was to establish Idaho’s schools as a high-tech vanguard.
To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators. And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.
“Teachers don’t object to the use of technology,” said Sabrina Laine, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, which has studied the views of the nation’s teachers using grants from organizations like the Gates and Ford Foundations. “They object to being given a resource with strings attached, and without the needed support to use it effectively to improve student learning.”
What a pity, a sign of how little respect people actually give to the profession of teaching; the only profession where people don't take the comments of practitioners seriously. Can you imagine saying to your doctor, "I know this is your diagnosis, but I'm going to go with my Great Aunt's diagnosis."
They complain that lawmakers listened less to them than to heavy lobbying by technology companies, including Intel and Apple.
under the state’s plan, that teacher will not always be in the room. The plan requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits.
I actually find this somewhat troubling...so little research exists as to how students are actually learning online. Are they using Facebook or are they going through MIT's Open Courseware? I'm inclined to think the former. I'm slowly adding more and more technology to my classes and frankly, I'm surprised that students are not more technologically savvy... the first and second digital divides are increasingly evident...
Interesting article, however, you can't ignore that students today will be doing a significant amount of learning on a computer. If our high school students can't master managing an online class in high school, how will they fare later on? It's another learning tool. 2 classes out of 47 credits? How is that detrimental to the development of lifelong learners?
We can research until the cows come home, but at some point if we don't dive in, we miss the boat. While we can all wish for all our students to graduate high school and then go on to college, the reality is that most of them won't. That's reality... Preparing our kids for future learning and building those skills necessary to be successful to master online courses is a skill they will need to succeed in their digital world.
"This year I had the opportunity to work with many educators in national and global workshops. On two of these occasions, I asked the teachers to share their wisdom by answering the question, "What I know now that I wish I had known as a first year teacher is . . . "
"
"Picturing the 1930s," a new educational web site created by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in collaboration with the University of Virginia, allows teachers and students to explore the 1930s through paintings, artist memorabilia, historical documents, newsreels, period photographs, music, and video. Using PrimaryAccess, a web-based teaching tool developed at the university's Curry Center for Technology and Teacher Education, visitors can select images, write text, and record narration in the style of a documentary filmmaker. They can then screen their video in a virtual theater. PrimaryAccess is the first online tool that allows students to combine their own text, historical images from primary sources, and audio narration to create short online documentary films linked to social studies standards of learning, said Glen Bull, co-director of the Curry Center. Since the first version was developed in collaboration with U.Va.'s Center for Digital History and piloted in a local elementary school in 2005, more than 9,000 users worldwide have created more than 20,000 short movies. In creating digital documentaries, students embed facts and events in a narrative context that can enhance their retention and understanding of the material, said Curry research scientist Bill Ferster, who developed the application with Bull. Besides increasing their knowledge about the period, "Picturing the 1930s" enhances students' visual literacy skills, Ferster noted, adding that PrimaryAccess "offers teachers another tool to bring history alive."
Here's the secret: It's really hard to pull it off and it takes years to master. It's far less like being a great salesperson and much closer to being a Jedi Knight.
Anyone telling you otherwise is selling snake oil.
"I am struck by both how resilient and fragile life can be. More so than in another other year, I have a stronger sense that learning matters and that I matter as a teacher So, with a mixed first week, I'm still struck by the lingering question: What does it mean to be a great teacher?"
Jacksonville newspaper The Florida Times-Union wins the battle with FLDOE over the release of state's teacher evaluation scores which use the value-added model (VAM) to determine teacher effectiveness. Link to an approx. 12 minute radio broadcast of a public radio show - First Coast Connect - on WJCT Stereo 90.
The benefits of embedding the teaching of writing into the curriculum have been advocated by educators and researchers. However, there is currently little evidence of embedded writing instruction in the UK's higher education context. In this article, we present a case study in which we report the design, implementation and evaluation of an academic writing intervention with first-year undergraduate students in an applied linguistics programme. Our objectives were to try a combination of embedded instructional methods and provide an example that can be followed by lecturers across disciplines and institutions. Through the integration of in-class and online writing tasks and assessment feedback in a first-term module, we supported students' writing development throughout the first term. We evaluated the effects of the intervention through the analysis of notes on classroom interaction, a student questionnaire and interviews, and a text analysis of students' writing and the feedback comments over time. The evaluation findings provide insights into the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach. The embedded writing instruction was perceived as useful by both students and teachers. The assessment feedback, whilst being the most work-intensive method for the teachers, was valued most by the students and led to substantial improvements in the writing of some. These findings suggest that embedded writing instruction could be usefully applied in other higher education contexts.
A substantial literature documents large variation in teacher effectiveness at raising student achievement, providing motivation to identify highly effective and ineffective teachers early in their careers. Using data from New York City public schools, we estimate whether subjective evaluations of teacher effectiveness have predictive power for the achievement gains made by teachers’ future students. We find that these subjective evaluations have substantial power, comparable with and complementary to objective measures of teacher effectiveness taken from a teacher’s first year in the classroom.
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
Pinterest has launched what may be the first of several official "hubs" featuring content targeting a particular segment of its user base, with today's debut of a new "Pinterest for Teachers" site at pinterest.com/teachers. Obviously timed to coincide with the back-to-school rush and news cycle, the company tells us that the new hub will also serve as something of a test to see if it makes more sense to continue down this path in the future, with more hubs devoted to other interests or groups.
Lisa C. Hurst on 05 May 15"AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
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