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"The Gallup Student Poll is an online poll made up of 20 well-researched questions designed to assess the hope, engagement, and wellbeing of students in the U.S. The poll takes eight to ten minutes to complete, and is entirely free to any public or private school in the United States. After your students complete the poll, you will receive a detailed report on the engagement level at your school. This report can be monumental in discovering elements of your school community that can be improved upon to increase student engagement. The act of administering the Gallup Student Poll, or any poll designed to research student engagement, is also an excellent opportunity to connect with your students. Explain to them why you're asking them to complete the poll and let them know that their school cares about their wellbeing. Reassure your students that you are listening to their feedback and that the results will be studied carefully and acted upon. Once you have a good idea of how engaged your students are, you can start to create activities and programs to increase their engagement."

"Pace yourself. You don't have to cover everything. If they don't read that play by Shakespeare, they will still live to be fine old people. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Don't put too much pressure on your students. It's not just a matter of taking what I do offline online. I've shortened my units because of the coronavirus. I have a lot of working parents; now they have kids at home. I can't ask them to do a 25-page paper on pronouns in Shakespeare. Figure out what's really essential for learning, and what can be let go in the next three months. For my composition students, for example, my primary focus is always helping them express ideas clearly and coherently. I'm less concerned about the genre of writing or how long it is. I can do that a paragraph at a time. For my more advanced students, they need to learn research skills: how to locate, evaluate, and use information. Online learning offers great opportunities for that, including with what's going on in the news right now. For my literature students, my emphasis is helping them understand stories that come from cultures other than theirs. Are they able to see the humanity and connections across the stories? That's essential. Whether they remember all of the characters and the authors-that's not essential. This is a great time to individualize instruction and have students work at different paces. You don't want 100-120 papers coming at you all at one time. Spread it out, and it will keep you from getting short-tempered with your students. I've got some students who won't turn on a camera in their house. They don't want you to see inside their house for various reasons. Be aware of it; be very sensitive and careful with human beings. Be prepared to let your students teach you. Students can be great help to us. Be each other's tech support."

"Using data with students encompasses classroom practices that build students' capacity to access, analyze, and use data effectively to reflect, set goals, and document growth. Using data with students encompasses the following activities: Students use their classwork as a source for data, analyzing strengths, weaknesses, and patterns to improve their work. Students regularly analyze evidence of their own progress. They track their progress on assessments and assignments, analyze their errors for patterns, and describe what they see in the data about their current level of performance. Students use data to set goals and reflect on their progress over time and incorporate data analysis into student-led conferences."

"Inquiry or interrogation? What if you asked your students which of these best describes their experience with classroom questioning? How do you think they would respond? My colleague Beth Sattes and I have posed this question to a wide range of students. The majority choose "questioning as interrogation" as the best fit for their experience. What makes them feel this way? Many believe that teachers ask questions to surface "right" answers, which students fear they don't know. Others think teachers ask questions mostly to find out who is paying attention - or not! Almost all students view follow-up questions as attempts to keep them on the "hot seat" and embarrass them for not knowing. And most perceive classroom questioning to be a competition that pits students against one another - Whose hand goes up first? Who answers most frequently? Very few students understand questioning as a process for collaborative exploration of ideas and a means by which teachers and students alike are able to find out where they are in their learning and decide on next steps. This is one of the primary themes running through our work."

"At EL Education, we believe that this is best done consciously and intentionally. We are unafraid to say that teachers and schools shape student character. We specify what we believe they should work towards: students who are not just effective learners, but also ethical people, and active contributors to a better world. We believe that this is supported when educators elevate student voice and leadership and model a schoolwide culture of respect, compassion, honesty, integrity, and kindness. In times of crisis, small-scale or large, this also means modeling courage in standing up for those values, and standing against racism, injustice, acts of hate, and the undermining of public education. One unheralded but powerful possibility is this: giving students real material to engage with and supporting them to do work that matters to them. This is what helps students become ethical adults who contribute to a better world. In EL Education schools, this deeper learning is the daily fare of classrooms. And, it's what empowers them to engage in civil debate. If students are fearful about what may happen to them or their loved ones, we can help them research what has actually been said or proposed, and what is possible according to the U.S. Constitution as it has so far been interpreted. We can help them respond in ways that build their own agency: writing letters, like students at World of Inquiry, or making videos and organizing actions like the Melrose Leadership Academy Peace and Kindness March."

" I'd been teaching writing all wrong! I'd dangled the carrots of prizes and threatened with the sticks of docked points for misplaced modifiers. But sometimes, I also got it right. Before, I'd let students choose prompts and readings as much as possible, providing autonomy. After reading Pink, I learned to unbend myself, make deadlines more flexible, and shape the writing process more to fit the student. Now, my students feel more control over their process. Before, I'd encouraged my students to write for real audiences as summative assessments. Now, I encourage students to write to real people for real purposes throughout the school year -- their own blogs, each other, me, their principal, their Congressional representatives, and the world. Before, I'd embedded grammar instruction in writing process and had students keep their work to casually notice their progress once a year. Now, I conference four times a year with students about portfolios of their work -- an ongoing conversation about writing goals of their choosing. I explicitly teach metacognition, or how to talk and write about their writing."

"Two years ago, Zak Malamed and a few friends held their first Twitter chat for students who were feeling frustrated about how little say they had in the school reform debates going on all around them. At the time, Malamed and two other friends were still in high school, and one friend was in college. But when they formed Student Voice, the group that rose out of that first chat, they agreed that "Revolutionizing education through the voices and actions of students," in whatever form that would take, would be their mission. "Students want to achieve in school. They want to find purpose being in school." said Malamed. "They want to discover their talents. Without students having a voice, we cannot collectively ensure that this will all happen for every student.""

"In this Teaching Channel video, McComb leads a class period where he's trying to give individual students feedback as they work and not only after they've turned in their assignments. He demonstrates how he tries to hold back from giving them the answers, instead guiding them with questions, making sure they are aware of and are using resources, and crucially allowing them the time and space to think through what he's asking and arrive at a solution on their own. McComb is doing a lot in this lesson. He's helping a few students work on a specific skill they lack; he's checking in on students working independently; he's conferencing with students who are having individual problems; and he's trying not to just give students the language that will improve their writing. McComb calls this practice a structure that's flexible and allows for short cycles of work that give him an opportunity to address problems and give real-time feedback. He's hoping this new approach to writing feedback will not only improve his students' work, but will also help them to become more independent learners."

"Given those disparities, the district plans to recommend that, as long as students participate, teachers should revert to their previous progress grades. Students could potentially improve those scores, but they wouldn't be penalized. "I don't want to give everyone an A because we're just trying to be nice," said Patrick Keeley, the principal of the district's single high school. "But we don't want to ruin people's chances in the future, either," especially when it's due to factors outside of their control. Contrast Mountain Empire's context with that of the Salem City district in Virginia, near Roanoke. The district serves a small, fairly compact city. Every student in grades 3 through 12 has a Chromebook through its one-to-one program. Salem has about 200 "hot spots" for WiFi connectivity, and a cable company has agreed to provide free internet access for students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches. So when its spring break ends on April 13, the district plans to make a legitimate go at covering the most essential of its remaining state standards via online learning-and to continue issuing letter grades for students' work. "We realize that if we tell kids today, 'Hey, your grade can't be any lower than it is now,' or if we tell them we're not going to grade them for the rest of the year, we're going to have a big chunk of kids check out," said Curtis Hicks, the district's assistant superintendent. "And that's not healthy for them for the short run, and it's not healthy for the long term, if students are underprepared for what comes next.""

"Low-stakes writing is a tool to help students build comfort with sharing and developing their thoughts through writing. A defining element of low-stakes writing is how it's graded -- the grade doesn't carry a lot of weight. This removes much of the pressure from having to do the assignment a certain way, putting value instead on student thought, expression, and learning, rather than punctuation, grammar, or getting a correct answer the first time. "The most important thing about it for me is that it's not censored, and it's not too highly structured," explains James Kobialka, a UPCS seventh-grade science teacher. "Students aren't being told exactly what to do. They're allowed to have freedom, and they're not so worried about it that they try to write what they think they want me to see, or that they're tempted to plagiarize. It's about them getting their own ideas down, and then being able to interact with those ideas, change them, and revise them if they're not correct." Low-stakes writing: Increases students' comfort with expressing their ideas and empowers student voice Creates more investment and ownership in student learning Prepares students for high-stakes writing and testing Is adaptable for any subject Allows for differentiation"

"The most frequent cliché I hear regarding educational policy is, "We're doing this for the good of the students." We undoubtedly mean that, but the fact that students are not included in district-wide and school-wide decision making essentially excludes them from expressing what they perceive as "for the good of the students." It should be conventional wisdom that including students directly and empowering them to help shape high school and district policy would be educationally beneficial for both schools and students."

"Students almost universally hate close reading, and they rarely wind up understanding it anyway. Forced to pick out meaning in passages they don't fully grasp to begin with, they begin to get the idea that English class is about simply making things up and constructing increasingly circuitous arguments by way of support. So what would happen if we ditched this sacred teaching technique? For starters, we could help students read more. Speeding things up might make it easier to grasp--and appreciate--the overall arc of a book, while allowing the opportunity for real connection with the characters and plot. You can't do that at the pace of a chapter a week. Furthermore, aiming for fifteen books a year, rather than five, might expose the students to more good literature . If the goal of an English class is to improve students' grasp of language, introduce them to great literature, and--hopefully--get students excited, then there's really no downside to this approach. If a few students really want to do close reading, they can do it as an elective or jump in head first in college. Otherwise, let's chuck the concept. We gain nothing by teaching kids to hate books--and hate them s-l-o-w-l-y. "

"Most teachers make an effort to get to know their students, and many regularly distribute surveys at the start of each school year to speed up that process. The problem is, most teachers read these surveys once, then file them away. Sure, they might have every intention of returning to the surveys and reviewing them later, but far too often, that time never comes. We rely on our day-to-day interactions for relationship building, and although we get to know some students quite well this way, others just fade into the background. A 360 Spreadsheet is a place for teachers to store and access the "other" data we collect on our students, giving us a more complete, 360-degree view of each student. It's a single chart that organizes it all and lets us see, at a glance, things we might otherwise forget. Many teachers already keep track of students' birthdays. Think of this as a birthday chart on steroids. Figure 10-1 is just one possible version of a 360 Spreadsheet:"

"What do students learn from the experience? "They enjoy it so much that they don't realize they're learning at the highest level," says Alexa Schlechter, a 10th-grade English teacher at Norwalk High School in Connecticut, who had never used a podcast in class before trying "Serial." Listening to and engaging with "Serial" helps many students address one of the main challenges in developing their analytical skills: getting beyond simple explanations of what happened, and figuring out how and why an event occurred, she says. Poring over text of the transcripts in class to uncover answers, students also develop their critical reading skills, she says. (See how students answered questions about discrepancies between the cell phone records and Jay's testimony at Schlechter's blog.) Students publicly debated Syed's guilt or innocence in Godsey's classes, addressing a Common Core standard to improve speaking skills, and worked together with other students to create their own podcasts or present mock closing arguments."

""The high school structure doesn't work for every student," said West Seattle Principal Ruth Medsker. Often big high schools like West Seattle require students to be compliant in order to fit in and that can lead to disengagement. Medsker is interested in finding models within her large school that offer something different to students who want it. "How do we make the system fit the child instead of trying to make the kid fit the system?" she asked. Teachers at her school are exploring this question in a variety of ways, including through a pilot advisory-type program that began with a cohort of 25 tenth graders. "The idea was these students have promise, they have skills, they have things to offer, but something about our school system wasn't working for them," said Matt Kachmarik, who acted as the advisor, social studies and English teacher to this group of students. As much as possible, school staff tried to give these 25 kids schedules that would allow them to take classes together. They also focused on non-cognitive skills using reflection, team-building games and discussion to tease out what was going on outside of school, as well as barriers to learning inside its walls. "I definitely have some students who are among the deepest thinking of anyone in the entire grade," Kachmarik said. Some of them are under a lot of stress or have experienced trauma or just don't have strong executive functioning skills, but they've found a home in what they call the Focus program."

"It's especially powerful because students identify the topics and carry out their own explorations, rather than teachers determining everything in advance. However: while the effort usually concludes with students presenting their learning through videos, blog posts, multi-media presentations, demonstrations, genius hour advocates often conceive these final outcomes primarily as students "showing what they've learned," essentially to evaluate the work and give it a grade. There's certainly nothing wrong with this approach, and teachers and students in many schools enjoy the energy, creativity, and learning that genius hour generates. But there's also so much more waiting to be unleashed if the products involve a larger purpose that just a grade. What's especially valuable is the potential of geniur hour as a gateway to student civic involvement."

"During the school year, students are expected to listen to and absorb vast amounts of content. But how much time has been devoted to equipping students with ways to disconnect from their own internal dialogue (self-talk) and to focus their attention fully on academic content that is being presented? Learning to listen well is a prime example of a skill that many assume shouldn't need to be taught. The Common Core State Standards for Language Arts recognize the importance of listening as an ability that students must master to become college and career ready. Listening is a crucial aspect of school and life, but it is often expected of students without ever being taught. The HEAR strategy described below is designed to help students recognize and block out that noise as they devote their attention to listening."

"Unlike most American high schools, student leadership at Harwood Union High School isn't limited to campaigns for cleaner bathrooms or better cafeteria food. Here, teenagers are deeply involved in shaping the pillars of school life, from the daily class schedule to the styles of teaching and learning that work best for them. Aided by community groups that have trained them in leadership techniques, young people and adults at Harwood have forged an unusually strong and equal partnership over the past eight years. They developed decisionmaking processes that put students at the heart of the biggest school decisions. When new teachers are hired, report cards are redesigned, or honors classes are revamped, students are at the table, debating, sharing research, listening, and voting. That work has made this unassuming school in Vermont's Green Mountains a national model for educators who believe students deserve the right to play a central role in creating their school experience."

"A year ago, we were approached by The Princeton Review to help them design a survey about Student Life in America. Rather than focusing on academic performance, they wanted to understand students' academic process. What goes through their heads when they do homework? Where do they turn for help when they're stuck? How do they think and feel during a typical school day? In short, the survey was designed to find out what only students can know: their thoughts, feelings, and goals. The results suggest that if we want to fix education, then we have to move away from blaming teachers, resources, or classroom size, and start talking seriously about what students are doing to create academic success -- and how we can best support them in that process. Here are some of the survey's most telling results."

The first program on the list, "Teachers and writers together: A look at student-staffed writing centers" is a great resource for peer tutoring from the National Writing Project. Offers suggestions and strategies for bringing students onto the staff at our writing center. Also shares benefits for peer tutors.