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Meghan Cureton

How to Design a School That Prioritizes Kindness and Caring | MindShift | KQED News - 1 views

  • You can’t just snap your fingers, and show a video, and it’s done,” she said. Rather, the school needed to adopt a philosophy of kindness that was “infused and woven through
  • initiatives had to seem to come from within, organically
  • They also do a “mix-it-up” exercise, borrowed from Borba’s book, that moves students around in advisory groups to blend grade levels. And to get teacher buy-in, select students attend occasional faculty meetings to share what excites them about their project and how their classmates are responding.
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  • Simple changes can have an outsized effect. Knowing the names of all the students in school, being generous with “hellos,” and encouraging teachers to greet every student by name in class, for example, are low-burden but powerful exercises,
  • “kindness strategies” are short and focused, rooted in relationships, carried out repeatedly, and related to actual events in school,
  • Two of the most fruitful exercises Carrollwood Day embraced, both borrowed from the Harvard project, were “Circle of Concern” and “Relationship Mapping.”
Meghan Cureton

NAIS - One School's Approach to Equitable Grading - 1 views

  • a student’s grade could be more reflective of the teacher’s approach to grading than the student’s academic performance.
  • because many of the teachers’ grading practices rewarded or punished students for every assignment, activity, and behavior in the classroom, students often were less willing to take risks and make mistakes, and cared less about learning
  • But Previna didn’t blame the teachers. After all, none of them—herself included—had ever received any training or support with how to grade
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  • She started by sharing a few articles about the weaknesses of common grading practices with the entire middle school faculty
  • Then she invited all faculty to research, examine, and imagine ways to align grading to their vision for progressive and equitable education
  • first learned how many common grading practices were created during the Industrial Revolution and are based on century-old beliefs about teaching, learning, and human potential that have long since been debunked. By continuing to use these practices, we contradict our current understanding about effective teaching and learning
  • After studying the research about grading and learning about research-supported grading practices that are more accurate, more bias-resistant, and develop intrinsic motivation in students, the pilot group of middle school faculty members was excited to start using them. These more equitable practices included using alternatives to the 0–100 scale, not including behavior in the grade, ending extra credit, using rubrics, and developing a culture of retakes and redos
  • Students were less stressed, and classroom environments felt more relaxed and supportive of learning.
  • Grade inflation decreased
  • Grades are more accurate and less biased
  • Students’ motivation increased
  • Changes to grading practices leverage other aspects of programmatic reimagining
T.J. Edwards

Impatient With Colleges, Employers Design Their Own Courses | WIRED - 0 views

  • That’s the fastest the university has ever introduced a new degree program, a feat it achieved by adopting off-the-shelf course materials already developed by Microsoft that the company is distributing to help turn out more employees with data and computer-science skills.
  • The courses employers have been helping to create don’t just teach skills students need to work for Microsoft, Amazon or Google, like the highly specialized training classes that are longtime industry standards
  • Instead, the companies are working with edX and others to provide what they say are the educations that all of their employees require in common, including such abilities as critical thinking and collaboration.
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  • And companies including Accenture, Boeing and Microsoft have created the Internet of Learning Consortium to speed up the production of job-ready workers by using the internet to teach them what they need to know.
  • “We talk about the days long gone when companies trained employees from the ground up and now we’re talking about companies training employees again. These organizations are saying [to the universities], ‘We need people with X, Y and Z skills and you’re not providing that.’ ”
  • While 96 percent of chief academic officers at higher-education institutions say they’re effectively preparing students for work, only 11 percent of business leaders strongly agree
  • Faculty could react more nimbly to industry demands if their universities hired more of them and gave them the resources they need to update courses or offer them online
    • T.J. Edwards
       
      Hired more industry people? Career changers?
  • In addition to long waits for programs to be approved by faculty and accrediting agencies, for example, many schools can’t find enough people qualified to teach computer science. The increase in the number of tenure-track faculty in that and similar fields has been one-tenth as much as the increase in the number of students crowding into classes, the Computing Research Association reports.
  • The Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, for example, is in the market for five or six new faculty hires per year in data, business analytics and other fast-growing disciplines, said Ash Soni, executive associate dean of academic programs. It usually manages to fill just two or three of those positions, Soni said.
  • “The pace of change and product cycles and skills demands in the economy are moving more quickly than traditional university processes and program development can keep up,” said Northeastern’s Gallagher.That needs to change, for universities’ own self-preservation, said Gordon, of Eastern Washington
  • “We’ve got to be at the leading edge of today and tomorrow,” he said, “rather than the day before.”
Meghan Cureton

Empowering Teachers to Empower Young People - A New Game - Medium - 2 views

  • A person who becomes self-empowered in this way uses her inner powers (her innate capacities) again and again to solve problems — to create opportunities — and to empower others.
  • Being self-empowered — changemaking — requires a sophisticated understanding of the world — an understanding that your wellbeing is inextricably entwined with everyone’s wellbeing. And it means taking responsibility — taking the lead — and collaborating with others to make life better for yourself and family and friends and community and humanity and the planet.
  • Being self-empowered is a way of being. It involves being empathic, thoughtful and creative — being curious, resilient and effective. Becoming self-empowered, then, is a process of finding, using and developing a complex array of changemaking powers.
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  • And for most, the experience of school reflects limited conceptions of the human mind, the human being and human potential.
  • it reinforces compliance and outdated hierarchical power structures.
  • To make these changes, we need pioneering teachers and educators to come together as change leaders — to form collaborative teams — and to execute strategically-focused projects. And to lay the foundations upon which these strategic projects can have massive impact, we need to build a global community of education professionals who are fully committed to self-empowering educators — for self-empowering young people.
Nicole Martin

The Physics of Change - Education Reimagined - Education Reimagined - 0 views

  • institutional inertia seems relatively simple: institutions, organizations, and people tend to remain at rest (i.e. satisfied with the status quo) or in uniform motion (i.e. slightly tweaking the status quo over time), unless that state is changed by an external force (i.e. transformation).
  • “Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace,”
    • Nicole Martin
       
      Great book- recommended by Shayna years ago as well.
  • the gravitational pull of the status quo is so incredibly strong, that escaping it can be a monumental task.
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  • Do you know teachers who claim to be doing PBL but are really doing the same teacher-centered instruction they always have, only with a project (think trifold) thrown in at the end of the year?
  • we fail to notice the ways of thinking and norms that structure the world in which we operate. As a result, we then cannot see the cultural and structural shift needed for these innovative ideas to reach their true potential.
  • the data presented showing that less than 1% of U.S. schools were actually operating in the learner-centered paradigm left me even more convinced that inertia is still winning and the only way to make any realistic change is by being much, much smarter in our approach to positive disruption.
  • earner agency; socially embedded; personalized, relevant, and contextualized; open-walled; and competency-based.
  • three change levers 1) increasing public will, 2) refining public policy, and 3) building proofs of concept—can be a powerful tool to help grow the 1% of learner-centered environments to a potential tipping point, where learner-centered environments are the prevailing approach to education in this country.
  • When more education stakeholders are able to see how learner-centered environments are having positive impacts on children, they are better able to build on this success in their own local context.
Meghan Cureton

School Traditions and Intentions Advancing Student Success | Getting Smart - 0 views

  •  
    Great piece to help facilitate convos about school traditions and intended vs unintended messages they send
Bo Adams

What Is School? - Bright - Medium - 1 views

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    HT @jbrettjacobsen
Bo Adams

Laurene Powell Jobs Commits $50 Million to Create New High Schools - The New York Times - 1 views

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    HT Education Reimagined
T.J. Edwards

Redmond High School's Build-It-Yourself Education - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Bullock and his kitchen-table colleagues wanted to build a program that was loose enough to encourage each student to work in their own way to best suit their own learning. This means that students have great liberty to choose the classes they want, even to show up at class or not, to find a groove of learning they’re comfortable with, and to have their success be measured in terms of proficiency or mastery for the content and skills.
  • weekly podcasts
  • not attending class can have consequences.
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  • There are also safety nets built into the system, including January and June terms, which offer a chance to make up uncompleted work, but also offer the opportunity to pursue some of the many electives the school offers. These range from wilderness preparedness and “remote first aid,” to the science of breadmaking.
  • Teachers at RPA have a tremendous amount of flexibility to design their courses. For example, an ex-policeman teaches history through the lens of his passion, which is the evolution of mobs and gangs in the U.S.; his class is called “mobology.”
  • I commented that this kind of teaching sounded like it involved more individual attention than could be done in traditional public schools. He replied, with a small chuckle, if it would be possible to say it took about 10,000 percent more individual attention.
Bo Adams

Stop telling us it's not about the points | thebloggerina - 1 views

  • If I focused on just learning all of the material instead of playing for points, I would fail.
  • If I learn now, I’m denied a bright future of learning later.
  • Even though I have good grades, my academic confidence is very low.
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  • As far as I know, the people judging our transcript will always win.
  • Instead, I would introduce a system of portfolios to let schools judge your real work and see you as a person, not as an average of numbers and letters.
  • If I had to put a date on when points became my main priority, I would say it was my first day of high school.
  • You could be wondering “Why doesn’t she want to focus on simply learning?” My answer is very easy. No one has time for that. Just as my day is split into 7 periods, so is my time after school. There is only so much I can do and only so much that I can handle.
  • If I learn now, I’m denied a bright future of learning later.
  • When I hear the frustration of my teachers about the desperation students have for points, I feel two things: guilt and a longing to be able to say that I don’t live on points and I fully submerge myself in my subjects. But that possibility seems untouchable, a million miles away.
  •  
    #stuvoice
  •  
    HT @MeghanCureton
T.J. Edwards

Career And Technical Education: Boom Or Bust? : NPR Ed : NPR - 0 views

  • I wouldn't risk my child's [education], even though I know that learning by doing is more powerful than learning with your head alone in school.
    • T.J. Edwards
       
      Huh??!! We have to take some risk to lead transformational change. To say that you are willing to stick with the status quo despite strong evidence that another approach is more powerful is mind boggling to me.
  • Every year, more than 400,000 young people in the top half of their high school class go to college, and eight years later they have not earned either a two- or four-year degree or certificate. So at some point, failure matters. Education reform in pursuit of academic excellence is floundering.
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    "Education reform in pursuit of academic excellence is floundering"
Meghan Cureton

4 Ways to Lead and Create a "Culture of Innovation" From Any Position - The Principal o... - 0 views

  • best learning can happen when we are uncomfortable,
  •  Observe, look, challenge, and wonder about the things on the walls and the learning in the school like it was your first day, every day.
  • Impact one other teacher in your school, and you impact probably a minimum of twenty students (that year only).
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  • Building innovative organizations will take all of us working together. This is not about a “top down” or “bottom up” approach as much as it is about “all hands on deck.” And it is possible.
Bo Adams

Is There a "Future of Work"? - 0 views

  • the speed and scale are going to shock those in education charged with preparing our children for it.
  • Like so many other things that we think of in the future tense, (climate change, surveillance, etc.) the changes in work have already arrived, we just don’t seem to realize it
  • we need to start thinking differently about what it means to be “career ready” (as well as, I suppose, “college ready.”)
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  • Why doesn’t education focus on what humans can do better than the machines and instruments they create?”
  • So, wouldn’t we be better off shifting the emphasis on the work of our teachers away from content and grades and curriculum to mentoring, apprenticeships, making, and discussion?
  • Finally, what role does leadership play in staying abreast of these types of shifts, articulating them to school and community, and in building capacity for those groups to engage in relevant, meaningful conversations around what changes may need to happen?
  • leaders better be building school cultures that learn, constantly.
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    HT @WillRich45
Bo Adams

Our Education System Needs More Architects - of School Redesign - Medium - 0 views

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    HT @MeghanCureton
Bo Adams

Re-Designing American High Schools for the 21st Century | Stanford Social Innovation Re... - 0 views

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    HT Education Reimagined, Pioneering Issue #17
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