student hands of hope

Personalized learning to improve student engagement Though all educators are quick to tell you that schools are about children and meeting their needs, the level of disengagement among kids paints a much bleaker picture. In fact, most students do not describe their schools and classrooms as “child-centered.” The good news is that we are getting better at it. We are learning and growing as an industry and don’t let anyway tell you that schools are not more engaging than they used to be. We’ve come a long way in the past 20 years in giving more learning over to students and providing more time for students to engage with each other. These are good steps for a community of educators that is evolving in positive…

rigor, instructional rigor

The ongoing debate in education about what we want all children to know and be able to do has raged on for decades and leaves us all to question and argue the merits of our current standards, assessments and pacing guides that seem to expect so much of our students and teachers with little regard for whether any of this is really doable. The instructional shifts required by the Common Core Standards (or whatever your state calls them) has contributed to this notion that these core competencies must required of all children and all we have to do is practice them over and over. What rarely surfaces in all this dialogue is the very real issue of foundational skills that must be mastered in order to…

high standards; instructional vision

That ding you just heard was another text or email coming in to a principal who is already overworked and underappreciated as he or she tries to get through the last lunch of the day without having to call an ambulance or calm down an irate parent. It leaves us to wonder how in the world a principal might have the time to set forth an instructional vision and if that vision can somehow, someway mesh with the increasing demands we all feel related to state accountability measures and teacher appraisal. To wrap our arms around these disparate initiatives and bring them together under one unifying vision, a top-notch instructional leader must know the key levers to pull to make it all work. That means…