“Isolated examples of professional learning based on individual educator needs are a poor substitute for engaging teachers in ongoing collaborative learning that draws on their expertise to examine student data and design learning agendas that benefit everyone in the school… when teachers or schools have too much control over PD decisions, there tends to not be a shared vision of quality teaching and learning across the district.”
“Practically speaking, high dependence on tuition — as high as 80 to 90 percent — is a good sign that an institution will not likely survive for long… Colleges and universities that are under threat of closure “have a full range of bad choices to make,” she noted: they can lower standards, defer maintenance, create new programs to generate new students or cut unpopular programs that aren't attracting enough students. All of these, she suggested, are terrible ways to save money or bring in new revenue.”
“People engage in this irrational cycle of chronic procrastination because of an inability to manage negative moods around a task… To rewire any habit… In the case of procrastination, we have to find a better reward than avoidance — one that can relieve our challenging feelings in the present moment without causing harm to our future selves.”
“Students need background knowledge about a topic to be able to understand a text about it, and the more background knowledge they have, research has shown, the more likely it is that they will be able to demonstrate the skills that U.S. schools assess. If students have never heard of the game polo, for example, a passage about polo on a test will likely confuse them so much that they flounder when asked to summarize the passage, even if they know how to summarize.”
“Though his oeuvre explores the depths and heights of human existence, here are a few of the major elements curiously absent from the canon of one of the world’s greatest writers… Successful rebellion… Independent women (who stay that way)… Moms… Healthy relationships…”
“Below, five lesson ideas that draw on Times resources to help students navigate the wine-dark seas and discover how the “Odyssey” might speak to their own lives and the world around them.”
“Students don’t do particularly well on standardized tests at The Met… School leaders, though, don’t pay much attention to test scores. Nancy Diaz Bain, a co-director, said she and her colleagues prefer to keep track of state survey data about student engagement, parent feedback about their children’s progress, student behavior, graduation rates and student performance in college courses. When students from The Met take and pass college courses in high school – which all of them do – they not only prove they can handle advanced coursework, they save money on an eventual degree, Diaz Bain said. And the other metrics about student engagement and success persuade school leaders that the model works.”
“The number one safety precaution is a classroom door that can be locked from the inside, and there is little evidence that students going through realistic drills… have any additional benefits.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson