I am not a big advocate of movies. I tend to think of them as a 100 plus minute escape from reality. Moreover, movies tend to condition some minds for the oddness that will likely occur in the future. Despite my general disdain of movies, I was recently compelled to watch in its entirety, Bennett […]
More than five years after many states implemented Common Core, the impact on student achievement remains unclear—though some states show small academic gains, with persistent achievement gaps. “Common Core is alive and well” says Adam Ezring, policy director of the Collaborative For Student Success, a nonprofit that supports use of the standards. “While it’s still […]
Burdened by demands to show outcomes and achievement, early education classrooms are often reduced to scripted lessons and meaningless craft work that imparts little learning. In her book The Importance of Being Little (Viking, 2016), Erika Christakis shows how the ever-increasing pressure to deliver has caused teachers to inadvertently stifle children’s natural sense of wonder […]
No matter how cutting-edge the technology or advanced the curriculum, students have a hard time mastering essays and equations if they’re hungry, traumatized or feeling marginalized by a textbook’s inaccurate portrayal of their ethnic group. “If you came to work and hadn’t eaten for a day or two, you wouldn’t be prepared to work” says […]
Students have more time for swings, monkey bars and outdoor games at four Texas elementary schools that have adopted a Finnish model structured around four short recess periods each day. Debbie Rhea, associate dean of research and health sciences at Texas Christian University, created the college’s Let’s Inspire Innovation ‘N Kids (LiiNK) program in 2013 […]
The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need from Grownups Viking Children come into the world hardwired to learn in virtually any setting and about any matter. Yet in today’s preschool and kindergarten classrooms, learning has been reduced to scripted lessons and suspect metrics that too often undervalue a child’s intelligence while overtaxing the […]
Teaching research skills once meant asking students to turn stacks of library books into essays on the poetry of Emily Dickinson or the causes of the Civil War. But today, it’s just as likely to mean asking second-graders to design a museum exhibit on the physics of flight, encouraging a 10th-grader to make the case […]
Schools are the center of the community and when schools are transformed in positive ways, communities are transformed. The continued rise of poverty is not surprising when policies and practices that could contribute to eliminating poverty are not addressed well. The foundation of systematic oppression is rooted in practices that contribute to a system becoming […]
With national attention intensifying on preparing students for college and careers, the nation’s estimated 103,000 school counselors in K12 schools are playing a more critical role in preparing students for life after graduation. When Cory Notestine moved to Alamosa, a southern Colorado town founded by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, he saw many barriers […]
Schools are the center of the community and when schools are transformed in positive ways, communities are transformed. The continued rise of poverty is not surprising when policies and practices that could contribute to eliminating poverty are not addressed well. The foundation of systematic oppression is rooted in practices that contribute to a system becoming […]
