Albemarle County, Virginia—A snake bit Pam Moran in front of her class on her first day of teaching 40 years ago. Moran, now a superintendent in Virginia, had no one to blame but herself on that fateful day in 1975. Thinking it would be an unconventional way to introduce herself, Moran had brought a garter […]
Ken Montgomery knows what his school looks like to outsiders. "We have people who come in and say, 'Oh, we could never do that,'" says Montgomery, executive director of Design Tech High School, or d.tech for short. But he says looks can be deceiving. The charter school, which opened in 2014 and is authorized by […]
As in years past, this new year will bring all sorts of new technology to schools. The question for educators is: To what degree do these technologies enhance education? "Figuring out which tech belongs in education is just the start" says Kelly J. Calhoun, research director at Gartner Research, a Connecticut-based market analysis firm. "The […]
High-quality instruction in science, math, engineering and technology requires both teaching expertise and content knowledge. Yet, at the elementary school level, many teachers haven’t had specialized education or training in science. At the secondary level, studies show that about 33 percent of middle school math and science teachers and 30 percent of high school chemistry […]
Marc Prensky, an authority on the connection between learning and technology, coined the phrase "digital native" in 2001. In his new book, Education To Better Their World: Unleashing the Power of 21st-Century Kids (2016, Teachers College Press), Prensky says our current education system is wrong for the future—not because we haven't added technology and so-called […]
Facing a ballooning teacher shortage in recent years, Clark County School District in Nevada launched a social media and email recruiting strategy, sending messages to self-identified school teachers over LinkedIn and reaching more than 2.5 million on Facebook. "When you have a staffing crisis, you have to come up with something different to do" says […]
In a perfect world, every child would have access to food, shelter and clothing. They would have loving, attentive parents. They would arrive at school eager, focused and ready to learn. Unfortunately, our pre-K through 5 school, like a growing number of U.S. public schools, does not reside in that world. At Highland View Elementary […]
For centuries now, we have come to believe that there is only one way for students to learn—come to school, sit at a desk, be taught by a teacher, and be tested. We’ve operated schools as if they were industrial factories, with teaching and learning practices that mimic assembly-line and batch-processing manufacturing. But we can […]
High school math classes focus traditionally on solving equations. The world of mathematical modeling emphasizes creating equations. The nonprofit Association of Computational and Mathematical Modeling is developing a free mathematical modeling curriculum that it plans to share with teachers by early 2017. It will show students how to construct equations that solve complex real-world engineering, […]
When only 13 percent of sophomores at the Grandview School District in Washington passed the state math exams six years ago, administrators decided to develop their own curriculum. For instance, leaders had concluded the textbooks they purchased didn't adequately teach fractions and integers, leading to gaps in student learning. Grandview spent about $200,000 to hire […]
