When Educators Make Space For Play and Passion, Students Develop Purpose
Harvard education specialist Tony Wagner has been advocating that we reinvent the education system to promote innovation for years. He’s clear that content should no longer be at the center of school....
View ArticleRethinking Data: How to Create a Holistic View of Students
The excerpt below is from “Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes For Every School,” by Mark Barnes and Jennifer Gonzalez. The following is from the chapter entitled, “Hack 10: The 360 Spreadsheet.”Collect...
View ArticleCan Design Thinking Help Schools Find New Solutions to Old Problems?
Principal Kamar Samuels had a problem: how to reach the most disaffected students at Bronx Writing Academy, a middle school serving mostly low-income students. The usual discipline methods weren’t...
View Article6 Storytelling Apps That Get English Language Learners Talking
For English language learners (ELLs) in the classroom, speaking English in front of others — particularly native speakers — can cause tremendous anxiety. In fact, the dread of speaking can actually...
View ArticleWhat If Teachers Took Computation Out of Math Class?
Math proficiency is a subject of a lot of anxiety for school leaders, parents and even national leaders. Employers and educators alike know that math skills are crucial to many of the science,...
View ArticleWhy Making Mistakes Is What Makes Us Human
Many people learn from a young age that making mistakes feels terrible and can be embarrassing. That lesson often gets learned in school. But in her TED Talk, Kathryn Schulz says those terrible...
View ArticlePixar In A Box Teaches Math Through Real Animation Challenges
Pixar senior scientist Tony DeRose was faced with a problem that animators had never solved — how to make the hand of an old man look lifelike. It was 1998 and he was working on the experimental short...
View ArticleIs School For Everyone? Some Say ‘No’
Several years ago, few people who knew Hannah Noblewolf would have thought that she would turn out to be an outgoing, articulate, self-assured young woman who has successfully completed her first year...
View ArticleDoes the Focus on Student Mindsets Let Schools Off the Hook?
It’s hard to be connected to the education field today and not have heard about Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset. The Stanford psychologist has spent her career researching how adult messages...
View ArticleHow to Design a Classroom Built on Inquiry, Openness and Trust
Teachers who are interested in shifting their classrooms often don’t know where to start. It can be overwhelming, frightening, and even discouraging, especially when no one else around you seems to...
View ArticleStudy: Kids’ Math Anxiety Reduced When Learning With Tutors
Math can be as scary as spiders and snakes, at least in the brain of an 8-year-old child. And that early anxiety about dealing with numbers can put a child at a significant disadvantage, not only in...
View ArticleUnderstanding the History and Pervasive Myths Around Autism
In 1938, an Austrian pediatrician named Hans Asperger gave the first public talk on autism in history. Asperger was speaking to an audience of Nazis, and he feared that his patients — children who fell...
View ArticleVideo Demos: How Minorities in Tech Can Inspire Students to Follow
Marcus Robinson comes off as an earnest, competent guy in his explainer videos. He looks like he has a good sense of humor — he might even be a bit of a joker with his friends — but he can also clearly...
View Article‘Lesson Study’ Technique: What Teachers Can Learn From One Another
Jasmine Bankhead needed to figure out a way to improve teaching at her school. It was 2013. She was the new principal of the O’Keeffe School of Excellence, an elementary school on Chicago’s South Side...
View ArticleWhere Do English Language Learners Fit Into the Ed Tech Revolution?
English Language Learners are a growing yet underserved segment of the U.S. student population, and teaching these diverse learners presents teachers with a host of unique and very complex challenges....
View ArticleHow to Incubate Creativity in School Through Making and Discovery
Sixth-grade students at Lighthouse Community Charter in Oakland, California, eagerly pull laptops off a cart and settle down with a partner to experiment with Turtle Art, a program meant to introduce...
View ArticleWhat Would Accountability Without Standardized Tests Look Like?
Standardized tests were introduced during President Lyndon Johnson’s administration to prove the extra funds going to low-income schools were working. As they became more common they helped shine a...
View Article10 Tips For Launching An Inquiry-Based Classroom
Transforming teaching practices is a long, slow road. But increasingly schools and teachers experiencing success are sharing their ideas online and in-person. Science Leadership Academy opened as a...
View ArticleWhat Kinds of Homework Seem to be Most Effective?
If you made it past the headline, you’re likely a student, concerned parent, teacher or, like me, a nerd nostalgist who enjoys basking in the distant glow of Homework Triumphs Past (second-grade report...
View ArticleHow Awareness of Cultural Differences Can Help Underachieving Students
Excerpted from Memory at Work in the Classroom: Strategies to Help Underachieving Students, by Francis Bailey and Ken Pransky. Bailey is the Director of the Teaching English as a Second Language...
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