When the administrators at Vestavia Hills High School (AL) were tasked with creating a leadership program, they knew one thing right away. They did not want to develop another program that tapped only the top students and did nothing to engage the rest of the student body. The resulting Youth Leadership program has not only had a positive impact on the school’s culture, but also provided the school’s administrators with several important lessons. In their edWebinar, “Build a Positive School Culture with a Student-Run App,” Kym Prewitt, Leadership Teacher at Vestavia Hills High School, and Whit McGhee, Director of Public Relations at Vestavia Hills City Schools, shared what they learned and how the kids continue to surprise them.
Education research is meant to improve teaching and learning. Since the actual ideas for research are often driven by the interests of the funding sources, though, there’s a potential disconnect between what research schools need versus what they’re getting. When presenting Digital Promise’s new Challenge Map, which explores issues, ideas, and resources for K-12 challenges, Babe Liberman, M.Ed., Research Project Manager for Digital Promise, said the current pipeline means schools are passively waiting for the right research and opportunities to come their way. In the edWebinar “Shaping the Future of Education Research: Digital Promise’s Challenge Map,” Liberman explained the purpose of the Map, how it was created, and how schools can develop their own.
“Every individual should be able to access things that they like,” said Monica Fisher, M.Ed., BCBA/COBA, Director of the Behavior Department at Monarch Center for Autism during an edWebinar. “It is our right to engage in preferred activities, spend time with family, and connect with the community. If there are behaviors that you are seeing in your students with disabilities and challenging behaviors that are limiting these rights, then it is something we need to fix as it can have a long-term impact on their quality of life.” Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), a technological and professional systematic approach, is designed to analyze and change behavior by identifying a behavioral problem, gathering relevant data, and formulating/testing a hypothesis. Fisher said that while ABA is a useful tool for looking at and changing the challenging behaviors of students with autism, it can apply to different parts of everyone’s lives. “ABA is how we have all learned and how our lives are shaped by behavior.”
Teaching to the middle—most teachers don’t want to do it. But when faced with a large class of learners with diverse proficiency, the middle is where many teachers find themselves. Knowing that he wasn’t challenging one-third of his class and teaching over the head of another, Peter Briggs, a music teacher at Lincoln High School (WA), wanted to find a way to manage and support growth for all skill levels. As he explained in the edWebinar, “Developing a Growth Mindset Using Digital Portfolios,” combining a change in his educational approach with the addition of differentiated assignments helped all students raise their performance.
“While we (teachers) are not always comfortable with technology, we need to think about students first and work through our challenges to make things better for them,” said Sharon Plante, Director of Technology for the Southport School, Southport, CT, during a recent edWebinar. She emphasizes that meeting the needs of students with learning disabilities through the use of technology “can make reading instruction a multi-sensory process that is engaging and explicit while maintaining the individualization and diagnostic-prescriptive aspects of the lesson.”
Zero tolerance policies, while trying to keep kids accountable for their actions, often result in suspensions for even minor infractions like dress code violations or being tardy. While these behaviors warrant attention, Fatima Rogers, Principal of Charles W. Henry School, School District of Philadelphia, and Jody Greenblatt, Esq., Deputy of School Climate and Safety, School District of Philadelphia, questioned what their conduct code and other discipline methods actually did to help students. Working with the Committee for Children, they’re piloting a program merging social emotional learning (SEL) and Restorative Practice (RP) in school. Their goal, as explained in the edWebinar, “SEL and Restorative Practices: Schoolwide Integration Strategies,” is to not only give students the emotional toolkit they need but to also provide a behavioral framework that focuses on support over punishment.
In a recent edWebinar, Julie Alspach, Program Administrator, Virtual Learning Academy Consortium (VLAC), and David E. Kanter, Ph.D., Chief Academic Officer, Calvert Education, shined a light on a shift in education. Kanter said that “the goals of education have shifted to create the independent thinkers and creative problem solvers that our world needs, both now and for the future.”
Learning seems like a simple process. The information goes in (encoding), the learner attempts to commit information to memory (storage), and then the learner tries to recall the lesson (access). Even though the ability to recall and apply the knowledge is critical, teachers spend the majority of class time focused on getting the information in. During the edWebinar, “Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning,” Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D., Cognitive Scientist and Founder of RetrievalPractice.org and Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S., Educational Specialist, Veteran Teacher, and Author discussed their research into the benefits of retrieval practice and emphasizing the third step of the learning equation. When educators help students learn how to access their knowledge in low-stakes environments, the presenters said, they help students improve their long-term educational recall and performance.
Of course cyber security is necessary in education. Schools have valuable information to protect for both students and employees. However, as financial and physical security issues arise, cyber security can fall down the list. As Ann McMullan, Project Director, CoSN Empowered Superintendents Program reminded attendees at a recent edWebinar, cyber attacks are increasing in K-12… read more →
Even with the NGSS’s emphasis on engineering, there’s still a feeling that in preschool and kindergarten, teachers shouldn’t place as much emphasis on the E in STEM. While four-year-olds can’t compete with even third graders in engineering, they can learn and benefit from modified lessons. Nia Keith, Director of Professional Development for EiE, Museum of Science, Boston, gave attendees insights into engineering in early education in the edWebinar, “STEM in Early Education: Empowering Problem-Solving.”