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Instructional Equity

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Zaretta Hammond is a former classroom English teacher who has been doing instructional design, school coaching, and professional development around the issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching for the past 18 years. She teaches as a lecturer at St. Mary's College's Kalmanovitz School of in Moraga, California.

In addition to consulting and professional development, she has been on staff at national education reform organizations, including the National Equity Project and the former Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC). She has trained instructional coaches in reading development, especially targeted at students of color and English learners. She has also designed national seminars such as the three-day Teaching with A Cultural Eye series for teachers and school leaders. She is regularly invited to present at regional and national conferences. She has authored articles that have appeared in publications such as Phi Delta Kappan.

Along with a focus on culturally responsive teaching, Ms. Hammond has a strong research agenda around literacy, vocabulary development, and equity. She has designed culturally responsive tutor training programs aimed at volunteer reading tutors for a variety of non-profit organizations. She currently designing a literacy program to accelerate low reading skills among high school students. She holds a Masters in Secondary English Education.

She also writes the popular ready4rigor.com blog. Zaretta is the proud parent of two young adult children, both of whom she taught to read before they went to school. She resides in Berkeley, CA with her husband and family.

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Zaretta Hammond: Coaching for Instructional Equity

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In this episode of&nbsp;Talking About Practice,&nbsp;we chat with Zaretta Hammond, the best-selling author of&nbsp;Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain. Zaretta Hammond is a former classroom English teacher who has been doing instructional design, school coaching, and professional development around the issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching&nbsp;for the past 18 years.&nbsp; She teaches as a lecturer at St.

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15 minutes of organizational ideas

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Comprehensible Input

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/13hym17aGS14ryuA7Aiq7ihI0LNCSWKpH/view?usp=sharing

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Keep it focused! 4 buckets for virtual tech

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Keep it focused! 4 buckets for virtual tech

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Check out the sample video lesson!

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In a world turned upside down by COVID-19, many schools are now closed, and some are offering virtual learning. The question I get most often is:

How do we determine which tech tool to use for online schooling?

When thinking about the tsunami of ed-tech recommendations shared lately on social media, less is more. You don't need more tech tools; just do more with the tools you have.

This is not an article about which virtual school tech tools to use. It's about how to assign a job for each of the tech tools in your repertoire. By starting with your learning objectives and considering which tech tool to use to help students access that objective, you can learn to filter the myriad of tech tools in your toolbelt into a workable framework.

To prevent myself and my students from drowning in the rising flood of tech options, I group the technology I use into 4 buckets.

If the tool serves a particular purpose effectively, I consider that bucket close-to-full, so I do not need to collect more tech tools. When a more user-friendly tool becomes available, the previous one is swapped out.

Programs that can fit into one or more of the buckets have a permanent spot in my toolkit. Pre-virtual learning, I only used about six tech tools on a regular basis. Now that I'm entering my 9th week of virtual school, I have added just two more.

The bucket method has helped me filter my tech integration into only what I really need.

Content: What tech tools help make content accessible?

The goal of these apps is to establish comprehensible input so students can learn content. Tech apps in the Content bucket help students learn concepts, master content-specific vocabulary words, and arrive at the essential understandings of a unit.

I only use a few tools to teach content, and the key is that I use them together as a system with the following steps:

1. Google Slides: I start off by creating a presentation that contains limited text and lots of visuals.

2. Edpuzzle: I find a video on Youtube that teaches the unit's content. I use Edpuzzle to embed prompts at key moments in the video. Students are to answer the prompt to proceed to the next part of the video. I embed the Edpuzzle assignment link into the Google Slides, which students have access to.

3. Screencastify: I then present the Google Slides, share my screen and enable my camera to record my face as I record the instructions. This helps make it feel like I am actually there with students. Screencastify can be integrated with Google Classroom or Youtube. Just share the link with students to watch the video.

Create: What tech tools can help students display their thinking?

The goal of these tools is to support comprehensible output. The tech tools in the Create bucket help students engage with content and demonstrate their understanding. A creation tool turns students' thoughts into typed texts and visuals so both they and I can see their ideas. Creation tools help you gather formative data and structure formative assessments.

Though I am listing four creation tool options, I mainly use Google Slides.

Google Slides: I use Google Slides to collect students' writing. Since Google Slides is a presentation creation platform, it allows students to insert photos, icons, and shapes that all can be easily manipulated with greater ease than in Google Doc.

Book Creator: We assigned this as a publishing platform for students' narratives. Students paste in their text written in Google Doc, insert relevant images, and even record themselves reading the text aloud. Students can even read each other's published books.

Buncee: If you're looking for an even more visually appealing creation tool than Google Slides, consider Buncee. It's like the RuPaul version of Google Slides. It's an award-winning platform where teachers and students can collaborate to create a presentation. Buncee comes with an extensive library of icons and stickers. Some stickers are even animated.

Piktochart / Canva: If you want students to create professional-looking infographics, consider Piktochart or Canva. They come with lots of icons and templates to support the design process. For older students, you can use the graph function to visualize data.

Collaborate: What tech tools help teachers and students talk to each other?

Virtual learning cannot consist only of asynchronously watching countless teaching videos. Students need to have time to interact with other students and their teachers. This can be facilitated by online conference platforms. The goal of these collaboration tools is to foster live interaction where students are using their speaking and listening skills. Conferencing restores some of the human element back to virtual schooling.

For the first eight weeks of virtual schooling, I mainly sent instructional videos to students, and we met in small groups weekly. However, the small group meetings were designed more to guide instruction and less to promote student collaboration.

As I move to the final quarter of the school year, which will also be online, I will be structuring learning as collaborative experiences where students come together in groups of two or three to:

I hope that this shift from disseminating information to facilitating collaboration will engage students and more resemble in-person schooling. The collaboration tools I use are:

Google Meet: I can schedule a meeting, assign particular students to the meeting, enable live closed caption, set notifications, and allow students to share their screen.

Zoom: Zoom has the same features as Google Meet. They also both allow for meetings to be recorded and provide a chat feature. Zoom's distinguishing features are its virtual hand raise option and the ability to view all participants' faces at the same time. The corporate version of Zoom also allows for the teacher to facilitate small breakout rooms.

Comments on Google Suit e: All Google apps allow users to leave comments, which is another form of collaboration.

Curate: What tech tools help manage assignments and messages in one central area?

Curation tools are like virtual mailboxes where teachers and students send work and leave comments for each other. Some curation tools are known as learning management systems. They centralize assignments for students and teachers.

Options for curation tools are:

: This is a life-saver of a platform where teachers can send Google Suite products such as Google Slides, Docs, Form, Sheets, and Google Classroom Drawings to students with the option of view only, comment only, or make a copy. It's like a virtual copier. It also organizes work for students in one central location.

Seesaw: This can be used as a virtual portfolio where students display work that can be shared with families.

"Week-at-a-Glance": Each grade in our elementary school now creates a Google Doc that describes the work students have to do each day for an entire week. This helps prevent students from drowning in a flood of links because one document holds all the required links for that week. This demanded extensive planning ahead of time, but families and students alike appreciated this document.

In closing

Did you notice that I only use a handful of tech tools to facilitate virtual school? That's because I doubled up on Google Suite products. For example, Google Slides can be used to teach content, foster collaboration, and be a canvas for capturing thinking.

I encourage you to find ways to optimize each of the tech tools you are familiar with. When we optimize technology this way, we maintain our sanity in addition to that of our students. In these insane times, maybe that's what we need the most.

Afterthought: Filling your buckets

I found the website Online Tools for Teaching and Learning by the University of Massachusetts, and I love it! They have categorized lots of tech tools into their own "buckets". They even go a step further to explain how they rated the platform.

It's worth looking into if you're looking for tools to add to your toolkit. Just make sure to identify which bucket it should go into.

Parris, H., Estrada, L., & Honigsfeld, A. (2016). ESL frontiers: Using technology to enhance instruction for English learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

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#110. 4 Buckets for Virtual School Tech - TanKHuynh

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In a world turned upside down by COVID-19, many schools are now closed, and some are offering virtual learning. The question I get most often is: How do we determine which tech tool to use for online schooling? When thinking about the tsunami of ed-tech recommendations shared lately on social media, less is more.

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Extensive padlet of links

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Mini-films and lessons from the NYT

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26 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity With Students (Published 2017)

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To help teachers make the most of these films, we also provide a grab-bag of teaching ideas, related readings and student activities.

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5-minute films fest

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The changing racial and cultural landscape of America is certainly a much-discussed topic -- some researchers studying U.S. Census data and demographics even say that America could be a "minority majority" country as early as 2050. While the barriers between countries continue to come down, and globalization continues, how can teachers address the needs of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds and upbringings? This collection of videos introduces culturally responsive teaching (CRT), and includes some techniques that you can use to help students from diverse backgrounds succeed together.

Video Playlist: Culturally Responsive Teaching

Watch the first video below, or watch the whole playlist on YouTube.

1. Valerie Purdie-Vaughns on Unintentional Bias (3:04)
In this short video from Big Think, researcher Valerie Purdie-Vaughns explains how bias and assumptions can unconsciously affect the way you act. Although it's geared toward diversity awareness in the workplace, this is a good primer on cultural discrimination.

2. Expanding Teacher Self-Knowledge (1:27)
Since bias is often unconscious, one of the first things a culturally responsive teacher can do is be aware of assumptions about themselves and their students. This quick tip from the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance initiative explains the value of self-reflection.

3. Office Chat: Culturally Responsive Teaching (9:24)
In this interview, Dr. Kavatas Newell, a faculty member at the University of Mary Washington, introduces some initial ways that teachers can incorporate culturally responsive teaching methods into their classrooms. The audio quality here is a bit low, but the tips are worth it.

4. The Danger of a Single Story (19:16)
Author Chimamanda Adichie's amazing TED talk introduces "The Danger of a Single Story." Teaching students of other cultures may require that you look past familiar stories and narratives to find school materials that resonate with your students' experiences and lives.

5. Building Trust With Families (14:12)
Many students from other cultures are English-language Learners (ELL). Although this video is long at 14 minutes, the panel of teachers and principals organized by Colorin Colorado offers great tips for connecting with the families of ELLs.

6. Recognizing Individual Characteristics (1:10)
This quick video, also from the Teaching Tolerance initiative, reminds viewers to respect students' individuality, even as you learn more about cultural differences and introduce more responsive practices into the classroom.

7. Education: Culture Matters (14:25)
This video from the Kamehameha Schools showcases the importance of culturally responsive educational programs. Students from the native Hawaiian population thrive when they learn in programs that incorporate their cultural heritage and traditions.

More Resources on Culturally Responsive Teaching

Whether you've been teaching diverse learners for years, or you're just starting to think about how to incorporate CRT into your classroom, these organizations and articles can help.

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5-Minute Film Festival: Culturally Responsive Teaching | Edutopia

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The changing racial and cultural landscape of America is certainly a much-discussed topic -- some researchers studying U.S. Census data and demographics even say that America could be a "minority majority" country as early as 2050. While the barriers between countries continue to come down, and globalization continues, how can teachers address the needs of students from a variety of cultural backgrounds and upbringings?

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This article on effective co-teaching models is Part 10 of the Collaborating for ELLs Series .

What do you use to carry your belongings from place to place?

My most beloved bag is an Osprey day bag. It's big enough to carry by laptop, ipad, and gym gear. But when I return home to the U.S. during summer breaks, I have two hardcover Samsonite suitcases that can spin a full 360 degrees.

Just like bags and suitcases, co-teaching comes in all shapes and sizes. When co-teaching, remember that form follows function. In this article, I describe several forms of co-teaching and plot them on a continuum to demonstrate how instructional needs shape co-teaching.

What is Co-Teaching?

Co-teaching is when a group of students receive instruction from two or more teachers who have collaborated over the content and method of instruction. We've already covered co-planning extensively in articles - , so this article will focus particularly on the forms of co-teaching.

Honigsfeld and Dove, authors of Collaboration and Co-Teaching: Strategies for English Learners , state that the main goal of co-teaching is, "[to] merge ESL and general-education instruction to increase the time ELLs are exposed to general-education curriculum and thereby strengthen their overall academic achievement" (2010, Kindle location 2489-2490).

The greatest chance that students have for achieving academic success is when their teachers tap into each other's expertise. They can work to structure instruction in a way that maximizes student engagement with the content, with each other, and with the teachers.

Forms of Co-Teaching

After analyzing the University of Virginia's website on forms of co-teaching and the ones presented by Hongisfeld and Dove (2010), I've synthesized the descriptions of the various forms of co-teaching models and have placed them on a collaboration continuum, just like I did previously with the co-planning collaboration continuum .

Successful collaboration depends on the ability of both the content and English language teacher (ELT) to contribute from their expertise. The asset-oriented model of collaboration encourages both educators to lead instruction to all students based on their area of expertise.

It recognizes that content teachers can contribute skills and knowledge that are different from those of the ELTs. This difference in skill sets is highly valued because students need both content knowledge and literacy skills development.

The degree to which both educators are allowed to lead instruction to all students based on their area of expertise.

Some models of co-teaching unintentionally devalue the ELT's expertise, while others see ELTs as equal partners in instructing all students. The following are the descriptions of each form of co-teaching sequenced from least to most collaborative.

Often referred to as the "One teach, One support" model, Lead-Support is essentially a co-teaching model where one teacher leads instruction while the other provides support. Usually, but not always, the lead teacher is the content teacher while the support teacher is ELT. The support comes in the form of working with one EL in particular, taking notes, identifying key content vocabulary, and/or assessing ELs' understanding.

This model doesn't provide the ELT time to instruct all students, however, so the chances of making academic language explicit to everyone are slim to none. In the Lead-Support model, the ELT often feels like an overpaid, over-qualified teaching assistant passively waiting to teach but never actually receiving the opportunity to do so.

I would use this model primarily if the content teacher is resistant to co-teaching. When you have developed a rapport and the content teacher begins to trust and value the ELT, then the ELT can slowly introduce other more collaborative models. Remember that co-teaching is less about the place we stand in the room and more about what we do while we're there.

Sadly, many content teachers think that having an ELT in a class collaboration. But true collaboration only occurs through collaborative planning - not simply by showing up to the classroom.

Lead-Support can be effective during co-planning if:

1. the support is clearly defined and

2. specific students are identified to receive assistance.

For example, a history teacher might want an ELT to work with a Korean Developing EL to help that student understand key vocabulary words for the unit.

However, Lead-Support should not be the only or even the primary form of co-teaching that occurs between content and ELTs.

Team Teaching occurs when two or more teachers are leading instruction at the same time to the same group of students. For example, Mr. D (a history teacher) wanted his students to present in front of the class, but the presentations were time-consuming. During our co-planning, I recommended using a simultaneous presentation model. On the next day, I assumed the role of teaching this model to students.

This form of teaching takes a significant amount of time to co-plan because each teacher has to know which part of instruction they're responsible for. However, this model explicitly values the ELT as an instructor and not an aide. Also, all students are allowed to receive academic language instruction because the ELT is afforded the opportunity to teach.

The only downside to Team Teaching is that there is less differentiation because instruction is given to the entire class at the same time.

Unlike Lead-Support and Team Teaching, Parallel Teaching is the first model on the continuum that organizes students into groups to receive instruction. The content teacher and ELT teach the same content but to different groups.

In Parallel Teaching, ELTs are valued for their expertise in literacy and language development, so they're usually given a group of ELs. The benefit of this approach is that ELs will receive scaffolded instruction based on their language needs.

For example, during Mr. D's history class, we decided to split the class - he took the non-ELs, and I worked with the ELs. We both used Mr. D' presentation on Spanish conquistadores to teach our respective groups, but I modified it to scaffold language for the ELs.

The downside was that they were homogeneously grouped together with other ELs, so the social isolation from proficient English users might have had a negative effect on the ELs' self-image. Additionally, the English proficient students did not receive the instruction of the ELT, so their language skills weren't challenged or extended in the same way.

In Alternative Teaching, the students are separated into two groups. The content teacher teachers the first deepening on their understanding of a particular top. The ELT teaches the second, smaller group, helping them access or relearn the content by reinforcing a concept or providing additional language support.

During Mr. A's science class, I pulled aside a group of ELs to reinforce the basics of the circulatory system while Mr. A taught the nuances to the remaining students.

The only downside to this model is that ELs are often the ones sent to the ELT to receive remediation instruction, and the content teacher is usually the one leading the large group. The difference is often very clear. However, if this model is used to differentiate instruction, then students see both educators as equals - but with different roles.

For example, if the history teacher noticed a group of students needing additional practice in reading graphs, they can be sent to the ELTs for further support.

Students are broken up into groups, which are usually homogenous with ELs in their own groups. The groups rotate between the two teachers who teach different things. For example, Mr. A's once lead an experiment station while I taught students how to communicate their data using a graph.

Alternative Teaching differs from Station Teaching because all students receive instruction from both teachers. The English-proficient students still receive academic language instruction from the ELTs, and the ELs receive content-based instruction from the content teacher.

The last and most collaborative form of co-teaching is Circuit Training. This is when students are (ideally) in heterogeneous language groups and working collaboratively together. Both the content teacher and ELT rotate between the different groups to focus on different things.

The content teacher monitors students' understanding of the content while the ELT supports and extends students' engagement with the tasks and helps them communicate their ideas. The ELTs' expertise and ability to deliver academic language instruction is again affirmed in this, one of my preferred co-teaching models.

For example, when it's time to write a lab report in Mr. A's class, I float around between table groups focusing on helping students write like scientists. Mr. A also shuttles between groups reinforcing the science concepts.

Circuit Teaching works best when students are engaged in project-based learning activities and lends itself to differentiating instruction. The only downside to this method is if ELs are grouped together rather than mixed with English-proficient peers, they can feel more isolated like in the earlier models.

Takeaways

Co-teaching comes in different shapes and sizes. It's highly adaptable and can adjust based on the needs of the students and the receptivity of teachers.
The rainbow of co-teaching models suggests that co-teaching is an academically enriching practice for students and teachers alike.
It intrinsically suggests that both learning and teaching benefit from the involvement of many individuals based on their expertise. As you consider how to integrate the different co-teaching models, remember to consider how collaborative each model is for an ELT and how inclusive it is for ELs. Co-teaching should be an enriching experience, not a socially marginalizing one.
Next Post
In the next post, I'll share a framework for thinking about co-teaching. The framework will help you consider grouping arrangements and offer specific strategies for ELTs as they co-teach.

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#52. The Models of Co-Teaching - ELL Strategies | TanKHuynh

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Explore examples of co-teaching models for ELLs and non-ELLs alike. There are 6 models that content and English language teachers can use when co-teaching.

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Zaretta Hammond's blog

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Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Hey. Thanks for stopping by my blog. You might have found your way here through a number of possible paths. Maybe you heard about my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Or, maybe you typed in www.ready4rigor.com and those shadowy internet puppeteers redirected you here. Maybe you ended up here because you were doing a Google search for culturally responsive teaching practices

Or maybe your school is reading Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain in a book study and you wanted to know more about this Zaretta Hammond chick who wrote it.

It doesn't matter how you got here. What's important is that you and I are now connected.

Since you are an equity-minded educator like me, you are probably waging your own private movement to bust the myths behind student engagement (or the lack of) among low performing students of color, poor students, and English learners.

Well, you are in the right place. This is a blog where we can get answers to our collective and individual questions about how we can help students become confident and competent learners. In this space, I want to highlight what I am learning from being out in schools and classrooms with teachers who are successful with diverse students. I want to focus on how we can take everyday strategies and practices and put them to work in their classrooms to be more culturally responsive.

So, again, welcome!

Just to let you know, on average, I publish a new post every other week - two times per month at the least (sometimes a few more). That gives me time to be in schools and to write. If you don't want to miss updates on what I am seeing and learning, sign up for my newsletter by pushing that button below.

Binge-worthy Posts and Podcasts

Books are good, but sometimes you want your knowledge in bite-sized doses. That's what I like to deliver: consumable, usable, and entertaining food for thought (and action). Here are some of the most popular blog posts and guest podcast interviews to sample.

About Zaretta Hammond

It's funny. These days a lot of folks are calling me "Dr. Hammond" since the book has become required reading in many teacher education programs and school districts. Well, to set the record straight, I am not a PhD. I do have a Master's degree, but I consider myself a "boots on the ground" teacher. I call myself a former writing teacher turned equity freedom fighter. My heart is forever with children and teachers in the classroom, not in an ivory tower, even if these days most of my "students" are new leaders and pre-service teachers. [ A quick note: Not throwing any shade at all the PhDs out there doing the work.]

When I was in the classroom back in the day, I taught composition (expository writing). It was where I started to understand how important literacy was to equity, and how neuroscience and culture should inform our instructional practice.

Since leaving the classroom, I have done work as a curriculum designer and professional developer at organizations such as the National Equity Project and the Annenberg-funded Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) in the San Francisco-Bay Area. I am a trained facilitator in anti-bias processes and have facilitated groups focused on learning to talk about issues of racial politics and privilege.

My primary work has been linking instruction, equity, and literacy. I have spent time as an adjunct instructor at Saint Mary's College in Norther California where I taught Adolescent Literacy and trained tutors and parents in reading support strategies for struggling students of color.

As an undergraduate, I attended University of California, Berkley before finishing up my degree at New York University where I majored in English Literature with a minor in Writing. I completed my Masters in Secondary English Education, with a Concentration in Writing Instruction at University of Colorado, Boulder where I simultaneously did my teacher certification program (starting three months after the birth of my son. I do not recommend this).

For the past 25 years, I've maintained a small, independent education consulting practice from which I do my research and writing as well as support schools doing deep instructionally-focused equity work.

Stay in touch

I hope this blog inspires, motivates, and challenges you to try some new practices that move you toward being more culturally responsive. If it does, send me a note. I'd love to hear from you. The best way to keep in touch with me is to sign up for free email updates (where you get all kinds of exclusive goodies).

Other Ways to Connect

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About - Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain

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Hey. Thanks for stopping by my blog. You might have found your way here through a number of possible paths. Maybe you heard about my book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Or, maybe you typed in www.ready4rigor.com and those shadowy internet puppeteers redirected you here.

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If you enjoyed this episode, you may like these A locksmith tells the story of an act of kindness he committed, hoping for a small reward. That, and other stories of kindness in New York City. We asked listeners to send us their best coincidence stories, and we got more than 1,300 submissions!

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"take the work seriously, but never take yourself too seriously..."

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In September of 2018, I wrote the post " 10 Core Values for Education " based on the "Core Values" of the online shoe company, Zappos.

In this post and podcast, I share something I did that was more focused on following the rules rather than doing what was right for my students, and how creating and discussing our "core values" as a school or district can put us in the position to do what is right by the standards of our "policies," but more importantly, what is right by the students and staff we serve.

When you look at the "10 Core Values" that I have shared, how do those apply to what the world and the world of education is going through right now?

You can check out the full podcast on Apple iTunes, Soundcloud, or Spotify. You can also read the slightly "updated" post below.

As in any profession, educators should be able to look back and think, "Why did I do that?" If you aren't able to do that, there might not have been much growth.

Early in my career, I remember walking into a colleague's classroom first thing in the morning and noticing that her students were eating and had water on their desks. I was seriously dismayed because the school rule was, "There is to be no food or drink in the classroom," and I was not one not to follow the rules. When I shared with her how her ignoring the rules made us all look bad, she shared with me, "It is tough for the kids to learn when they are hungry." I would love to say that I got it then, but I didn't. I was more worried about following the rule than doing what was right by my students because, in all honesty, I thought the rule WAS doing right by my students. I feel differently now.

This all came back to me as I was discussing with a teacher how they were doing something subversive that was in contradiction with the school rules, but it was helping their kids. My stance is that the principle we should follow as educators is the following:

"Do what you can to support the growth and success of your students."

When the rule trumps common sense, the rule is stupid.

But I know that I have always had this need to do right by my boss. I am not the "Ask forgiveness, not permission" type because I don't want to be in that position where I am subversive to my boss and/or my colleagues. I know a lot of teachers like this as well.

So what am I suggesting moving forward? As administrators, we have to look at our policies and "rules" in place within our school and see if they are putting our teachers in a place where we are pushing them to follow the rule over-serving their students.

I love the core values of the shoe company "Zappos" and the preamble before:

At Zappos our 10 Core Values are more than just words, they're a way of life. We know that companies with a strong culture and a higher purpose perform better in the long run. As we continue to grow, we strive to ensure that our culture remains alive and well. Check out our Oath of Employment, which we use to not only highlight our values, but commit to them both as Zappos employees and as a business.

1. Deliver WOW Through Service

2. Embrace and Drive Change

3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

5. Pursue Growth and Learning

6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

8. Do More With Less

9. Be Passionate and Determined

These core values give direction but there is so much flexibility in what each value looks like and how it can be applied to serve their customers.

So perhaps creating these types of "core values" for your school or organization might be something that helps guide while encouraging each individual to do what is best for the people they serve directly. Here are ten that come to my mind when thinking about education:

1. Do what you can to support the growth and success of your students.

2. Grow and learn in a way that you would expect from the students in your classroom.

3. Push your colleagues to grow along with you, but support, collaborate, and empower them on their path.

4. Over-communication is better than under-communication.

5. Take care of yourself so that you can better support others.

6. Find joy in your work.

7. Take the work seriously but never take yourself too seriously.

8. Share your passion with others so we can help students find their passion.

9. Find and develop strengths and talents first of your students and colleagues. Always start in the positive.

10. Don't just value people but also ensure people know they are valued.

What would your core values be for your school or organization? What would they create for your culture and community, and how would they put your staff in a situation where they can always do what is right by their students?

Of course, there are going to be some rules and policies that are needed, but I guess that there are often too many that limit teachers instead of empowering them.

Focusing on these types of "values" helps develop wisdom. It creates cultures where educators are treated as professionals and ensure they do right by those that they serve instead of shifting their focus on what "rules" they need to follow.

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In September of 2018, I wrote the post " 10 Core Values for Education " based on the "Core Values" of the online shoe company, Zappos.

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Comprehensible Output

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Book Creator - Love Learning - Book Creator app

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Teachers love it. Students love it. Book Creator is the simplest, most inclusive way to create content in the classroom.

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Hangout and Conferences

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LMS or virtual mailboxes

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Honigsfeld and Dove

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Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

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Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. Founded in 2011, Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done.

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Respond, Include, Represent: Build Empathy and Engagement with Immigrant Students | GBH Education