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Years ago, as I shifted toward empowering students, I ask myself the question, "What am I doing for students that they could be doing for themselves?" One of the most glaring answers was assessment. So, I began to incorporate peer assessment and self-assessment.

However, my first attempt at peer feedback was a crash course in what not to do.

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My Epic Fail with Peer Feedback

I had a vision of how the writer's workshop would look. Students would pour over each other's drafts offering statements like, "Have you considered _______?" or "I appreciate the way you ________." They would lean in intently, offer their own thoughts, and jot down a few ideas for next steps. After some back and forth, they would switch roles and engage in the same back and forth feedback process. The feedback would be practical and instant and it would lead to improved clarity in writing and perhaps even better word choice. They might argue over ideas and sharpen their logic and argumentation. The workshop would buzz with excitement, followed by small lulls as students revised their drafts.

I began the class period with a warm-up where students wrote about the value of peer feedback and after a short discussion, I said, "You'll need to find a partner who will read your work and then give you feedback. Take as long as you need. Then you can switch and both of you will find a new partner." I explained that this was how writer's helped one another improve. This was a process professional writers used on a regular basis. They were now part of that larger collective of writers who would help one another improve in their craft.

Ten minutes later, I watched as students wandered around the room. A few students pulled out their phones (and this was pre-smartphone) and texted friends. They talked about football and fashion and tv shows and video games and everything but writing. A few students shot paper football at the ceiling. Gradually, the class moved from a hum to an ear-splitting roar. I quieted them down, instituted a "no moving" rule and added a timer for accountability. Still, it was a waste of a class period.

In second period, the students took the peer feedback process more seriously. I reminded them of the expectations to stay focused on the text and to share feedback. However, the feedback was too nice. It was a lot of, "This is great. It's really good. Have I told you how good it is? Great job." It was cotton candy feedback - vague, amorphous, and overly sweet but ultimately lacking any substance. In third period, students were not giving cotton candy feedback. It was more like giant shards of glass. A few students made comments like, "This sucks. None of your sentences even have periods." Two students refused to talk to each other. Three students were in tears. By lunch time I scrapped the writer's workshop entirely and had students use a checklist for self-assessment instead.

Looking back on it, I wasn't wrong in my vision for quality peer feedback. However, I didn't communicate that vision students. I wanted them to say, "Have you considered ______?" but I didn't provide them with the sentence stems to do so. I wanted students to follow a protocol of listening and asking questions before giving feedback but I didn't share any protocols or create any structures. I wanted the feedback to be practical and useful but I didn't model that for students and I didn't set the parameters for how to give feedback or in how the feedback would be used.

Seven Strategies for Getting the Most Out of Peer Feedback in the Classroom

The following are some strategies you can use as you empower students to own the peer feedback process.

1. Make sure students are beginning with a place of trust.

We live in a world full of unsolicited feedback. Whether it's a snarky comment on a YouTube video or a honking horn from a fellow driver. Incidentally, I learned that folks use their horns way more often in the east coast than they do here in Oregon. I also learned that "bless your heart" is the southern middle finger. These are the fun lessons I've learned in doing PBL workshops around the country.

Sometimes, the feedback we receive is downright toxic. Sometimes it's misinformed. However, sometimes it's the very thing we need in order to grow.

This is why feedback requires trust. Sometimes this trust is relational. Do they have my best interests in mind? Other times, the trust is more about expertise. Do I trust that this person's feedback is actually valid?

When I taught middle school, I noticed that students often struggled to distinguish between critical feedback and insults. For all the stereotypes of middle school mean kid behavior, I actually found that most of my students struggled to provide critical feedback. They worried about insulting their friends and classmates.

About ten years ago, I created a grid to help students with the feedback process:

Here's a video version of this grid as well:

Even now as a professor, I sometimes do a simple survey as a "pulse check" to see how well students trust the members of their group. Here, students fill out an anonymous Google Form. Often, it's an exit slip with 3-5 questions. Here's a sample of the questions I might ask:

On a scale of 1-5, how well does your group trust each other?

On a scale of 1-5, how well do you trust your group members to complete tasks?

Do you feel like you can speak freely and share ideas with your group?

In this case, I'm looking for trust in general and for whether or not they trust each other with tasks and with communication. Other times, questions might connect to conflict resolution or risk-taking. But the goal in each case is to get a pulse check on student trust.

2. Use structures to guide the peer feedback process.

My first writer's workshop had no clear structure. Students weren't sure what they were supposed to do. I was afraid that structure would make things less authentic but the free-for-all led to confusion and chaos. Students spent the whole time chatting or wandering around. Later, I started thinking about feedback in real life. True, there are times when it is unstructured. But if we take a deeper look at the seemingly unstructured peer feedback, we'll notice that it often follows a pattern and a system. A friend asks you for an opinion. You spend time looking at the work. You ask some questions. You give strengths and weaknesses using scripts that you don't even realize are scripts (something like, "I noticed that you _____") and this leads to a conversation and a set of next steps. Even if it doesn't feel like a protocol, we often default into our own feedback protocols informally.

On a more formal level, people sometimes use structures because the limitations of the protocol actually facilitate better feedback. Whether it's an art collective or a corporation, structured protocols can help facilitate better feedback. The following are specific structures you can use as students provide peer feedback:

The 20-Minute Feedback System: This approach begins with one student sharing their work or pitching an idea while the other student actively listens. It has some elements that are similar to critical friends.

Structured Feedback with Sentence Stems: Here, you as a teacher provide specific sentence stems that your students can use to provide diagnostic, clarifying, or critical feedback.

3-2-1 Structure: This is simple. Students provide three strengths, two areas of improvement and one question that they have.

Feedback Carousel: Each group gets a stack of sticky notes and offers anonymous feedback as they move from group to group.

Peer Coaching: Students interview each other about the process, using the coaching questions from the student-teacher conferences to guide them if they struggle to come up with reflection questions.

Mastermind: this is a longer peer feedback structure. I'm actually a member of two different mastermind groups for blogging and one mastermind group for research and dissertation writing.

Rubric: Students use the rubric (or a checklist based on the rubric) to give targeted feedback on how another student is doing.

Note that the 20-minute peer feedback structure is fast.

On the other hand, the Mastermind Structure is slower and allows for a more dynamic give-and-take that can take an entire class period.

In both cases, though, students follow a specific protocol with clearly defined structures. This sense of structure doesn't inhibit authentic feedback. Instead, it facilitates better feedback by setting parameters.

In some cases, it can help to think about peer feedback in rounds. If you're doing a project-based learning unit, you might have stages where you move from more open-ended feedback toward more specific feedback. At first, students might need general feedback but later it can be more targeted.

Students might start out using something like a 20 minute peer feedback process but moving toward something like peer feedback on a rubric toward the end.

3. Explain the purpose of the feedback.

As we think of the larger scope of feedback, it's important for students to know what they are receiving feedback on and why it's important. Last week, I shared the metacognition cycle and the how authentic feedback can help students learn to think about their thinking. As teachers, we sometimes need to make this explicit for students by sharing the following ahead of time:

What type of feedback you will give and receive. Is it about the process or the product? Is it about the accuracy of knowledge? Is it about a particular skill?

The key areas where you want to focus. In writing, it might be feedback on word choice. In a design thinking project, it might be feedback on the research students engage in. In math, it might be feedback on an approach to solving a problem.

What students will do with the feedback. Remind them ahead of time what they will do when they receive feedback. In other words, how will students use the feedback they are giving and receiving?

You might provide students feedback on their ability to use the design thinking process in a project. Or you might provide feedback on their current product so that they can continue to revise and improve it. Students need to know both the parameters of feedback and the rationale. They should have a sense for why they are getting feedback, what type of feedback they are getting, and how they will actually use the feedback to further their learning.

4. Don't allow students to grade one another.

It is critical that peer assessment does not become peer grading. You are the teacher and the expert on the content. While students can benefit from peer feedback, you as the teacher ultimately know their level of mastery best. Peer grading can create unnecessary power dynamics that actually get in the way of meaningful feedback. Consider the role of peer reviews in companies. While most employees enjoy asking for feedback on a specific idea, they hate peer reviews - the biggest reason being that they feel judged and graded by their peers. There's actually a fascinating section about this in the book

If that's the case for adults, we want to avoid that dynamic with students. When students grade one another, the focus shifts from the feedback to the grade. In these moments, students don't actually use the feedback that they receive. This is actually true with teacher feedback as well. In my experience, when I provided a grade with the feedback, my students focused almost entirely on the grade and not on the feedback. This was true for rubrics, for checklists, or for overall grades on things like blog posts or documentaries. Jennifer Gonzalez has an excellent thought-provoking post on this topic. She suggests the following steps:

Write comments on student work and write the grade on the rubric separately

Return just the papers to the students.

Have the students read your feedback and write three observations and two questions based on your feedback

Have the students use the rubric to give themselves a grade.

Conference one-on-one with students and have them share their rubric while you share your rubric with them. This helps clarify any misunderstandings they might have.

Give them a chance to revise their work.

I've actually been using a modified version of this with my current pre-service teachers as they develop their lesson plans and unit plans. As a result, each teacher candidate has a clear sense of what they know, what they don't know, and what they will do to improve without focusing on their final grade.

5. Provide revision time in class.

Often, in education, we value speed and accuracy more than depth and mastery. Students take timed math tests and focus on fluency in reading. They watch the tight time deadlines, knowing that if they fall behind, they'll be seen as slow. I've seen some students struggle with the whole idea of revision because they've rarely needed to revise their work at school. But if we want students to make sense out of feedback, we need to block out time for revision.

This is why I love using project-based learning and design thinking. Both of these frameworks include a section for student revision. This is possible, because they spend less time in direct instruction and they are often learning multiple standards at the same time. Students in a PBL classroom are also assessing as they go rather than stopping to take a multiple choice test. In the process, they gain additional time to focus on making sense out of their feedback and using it to revise their projects. Here, students begin to view revision as an iterative part of the process rather than a punishment for getting things wrong.

It can help to ask your students the question, "What are you going to do with this feedback?" Often, they struggle with this. In their schooling experiences, they have typically received a grade and walked away without thinking much about it. This approach focuses on using feedback in a way that's more self-directed. If students understand the purpose of the feedback, they are better able to make modifications, set goals, and own the learning process. It can help to use the sentence frame, "I plan to use _________ feedback to change __________." Or another option might be, "One valuable piece of feedback is _______. I plan to _________ to improve my __________."

6. Set parameters and expectations for peer feedback.

In the disastrous writer's workshop example I shared earlier, my third period class struggled because they were giving harsh feedback. Some of this had to do with lack of trust. However, I hadn't set expectations for the language we would use in peer feedback. The next time we attempted a writer's workshop, I had the class develop a set of norms, or behavioral expectations for peer feedback. These included the following categories:

Respectful language: What are the types of phrases you want to use? What words or phrases do you want to avoid?

Active listening: What does it mean to listen actively? What does it mean to listen with the goal of understanding? What does active listening "look" like? (Note that it's important we allow students to do this in a culturally responsive way that doesn't require eye contact)

Focused participation: What does focused participation look like? Have students visualize this by stating specific positive behaviors. Have them consider any distractions they might need to look out for ahead of time.

Being prepared: What does it mean to show up to peer feedback fully prepared? Is there work you need to bring? Are there questions you need to have?

Staying on-topic: What do you need to do in order to stay on topic? How do you keep focused on the feedback at hand?

After setting up the norms, you might need to have students review the norms before they meet for feedback. As students begin to internalize the feedback, you might not need to remind them of the norms every single time.

7. Model and practice the peer feedback process.

Great feedback does not always come naturally. It's something that students have to learn through practice. That shouldn't surprise us. Consider how many people you know who are awful at giving or receiving critical feedback. For this reason, you may need to model the process with students. It works best to have a confident student give you feedback and to explain and label each part of the process.

To reduce cognitive load, you might break down a peer feedback protocol and demonstrate the first step, followed by having students practice that step. Then, do the same for the third, fourth, and fifth steps. This helps students solidify the process in their long-term memories. It can also help to have a visual (like a PowerPoint slide or an anchor chart) that students look at as they practice a protocol. While this modeling process can feel slow at first, students quickly learn the protocols and the peer feedback become quicker and smoother. Eventually, students are giving and receiving meaningful feedback and using the feedback to clarify misconceptions, improve their skills, and take their learning to the next level.

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Seven Strategies for Getting the Most Out of Peer Feedback in the Classroom

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Years ago, as I shifted toward empowering students, I ask myself the question, "What am I doing for students that they could be doing for themselves?" One of the most glaring answers was assessment. So,

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Do you remember when you learned how to set goals?

If you have trouble answering that question, you're not alone! Most of us don't spend much time thinking about how we set goals.

In fact, many of us don't even think of goal setting as a skill; rather, it's just something we do without reflecting on it much.

However, goal setting is a practice that operates on a set of specific skills-and luckily, these skills are relatively easy to teach.

As with most skills, it's best to start teaching goal setting early. Although parents are perhaps the best source of skill-building and development for their children, it's vital to have some goal setting material in the school curriculum as well. Learning how to set goals in school and seeing goal setting modeled by peers and teachers is a great way to encourage effective goal setting in children.

This article will explore why goal setting is a great addition to the curriculum from elementary school all the way up to college, and how it can best be incorporated.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free. These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.

A Look at Goal Setting in Education

Setting goals is a vital practice that can benefit anyone with a dream or a vision for their future. Young people who are just starting out on the grand journey of life are at a particularly opportune time to start building their goal setting skills-not only will these skills serve them throughout their lives, but building them now will help them mold their future into one that they desire.

Parents can encourage goal setting in their children-and absolutely should do so-but the importance of this skill justifies its inclusion in our schools' curriculum. The world of education is an excellent place to introduce children to goal setting, lay the foundations for effective goal setting, and begin to practice setting and striving towards personally meaningful goals.

Why is Goal Setting Important for Youth?

Not only will a curriculum that includes instruction in setting goals teach kids the mechanics and techniques of goal setting, but it will also give them early wins and help them develop belief in themselves. Anyone who has worked with children will recognize the importance of self-belief and self-confidence for early life development.

Further, research backs up the effectiveness of goal setting, both for the children themselves and for schools and systems overall (O'Neill, 2000). When teachers practice good goal setting, the benefits for their students are two-fold:

1. The students see effective goal setting modeled, and

2. The school itself is likely to become more effective at facilitating learning.

How Do Children Benefit from Goal Setting?

Aside from helping them believe in themselves and setting them up for success in school, goal setting also benefits children and students in many ways, including:

1. Improving self-image

2. Increasing awareness of one's strengths

3. Increasing awareness of one's weaknesses

4. Providing an experience of success

5. Facilitating effective visualization

6. Clarifying the path ahead

7. Encouraging prioritization

8. Defining reality and separating it from wishful thinking

9. Building responsibility for one's self

10. Improving decision making (Goucher College Office of Student Engagement, n.d.)

These are generic benefits of goal setting that anyone who engages in smart goal setting and striving can attain, but a few of them can be particularly effective for children; for example, the benefits of goal setting for youth include:

Provides direction, which most youths are either seeking or trying to nail down.

Helps children clarify what is important to them and focus on it.

Facilitates more effective decision making through better self-knowledge, direction, and focus.

Allows children to take a more active role in building their own future.

Acts as a powerful motivator by giving children something to hope for and aspire towards.

Gives children a positive experience of achievement and personal satisfaction when they reach a goal.

Assists children in finding a sense of purpose in their lives (The Peak Performance Center, n.d.).

Using Goal Setting Effectively with Kids and Teens: A Look at the Research

According to Education World, there are six key secrets to successful goal setting that you can communicate to your students:

1. Write clear and measurable goals.

2. Create a specific action plan for each goal.

3. Read your goals daily and visualize yourself accomplishing them.

4. Reflect on your progress to see if you are on target.

5. Revise your action plans if needed.

6. Celebrate your accomplishments.

The research on this topic provides some extra tips and tricks for maximizing the effectiveness of goal setting curricula:

Set upper and lower limits on students' goals to teach realistic goal setting (they can always be removed later).

Use games to teach goal setting in a context with low pressure and high engagement.

Hold one-on-one goal-setting conferences with students to give them individual attention and help them learn to assess goal difficulty (Schunk, 1990).

Encourage students to write down their goals rather than simply creating them and leaving them floating around their mind (Matthews, 2015).

Make extensive use of models (teachers and/or peers) in the classroom to show students how it works.

Teach effective goal setting strategies (like setting SMART goals) to increase the likelihood of success and provide feedback on student progress.

Provide direct instruction on goal setting and include instruction on self-evaluation.

Provide instruction on effective learning strategies in general, as students will need these broader skills to build their goal-setting abilities (Schunk, 2003).

How to Best Teach Goal Setting to Students

If you're looking for some concrete examples of the best ways to teach your students' goal setting, you've come to the right place. Read on for lesson plans, exercises, activities, and examples.

Examples of Goal Setting for Teachers

The Children's Center for Psychiatry, Psychology, and Related Services provide five great examples-one per each aspect of the SMART goal setting method -that teachers can use to teach their students about setting SMART goals:

A Lesson Plan for Teachers

There are tons of lesson plans available to help teachers incorporate goal-setting into their curriculum. Here is a popular and widely-used lesson plan outlined below.

Growth Mindset Goal Setting Lesson Plan

This lesson plan from Mindset Works is intended to meet one important objective: Students will (learn how to) set growth mindset learning goals.

The objective will be met through guiding students as they:

You'll need the following materials to implement this lesson plan:

Goal Setting Template (found here)

Assignment list(s) with scores

Recent rubrics (holistic or analytic) that have feedback from a teacher

Recent reports from benchmark tests

Examples of their own work that the student has produced over time

The lesson plan outlines three mini-lessons, each with their own activity:

1. Mini-Lesson 1: Setting a Goal
Activity 1: Goal Setting

2. Mini-Lesson 2: Creating an Action Plan
Activity 2: Action Planning

3. Mini-Lesson 3: Reflection on Progress
Activity 3: Reflecting

Click here to see this lesson plan and download it for your use in your classroom.

4 Goal Setting Worksheets and Templates (PDF)

Templates and worksheets are a must-have for teachers going over goal setting in the classroom. Use the four listed below to help your students learn about and practice effective goal setting.

1. Goal Execution Plan

The Goal Execution Plan template is an excellent resource for older students due to the considerations it includes and the level of detail.

It includes space for up to three goals, with six steps per goal, and provides the following columns for each step:

Goals and Action Steps

Date Start

Responsible (who is responsible for it)

Starting Metrics (metrics measure goal progress-this is the starting point for these measures)

Budget (if any)

Notes

Final Metrics (endpoint for the measures of goal progress)

Date End

You may not need all of these columns, but it's helpful to have prompts to think deeply about each goal. You can find the template here.

2. Student Goal Setting Worksheet

This worksheet is quick and simple, making it a great choice for young children.

The Student Goal Setting Worksheet has space for the student's name and the current date, then poses these five prompts:

1. I am good at...

2. I am bad at...

3. What I will improve?

4. How will I make these improvements?

5. If my plan doesn't work, what will I do?

Working through this activity will help them start thinking about what goal setting is as well as what direction they'd like to go with their goals.

You will likely need to walk your students through these prompts, so be prepared to provide assistance as needed. You can find the worksheet here.

3. Simple Goal Setting Worksheet

This is another simple worksheet-as the name implies-that can be used with younger or older students to help them figure out the basics of setting and working towards their goals.

The worksheet provides space for students to answer the following prompts:

If you use this worksheet with younger students, you might need to help guide them through it or provide examples, but older students should have no trouble completing it on their own.

You can find the worksheet at this link.

4. SMART Goal Setting Worksheet

If you want to focus your students on setting SMART goals, this worksheet is a great choice. It's a bit more involved than the previous worksheets, making it more suitable for high school students than younger students.

Here's the gist of the worksheet:

1. What is the goal?

2. Why is the goal important?

3. SMART goal checklist:

1. S - Specific - Is the goal clearly written, with no ambivalence? Is it clear who needs to accomplish the goal, and any support they might expect?

2. M - Measurable - Does the goal answer the questions of how many, how much, and/or how often?

3. A - Achievable - Can you get the support needed to achieve the goal by the target date? Do you have all the resources needed to achieve the goal? Are the results expected realistic?

4. R - Relevant - Does the goal make a difference in your career? Is it going to make an improvement in your personal life? Is it going to significantly make a difference to your business/academic career?

5. T - Time-Bound - Does the goal state a clear and specific completion date?

4. List potential problems that might keep you from completing your goal.

5. Goal Completion Date.

At the bottom of the worksheet, there is space to list up to 7 action items and determine when they need to be completed by.

Click here to see this worksheet and download it for your classroom.

2 PPTs to use in the Classroom

If you want some ready-made positive psychology PowerPoint presentations (PPTs) that you can use in your classroom or as templates for putting your own unique spin on goal setting, these slideshows are a good place to start:

A Look at Goal Setting in Elementary and Middle School

Goal setting is a bit trickier in elementary and middle school than in high school. Younger children generally need a bit more guidance and supervision when setting and striving towards goals, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a shot!

Use the games, worksheets, and activities below to teach goal setting to your elementary and middle school students.

5 Games and Worksheets for Elementary Students (PDF)

1. Pressure Cooker

This game is a great way to get your elementary students to use their critical thinking skills.

It was designed to:

It takes only 15 to 20 minutes to play, keeping it within the attention span of the average elementary school student. You can have up to seven players.

Here's what you'll need to play:

A long rope (around 7 meters)

One numbered spot marker per player

A stopwatch

Here's how the game works:

In advance, lay a long rope on the floor/ground to form a large circle.

Collect and number as many spot markers as you have people in your group.

Randomly distribute the numbered spot markers inside the circle.

Ask each person to stand on top of one of the spot markers.

When ready, instruct each individual to move to and touch every other spot in the ascending order of the numbers.

For example, the person standing on spot #8 will move to 9, 10, 11 and 12 (presuming there are 12 people in the group,) before moving

to 1, 2, 3 through to 8.

As soon as an individual has touched all of the spot-markers and returns to their own, they will exit the circle.

Challenge your group to perform this task as accurately and as fast as possible.

Furthermore, challenge your group to solve this problem without stepping outside of the (roped) circle or touching any other person in the process (touching elsewhere within the circle is permitted.)

Encourage your group to make as many attempts as possible within a specified time period, aiming to improve their performance with each attempt.

Allow ample time for planning and problem-solving.

Click here to download the activity sheet and see popular variations on the game.

2. Cat on Yer Head

This silly game was designed to work with crowds and can accommodate medium to large groups.

The benefits of this game include:

It only takes 2 to 5 minutes to play, making it an excellent warm-up game. All you'll need to play is some balloons and a stopwatch to keep track of time.

To play the game, follow these instructions:

1. Choose or invite two volunteers seated in opposing corners of the room.

2. Nominate one of these people to be the Cat, and the other person to be the Mouse.

3. Announce that the Cat and the Mouse will soon move positions very quickly.

4. To help identify where the Cat (or Mouse) is at any time, they must say the word "CAT" (or "MOUSE") loudly over and over.

5. The Cat and Mouse move whenever the person with it taps any person close to them on the shoulder.

6. Practice this calling and tapping movement for 5 to 10 seconds to gauge understanding.

7. Remind your group that both the Cat and the Mouse can be moved around the audience in any direction, at any time.

8. Announce that the Cat has 30 seconds to catch (tag) the person with the Mouse.

9. When ready, call "GO."

10. If the Cat catches the Mouse before the time expires, the Cat wins.

11. If the Mouse survives for 30 seconds, the Mouse wins.

12. Play several rounds and/or try a variation.

If you'd like to give this game a shot with your students, click here for the full game description and more information.

3. Longest Shadow

This is a quick problem-solving game that requires nothing but the sun! It's good for up to 7 players and only takes 5 to 10 minutes to play.

Why would you choose the Longest Shadow?

1. It's simple to set up.

2. It inspires creativity.

3. It fosters collaboration.

4. It requires no props!

Here's how the game works:

1. Invite your group outside on a bright, sunny day within a wide open space.

2. Challenge your group to work together to position themselves in a manner that casts the longest shadow possible.

3. Each group starts with their shadow touching a common starting line.

4. To heighten the challenge and govern fair-play:

1. The shadow must be one continuous line (i.e., all shadows must be connected); and

2. Only bodies may be used to cast a shadow (i.e., no clothing or other props).

5. Allow the group to have as many attempts as possible within 10 minutes.

6. Measure and record the longest shadow.

To see the full game description and learn about popular variations of this game, click here.

4. Paper Holding

This fun and easy game is great for small groups and facilitates team-building.

You might want to try this game if you're looking for something that:

1. Is an innovative challenge.

2. Fosters cooperation.

3. Inspires creativity.

4. Is very playful and fun!

It takes only 5 to 10 minutes to play and all you need is some paper.

Follow these steps to play the Paper Holding game:

1. Form into teams of three to five people.

2. By way of demonstration, ask two people from a team to volunteer and hold one sheet of paper between the palms of one of their hands.

3. Each team is challenged to assist two of their group members to hold as many pieces of paper
off the ground by using only their bodies.

4. To guide fair play, announce that:

1. Only one sheet of paper can be affixed between any two body parts.

2. No adhesives can be used to hold paper to one's body.

3. Folding the paper is not permitted.

4. Each sheet of paper must be in contact with both team members.

5. No two sheets of paper can be touching.

5. Distribute sheets of paper to each team, and announce "GO."

6. Allow up to 10 minutes and survey the results.

If you want to play this game with your students, you can find more information by clicking here.

Click here to see more games you can use to help students learn about and practice goal setting and goal striving.

5. My Goals Worksheet

It's not as fun as the games described above, but this worksheet is a great way for your students to practice identifying and planning for their goals.

It only requires them to set two goals and gives them ample room to write them down (although they may need your help with this).

After they have identified two goals, they answer the following prompts for each of them:

This goal is important because...

Steps I'll take to reach this goal are...

It's simple, easy, and won't take more than 10 minutes or so, making it an excellent addition to the goal-setting curriculum either before or after one of the games above.

You can find the worksheet here.

8 Goal Setting Activities for Middle School Students (Incl. Worksheets)

If you're a teacher of middle schoolers (or anyone else that interacts with several middle schoolers on a regular basis), these activities and worksheets will provide you with plenty of options for adding goal-setting into the curriculum.

1. Make a Family Bucket List

Making a bucket list is a great way to set goals, and this activity involves the whole family in the goal-setting practice. It's a great way to both model goal setting and encourage your children to practice it themselves, all at once.

Here's how to do it:

Get your family together and collect a piece of paper and some markers.

As a family, brainstorm a list of accomplishments, experiences, or achievement goals that you want to work towards as a family over the next year.

At the end of the year, look back over your list and see what you've accomplished. Celebrate the goals you accomplished as a family.

Encourage your children to use online tools like Trello or Evernote to help create this bucket list and/or to create one for themselves.

2. Draw a Wheel of Fortune

The wheel of fortune is a fun way to introduce goal setting in different areas of life. It will show your children that you don't need to keep your goals limited to school or work, you can set goals in all life domains.

Follow these steps to create and use a wheel of fortune:

1. Draw a circle and divide it into even segments (like you're cutting a pizza into slices).

2. On each segment, write one of the important life domains; for example, you might write "Family," "Friends," "School/Work," "Hobbies," "Health," and "Fun."

3. For each domain, have your child write out the goals she would like to accomplish. Make sure she keeps the goals to a specific timeline (e.g., a month, 3 months, a year).

Make sure to help her keep track of her progress throughout the timeline you chose.

3. Create a Vision Board

Vision boards are a great way to plan out your goals, especially the big ones that are especially meaningful to you. Helping your children or students create a vision board will challenge them, get them thinking about what is most important to them, and encourage them to stay motivated in striving towards their goals.

Here's how to create an effective vision board:

Gather some old magazines (you can also draw pictures, use newspapers, print out some pictures, etc.) and have your students cut out some pictures that represent their hopes and dreams for the future.

Help your students arrange the pictures on a piece of cardboard and use glue to secure them in place. You can also provide glitter, stickers, ribbons, markers, and anything else they might like to decorate their vision board with.

Ask your students to describe what each picture represents and how he or she plans to work toward that goal. If your class is too large or you have some shy students, ask them to write it down instead of sharing it out to the group.

Send them home with their vision board or hang it somewhere in the classroom if there's space for all of them.

4. Play 3 Stars and a Wish

This is a fun and easy game that you can play with your students or your children to help them start thinking about their goals.

It's a simple activity with simple rules:

1. Ask your students or children to come up with three "stars," or things that they do well. The sky is the limit for this activity-the thing they're good at can be anything from a subject in school to a quality that makes him or her a good friend.

2. Now that they have their three stars, tell them to come up with a "wish" to complement their stars; the wish should be something that the children need to work on or would like to get better at. Again, they are only limited by their imagination. They can pick any goal, as long as it is meaningful and important to them.

This activity will not only help them come up with important goals, but it will also help them develop the self-belief they need to succeed.

5. Ask Fun Questions

Asking questions is a great way to get your children or students thinking about what is important to them, what they'd like to achieve or accomplish, and how they can get there.

There are tons of fun questions out there, but here are a couple of examples to get you started:

Ask your students "What would you do if you won the lottery?" or "If you had a superpower, how would you use it?"

Listen to their answers and encourage them to be detailed.

Discuss how they can take their fate into their own hands by making a plan to achieve the hopes, goals, and dreams they identified in their answers.

Continue the discussion as often as you can to make sure they are still thinking about their long-term goals and actively planning ways to reach them.

6. Interest Maps

Interest maps are best for older students, so you may want to save this for upper middle school or junior high students.

Here's how to help your children or students create an interest map:

1. Ask your students to think about what they like to do. Do they like art? Science? Writing? Sports? Have them think about all of their interests and favorite things to do, and write them down.

2. Help them look through their list of interests and see if they can find any patterns; for example, maybe most of their interests involve helping other people or being outside.

3. Have them create an interest map by creating a web of circles and filling them in with their interests in a way that makes sense (e.g., similar interests by one another).

4. Based on their interest map, assist them in creating goals that are relevant and meaningful to them.

This activity will help your students learn more about themselves, which is a vital prerequisite to setting good goals.

7. New Year Reflections and Resolutions

Middle-school-age children will likely have a grasp of the ritual that is setting New Year's resolutions. They will also be at an age where they are demonstrating more agency and preferences in regards to their studies and extracurricular activities.

Making a ritual out of setting New Year's resolutions not only serves as a great opportunity to set goals, but it provides an opportunity to encourage children to reflect on the challenges and triumphs of the previous year, fostering gratitude and a sense of accomplishment.

To facilitate this activity, ask your child to reflect on some of the following questions:

What are you most proud of having achieved in the past year?

What do you think you could have done better in the past year?

What's something you felt particularly passionate about in the past year?

What new goal would you like to accomplish in the new year?

What's a behavior you'd like to stop in the new year?

What's a behavior you'd like to start doing in the new year?

What's something new you'd like to try in the new year?

This is a great exercise to do together as a family. This way, you as the adult can also describe your reflections and set new goals in your personal or professional life. This will allow you to set an example for your kids, who may wish to set goals regarding their schooling, sports, or other extracurricular activities.

For a range of useful worksheets to help your child set goals for the new year, take a look at the templates available at Charts4Kids.com.

8. My Goals Worksheet

This worksheet is an effective tool for encouraging children to think more about their goals and plan on how to meet them.

At the top of the worksheet, there is a box for them to identify their goal and a box to note the target date for completion of their goal.

Next, they are asked to identify three actions that will allow them to reach their goal. These should be relevant and realistic actions that will lead them to completing their goal by their target date.

At the bottom, there is space to explain how they will know they've reached their goal (e.g., what will it look like when they achieve their goal, what the outcome will be). Plus, they are prompted to come up with two things that will help them stick to working towards their goal (e.g., an encouraging friend, a motivating thought).

To see this worksheet or download it for use in your classroom, click here.

Goal Setting for High School Students

At the high school level, goal setting gets a bit easier to teach, but not necessarily easier to learn and implement for the students! High school brings with it all kinds of distractions that can make setting good goals a challenge.

5 Activities and Worksheets for High School Students (PDF)

Use the activities and worksheets described below to help your older students navigate effective goal setting.

1. Smarties Warm-Up Activity

You can use this activity to get students warmed up and ready to think about goal setting. All you'll need is two rolls of Smarties candies (or a similar round, stackable candy) per student and 5 minutes.

The students' task is to stack as many Smarties as they can in one vertical column in one minute-but they can only use one hand. Before they begin, have them set a goal for themselves by estimating the number of Smarties they think they'll be able to stack.

Start the timer and have the students start stacking! Once the timer hits one minute, instruct your students to stop stacking and count up their candy.

Next, you'll guide them through the scoring guidelines:

The Smarties must be standing 5 seconds after the time ends to count.

If the goal is NOT reached, each candy stacked is worth 5 points.

If the goal IS reached, each candy stacked is worth 10 points up to the goal, and 5 points for each additional candy stacked over the goal.

For example, say a student sets a goal of 15 Smarties stacked.

If the student stacked 10 Smarties, they would score 5 points per candy for a total of 50 points.

If the student stacked 15 Smarties, they would score 10 points per candy for a total of 150 points.

If the student stacked 18 Smarties, they would score 10 points per candy up to 15 (150 points) and 5 points per candy up to 18 (15 points) for a total of 165 points.

Have the students calculate their score then determine who stacked the most candies and who had the highest score-due to the scoring, this may not be the same person. Discuss any unusual approaches students used, if any.

See more activities and a full lesson plan on setting goals with high schoolers here.

2. Action for Goals Worksheet

This worksheet is a great reminder for students that setting goals on its own won't get you anywhere-you need to set mini goals and identify action steps on the way to your larger goal.

The worksheet provides an example of a larger goal and the mini goals and action steps that will lead to it:

Overall Goal: I will learn to play a musical instrument proficiently in 5 years.

1. I will determine which instrument I would like to play.

2. I will find a tutor/teacher and begin taking lessons weekly.

3. I will practice daily for 60 minutes.

Using this as a template, students are given the space to write down four goals and come up with 3 mini goals or action steps per goal and provided with these instructions: " In each box below, state a goal that is important to you and then identify the mini goals/action statements needed."

Completing this worksheet will help your students get in the right frame of mind for goal setting and goal striving, and keep them cognizant of the effort required to actually meet their goals after setting them.

You can find this worksheet at this link.

3. My Goals Worksheet

The My Goals worksheet is a good way to help your students figure out what their goals are and refine them into ones that are relevant, meaningful, and motivating.

Here's how it works:

There are 4 boxes on the worksheet:

Healthy Living

Finance

Friendships

Work or School

These boxes surround one oval marked "Me."

Students are instructed to "Describe your needs in each of the following categories below; from those needs, determine what good goal statements would be. In the middle box, describe yourself."

Good goal setting requires healthy reflection and an understanding of who we are and what we want, which this activity is sure to help your students build upon.

View, download, or print the My Goals worksheet by clicking here.

4. Rate Yourself Worksheet

Another great activity to try before setting goals is to rate yourself on your need for goal setting in each life domain-in other words, to determine how much you are in need of improvement in each area.

This worksheet provides you with an easy way to get your students to rate themselves in 12 different life domains. The instructions at the top state:

" Before setting goals for yourself, determine where the need is by completing the scale below. Once completed, prioritize them from greatest to least need."

The scale given to students for their use in rating is as follows:

1. Very Dissatisfied

2. Somewhat Dissatisfied

3. Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied

4. Somewhat Satisfied

5. Very Satisfied

The 12 domains listed for students to rate their need are:

1. Money

2. Family Relationships

3. Friends and Relationships

4. Fitness

5. Diet

6. Career or School

7. Social Life

8. Spirituality

9. Sense of Belonging

10. Hobbies / Sports

11. Knowledge

12. Other

To use this worksheet with your high schoolers, follow this link.

5. Goal Setting: Learning from the Past

It's also important to think about your past goals and taking inventory of what went well, what didn't, and any other lessons learned. This worksheet can guide your students through that process.

It opens with an explanation of why it's an important practice:

"Before setting new goals, it's important to look back to previous goals you have set and learn from them. Analyze why you reached those goals or why you didn't reach those goals."

Next, the worksheet presents several questions and prompts to help the user think it through:

Be ready to help your students with useful prompts or examples in case they need help, and discuss their answers with them after they've completed the activity.

Click here to see this worksheet.

Goal Setting for College Students

By the time students reach college, they are generally at least somewhat familiar with goal setting techniques and have a minimum level of competence in setting effective goals; however, that doesn't mean they have no work left to do!

Goal setting and striving are made up of a set of skills that can be increased and enhanced throughout life-there is no maximum level of skill one can have in setting good goals.

9 Activities and Games for College Students

The activities and games described here can help you give your college students the push they need to further develop their goal-setting skills.

Goal Setting for the First-Time College Student

This is a great activity for new college students, as it shows them the importance of setting good goals and planning to achieve them.

Here's how to get your new students thinking critically about their goals:

1. Ask them to answer the questions in this activity as profoundly and honestly as they can.

2. Instruct them to think of at least categories of life goals:

1. Relationships with other people (family, friends, work relationships)

2. Work or career goals

3. Other personal achievement activity goals (hobbies, travel, athletics, etc.)

3. Have them take a few moments to visualize what their life would be like if it was perfect.

4. Hand out six 3 x 5 index cards to each student and have them number them 1 through 6.

5. Allow one minute for Part 1:
On the first card, have your students answer this prompt: "How do you want to spend the rest of your life? Make a list of activities and goals for the rest of your life."

6. Allow one minute for Part 2:
On the second card, have them answer this prompt: "What do you want to do the next 5 to 10 years? Again, list activities and goals."

7. Allow one minute for Part 3:
On the third card, have them answer this prompt: "If you had six months to live, how would you spend it? List activities and goals."

8. Allow one minute for Part 4:
Have them go over the first three cards and add or delete any item that has come to mind since the beginning of the exercise.

9. Allow one minute for Part 5:
Card 4, line 1: Have your students select the goal or activity from card one that they most desire to achieve and write it there.

10. Allow one minute for Part 6:
Card 4, line 2: Have your students select the goal or activity from card two that they most desire to achieve and write it there.

11. Allow one minute for Part 7:
Card 4, line 3: Have your students select the goal or activity from card three that they most desire to achieve and write it there.

12. Allow three minutes for Part 8:
On card 6, have your students write as many things as they could do in the next 7 days to further the goals they wrote down on card 4. This part isn't about feasibility, but creativity and comprehensiveness, so tell them not to worry about how possible or likely these things are yet.

13. Allow one minute for Part 9:
Instruct your students to scratch out any item on card 5 that they don't actually intend to do or think they can't do.

14. Allow one minute for Part 10:
Have your students choose three items from card 5 that they will do in the next 7 days and write them down on card 6.

To further the goal-setting practice, you can share the worksheet at the end of this activity with your students.

It poses 8 prompts for students to answer:

1. My long-range goals to complete in the next 2-3 years are:

2. Steps I need to take to achieve these (long-range) goals are:

3. My mid-range goals to complete in the next 1 year are:

4. Steps I need to take to achieve these (mid-range) goals are:

5. My short-range goals to complete by the first day of the semester are:

6. Steps I need to take to achieve these (short-range) goals are:

7. My immediate goals for the next month are:

8. Steps I need to take to achieve these (immediate) goals are:

To see this activity and the worksheet attached to it, click here.

8 Activities to Think About Goal Setting

This list of activities to help students think about goal setting comes from the Supporting Transition and Education through Planning and Partnerships (STEPP) Program, a program designed to help students with learning disabilities succeed in college. It's not just helpful for students with learning disabilities though-the activities can be helpful for anyone who wants to improve their goal setting skills.

The activities include:

1. Thinking About You - What qualities do you like most about yourself? What qualities would you like to improve?

2. Thinking About Others - What qualities do you admire in others (i.e., qualities you see in specific people, and/or those you admire in general)?

3. Values - Identify your top 5 values. What is most important to you? Why?

4. Strengths vs. Weaknesses - What are you good at? What is difficult for you?

5. Likes vs. Dislikes - Identify things you strongly like and dislike (e.g., places, activities, classes, foods, events, people, etc.). Why do you like/dislike these?

6. Super-You - Imagine you are a superhero? What would your superpower be? What would your "kryptonite" (vulnerability) be?

7. Back to the Future - Picture yourself 5 years from today and consider where you would like to be, who you would like to be with, and what you would like to be doing. Then ask the same questions for 10, 20, and even 50 years down the road.

8. Pushing Up Daisies - Imagine that you have passed away at the age of 100, and someone close to you is about to give the eulogy at your memorial service. What do you most want them to say about you?

These 8 activities will give your students a great head start on thinking about their goals and how they plan to reach them.

Click here to see these 8 activities and other helpful tips and tricks on goal setting for college students.

Recommended Books on the Topic

To learn more about goal setting for children and students, check out these six popular books on the subject:

My Happy Place: A Children's Self-Reflection and Personal Growth Journal with Creative Exercises, Fun Activities, Inspirational Quotes, Gratitude, Dreaming, Goal Setting, Coloring In, and Much More - Sheleen Lepar and Helene Pam (Amazon)

Future Lady Boss: Goal Setting Journal - Suzie Luv (Amazon)

Student Achievement Goal Setting: Using Data to Improve Teaching and Learning - Leslie Grant and James Stronge (Amazon)

Every Kid's Guide to Goals: How to Choose, Set, and Achieve Goals That Matter to You - Karleen Tauszik (Amazon)

Levi's Great & Wonderful Life: A Child's Story About Overcoming Fears, Setting Goals, & Achieving Success Through Visualization - Brandon Vannoy (Amazon)

My Simple Book of Goals: Goal-Setting Journal for Youth - Alicia Hadley (Amazon)

Then we have an additional article where we take an in-depth look at the best goal-setting books.

3 Recommended Videos

If you don't have time to read a full book at the moment but want a little more knowledge about goal setting for children, give these four videos a try:

Setting Goals - McMasterUTV

CashVille Kidz Episode 11: Goal & Goal Setting - CashVilleKidz

Goal Setting Growth Mindset - Michelle Turner

A Take-Home Message

In this piece, we described goal setting for children, explained why it's important, and provided some resources to help you teach your children or students about goal setting.

I hope you found this piece helpful and that you have some ideas about how to encourage successful goal setting and striving in your children or students.

What are your thoughts on goal setting for children? Does it need to be approached in a different way than goal setting for adults? How do you think it's best to get started? Let us know in the comments section!

Thanks for reading, and happy goal setting!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don't forget to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free.

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42 Goal Setting Activities for Students & Kids (+ PDF)

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Learning how to set goals in school and role model the right behaviors that can encourage effective goal setting by students and kids.

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As K-12 schools increasingly recognize the importance of social-emotional learning, many schools are trying to help kids cultivate a "growth mindset." What does that mean?

According to Carol Dweck, the Stanford University professor who coined the phrase, having a growth mindset means believing that your basic qualities - like how smart you are or whether you're good at math - are things you can change, through your own efforts and help from others. In her pathbreaking 2006 book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success," Dweck contrasted this with a "fixed" mindset, which is best summed up as "you have it or you don't."

The difference matters. Research has shown that kids with a growth mindset embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks and learn from their mistakes. They feel a greater sense of control over their lives and become more motivated. All of that translates to an academic impact: For instance, one 2021 report from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that students identified as having a strong growth mindset scored significantly higher on all subjects than those who believed their intelligence was fixed.

Dweck and other researchers have found that simply teaching kids about growth mindset can help them develop it, and that can have a direct impact on their achievement. Schools have taken note and attempted to help kids see effort as the path to ability. But several common missteps have been identified over the years.

What Schools Teach About Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

If you believe that intelligence, skill and strength are fixed, then every test, every project and every sporting event feels like an invitation to prove your greatness or reveal your deficiency. There's no third option. With a fixed mindset, if you have to work hard, it means you're not smart. You can't admit to a misstep, let alone learn from it. The worry about being found lacking is constant. These kids, says Laura Markham, author of "Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids," "would rather [you] think they're smart, but just not trying, than think they're not smart."

With a growth mindset, kids see the goal as development, not perfection, and can ditch this binary thinking, says Kristin Smith Alvarez, who has seen growth mindset coaching in action in dozens of schools as a teacher educator in the San Francisco Unified School District. When teachers cultivate a "culture of error," she says, with "that tone in the room of, 'We are here to make mistakes as learners,'" kids who face setbacks say things like, "I don't know it ... yet' and 'I'm a work in progress.'"

How Adults Can Help Kids Develop Growth Mindset

We all slip in and out of the two mindsets. To help kids get in a growth mindset more of the time, Sean Talamas, the executive director of Character Lab, a nonprofit that connects researchers and educators to improve students' well-being, says in some ways, "It's probably easier to think about the things you should try to avoid than the things to do."

The first no-no seems unrelated: Don't be overbearing. Experiments show that when adults step in to take over a challenging task, kids are more likely to give up sooner on the next one. Why? If you swoop in to help, you imply they're not capable.

Parents often send hidden messages like this. "Without realizing it, we evaluate kids constantly," Markham says. Even if it's positive - e.g., "you're a natural" or "you're so smart" - our assessment transmits a fixed mindset. Alvarez says compliments should avoid communicating, "You have fixed traits that I like" and instead commend specific aspects of performance, with a focus on hard work, practice, problem solving and persistence.

When kids whiz through a task, she recommends saying, "Let's get you some problems that will challenge you so you can continue to build and get stronger!"

Modeling is essential. Alvarez recently watched a teacher realize she'd made a phonics error in front of the class. "She used it as an opportunity to say, 'Look, I made a mistake here. We are all learning and growing.'" At home, parents can do the same by sharing stories about setbacks at work and saying things like, "I'm not great at navigating Snapchat yet, because I haven't put time into learning the features."

Growth Mindset Activities

Beyond shifting their own behavior, teachers and other adults can try a few kid-friendly activities.

Read kids stories about characters learning from failure and persisting through challenges, like "Rosie Revere, Engineer," suggests Markham. Tell them stumbling is part of the learning process. Markham says to let kids know they're supposed to feel challenged, and it's OK to be uncomfortable. The goal is to eschew what Character Lab calls "the myth of the lazy genius" and glamorize striving instead.

Alvarez agrees that the trick is making challenge desirable. Make sure kids know that another student's work product is like an island that's the top of an underwater mountain, she says. Ask them what invisible effort could have gone into a peer's achievement to help kids avoid thinking of others as naturally more talented. It loops them back to "yet," she says: "It's a simple three-letter word, but it really does shift that power of possibility and interrupts the narrative of 'I'm not good at it.'"

In one study, supported by Character Lab, ninth graders who spent 15-20 minutes writing about a failure and how it changed them for the better - or a success story and what they did to make it happen - demonstrated greater academic persistence and got better grades. The effect lasted for weeks before fading. Alvarez says even young kids can engage in this sort of reflection exercise to get a persistence and resilience boost.

Common Pitfalls of Growth Mindset

But watch out for a few ways growth mindset coaching can go wrong.

First, you can't fake it. Alvarez says she'll have elementary educators come in who believe deeply in the concept of growth mindset for their students, but then say, "I'm not a math person." Markham sees the same thing in the way parents talk about themselves: "I messed that up" or "I'm just not good at tennis."

"Parents and educators that don't themselves have a growth mindset but are trying to follow a script to try and promote it, I think can be ... more harmful than helpful," Talamas says.

And it's easy to miss the mark on the "hard work" piece. Parents sometimes say, "You worked so hard" when the kid didn't.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there are limits to how much hard work is healthy. Researchers warn that growth mindset messaging can contribute to "grind culture" in high-achieving schools. Talamas makes a related point: Kids often need to stop and try a different tack, and they should be encouraged to ask for input when needed. Markham says, "This is where it's an art and not a science." Let them problem-solve and build up a frustration tolerance, but provide enough support so they don't get to "the point where they throw it across the room," she says.

J. Luke Wood, a professor of education at San Diego State University, says growth mindset assumes that children have a baseline level of confidence in their ability, "and what you find is that with students of color, many of them have never heard someone say, 'You are intelligent, you are capable.'" In fact, the reverse may be true. They don't see themselves reflected in positions of power in the wider world the way white children do. And in schools, Wood's ongoing research confirms what other studies have long established: Black students are forced to grapple with an assumption of academic inferiority. Knowing this, he says, "You can validate the effort that they put in, their perseverance, but you also have to give them that life-giving message" that they are capable.

Wood says parents and educators should aim for a combo-message - expressing faith in children's effort and their ability - with any student who may feel marginalized, including kids with disabilities, English-language learners and girls in STEM classes.

Finally, context is important, especially for disadvantaged students. Growth mindset coaching can send the message, "If you haven't done as well, it's because you haven't worked as hard," Wood says. But some kids have more resources and support systems than others. And there isn't equity in the opportunity to work hard academically when some kids have to commute two hours to school, work a job or take care of siblings. Wood sees a danger of sending "a myth-of-meritocracy, bootstrapping message."

Navigating these concerns is easier if adults also embrace a growth mindset. Think of stumbles in your own messaging as opportunities to grow. If you keep at it, pretty soon you'll have kids who react to a challenge that way, too.

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How to Instill a 'Growth Mindset in Kids

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As K-12 schools increasingly recognize the importance of social-emotional learning, many schools are trying to help kids cultivate a "growth mindset." What does that mean? According to Carol Dweck, the Stanford University professor who coined the phrase, having a growth mindset means believing that your basic qualities - like how smart you are or whether you're good at math - are things you can change, through your own efforts and help from others.

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How to Provide Better Feedback Through Rubrics - ASCD

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A rubric is an evaluation tool consisting of a set of criteria, a fixed scale (e.g., 4-point, 7-point), and descriptors that distinguish the differences in the levels of the scale (Arter & McTighe, 2001). The term has its origins in the Latin word rubrica meaning “red earth” or colored soil used to

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Sarah McKibben is the digital managing editor of Educational Leadership.Learn More

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Retrieval Practice: One Minute to Better Student Learning - ASCD

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We put a lot of information into our students’ heads. But are they retaining it? Pooja Agarwal—a cognitive scientist, founder of RetrievalPractice.org, and coauthor of Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2019)—says retrieval practice, which can be done in as a little as

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After spending so long teaching children sitting in rows, facing the front, during the pandemic, it wouldn't be a surprise if some of us had forgotten just how powerful group work can be.

Often teachers find the idea of pupils sitting quietly and working independently more appealing than the noise and activity that comes from group work - not least because we are forever being told that we should be trying to cut down on the distractions that can create excessive cognitive load.

However, we may not need to worry about that quite as much as we might think. In a 2011 study, Femke Kirschner and colleagues show that "the collective working memory effect" means that collaborative learning is likely to be more effective than individual learning when the complexity of the learning material is high.

In other words, when the task is particularly tricky, with multiple aspects and chunks of information, more heads can be better than one.
More on teaching and learning:
But, despite these benefits, there is still a time and a place for group work, as a 2019 study by Jimmy Zambrano and colleagues shows.

The researchers set out to determine whether learning in groups is still more effective than individual learning when you take prior knowledge into account. They found that when learners have gaps in their knowledge, collaborative learning is likely to be more effective than individual learning. In this instance, the prior knowledge of one pupil can fill the gap of another.

How teachers can make the most of group work

However, the reverse is true when pupils have the complete prior knowledge needed for a task - in this scenario, individual learning is more likely to be superior to collaborative learning.

So, when planning group work, teachers must first ask themselves if the task is complex enough to warrant collaborative thinking, and then consider the knowledge that each pupil will bring to the task.

If pupils have the prerequisite knowledge and understanding to achieve success individually, then a collaborative task may not be the best choice, as pupils will not need the input from each other - unless the task is particularly complex.

But if you know that pupils' prior knowledge will have gaps, and in different areas, then a collaborative task is likely to be much more effective than leaving pupils to toil over the task on their own.

In this case, it is important to choose collaborative tasks in which success relies on pupils contributing in different ways, filling each other's gaps in prior knowledge, effectively cutting down the load on the collective working memory.

Overall, the key takeaway is that if a task is broad and differentiated, with gaps here and there for different pupils, then collaborative learning is likely to be rich and rewarding.

There are, though, nuances to consider around this.

There will always be children who sit in a group, panicked, feeling unable to contribute because of the large gaps in their knowledge. To mitigate against this, teachers could give these children a preliminary task around specific knowledge that will then support them to contribute.

Equally, we shouldn't throw any pupils into collaborative group work without giving them instructions on how to collaborate effectively and manage shared thinking. This includes how to capture and evaluate each other's ideas, as well as how to take turns and listen to each other.

If we can do that, then we will help children to develop abilities that will prove valuable not just in group tasks but throughout their lives.
Beth Budden is an assistant headteacher at John Ball Primary School, in south-east London, and a PhD candidate at IOE/UCL. She blogs at bethbudden@wordpress.com and tweets @bethbudden

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After spending so long teaching children sitting in rows, facing the front, during the pandemic, it wouldn't be a surprise if some of us had forgotten just how powerful group work can be.

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EDUCATION WEEK

September 22, 2021

By Alfie Kohn

I often urge noneducators to ponder the versatility and resilience that have been asked of teachers during the pandemic. Just think about all that's required to sustain relationships with, let alone educate, dozens of students who have been reduced to so many squares on a screen. And consider how the long-awaited transition back to actual schools presents challenges of its own.

The return to in-person teaching coincides with the twenty-fifth anniversary of my book Beyond Discipline, which I originally described, only half in jest, as a modest attempt to overthrow the entire field of classroom management. What led me to say that - and to write the book in the first place - was how often teachers are encouraged to control their students rather than to consult them and support them. That disturbing fact is hardly new, but it becomes newly relevant now that schools have reopened their doors.

Like a mutating virus, the programs peddled to teachers back in the 1990s, including one called Assertive Discipline, have mostly given way to newer variants with names like Class Dojo and Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). But they, too, consist largely of Skinnerian manipulation; their approach is still more "doing to" than "working with." Sometimes children, or whole classes, are even pitted against each other in a race for artificial distinctions.

These strategies reflect another unfortunate continuity over the last 25 years: how the field of classroom management, with its focus on methods, promotes the tacit acceptance of problematic goals. When we're led to look for "effective" strategies without asking what exactly that word means, the default objective is less likely to be about promoting students' social, ethical, and intellectual development than simply getting them to do whatever they're told. That was true in 1996, when teachers were advised to train students as if they were pets by dropping marbles into a jar, a step to receiving a reward for following directions. And it's true in 2021 when teachers are told to monitor students on an app and award points for obedience.

During the last quarter-century, there has been some welcome scrutiny of the political, economic, and racial implications of discipline, including the macho "zero tolerance" fad - a rebranding and intensification of punitive tactics that, it turned out, actually made schools less safe.

But a different kind of political consideration has often gone unnoticed: Newer initiatives dedicated to instilling in students a " growth mindset," self-regulation, grit, resilience, and mindfulness are ways of fixing individuals rather than addressing systemic problems. Small wonder that efforts to help students adapt to the existing rules and structures - and to become more productive at whatever tasks they're told to do - have often proved more popular with adults than challenges to rethink one's curriculum or pedagogy and the power hierarchy.

Similarly, well-meaning efforts to emphasize the importance of social and emotional learning are sometimes used to enforce the Protestant work ethic rather than to foster, say, curiosity and empathy. As Val Gillies, a British sociologist, observed, the "acknowledgment that pupils are emotional beings" has become just a way "to better manage them."

In a 1996 commentary in Education Week, I urged educators not to be seduced by programs that, in an effort to appear enlightened, describe their brand of discipline as "cooperative" or infused with "dignity" or "love and logic" even though they just offer slightly different versions of carrots and sticks intended to make children obey. I also warned that even if a noxious program disappeared tomorrow, a new one would pop up like the next Kleenex in the box if teachers failed to question the underlying assumptions of classroom management itself, notably its dim view of children (and, by extension, human nature) and its consequent prescription for control.

But when we are willing to ask the root questions, a qualitatively different kind of classroom comes into focus. It's based on two things: constructing caring classroom (and school) communities, and giving students more say, individually and collectively, about what they're doing.

Since I wrote my book, a profusion of psychological research has confirmed the benefits of - and offered strategies for providing - what has been called autonomy support. This concept, derived from a branch of psychology called self-determination theory, focuses on meeting a fundamental human need to experience a sense of agency. In a school setting, teachers who offer autonomy support take pains to minimize coercion (including the sugarcoated kind) and give students chances to make meaningful decisions, which include constructing possibilities rather than just selecting items from a menu.

Research shows that doing so is beneficial for students' overall well-being as well as their enjoyment of school, their motivation to learn, and their academic success. Psychologists have also explored reasons that some teachers seem resistant to creating such classrooms and have suggested strategies for supporting them in moving past their focus on compliance.

Resources on the subject of community, meanwhile, emphasize the advantages of helping teachers to think less about "managing" students and more about creating supportive relationships with each one and fostering connections among students so they come to feel part of an "us." The idea is to shift from asking "How can I get these kids to do what I tell them?" to "What do these kids need? How can I help them to meet those needs?" The classrooms that result - mercifully devoid of bribe-and-threat behavior management systems - aren't just more respectful (and pleasant!) but are also characterized by more impressive academic learning.

It recently occurred to me that some children who were in elementary school when I first offered this critique may today be back in schools - as teachers. My hope is that the places to which their students return this fall are less like traditional classrooms than democratic learning communities.

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The Case Against Classroom Management . . . a Quarter-Century Later

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EDUCATION WEEK September 22, 2021 By Alfie Kohn I often urge noneducators to ponder the versatility and resilience that have been asked of teachers during the pandemic. Just think about all that's required to sustain relationships with, let alone educate, dozens of students who have been reduced to so many squares on a screen.

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In the study, researchers asked 39 novice and expert teachers-school leaders and mentors in charge of training new teachers-to watch video clips of a high school classroom. In each video, an educator could be observed giving instructions or walking through the class while students worked. During each video, a disruptive event would occur, ranging from students talking loudly to students refusing to participate in the lesson. The teachers in the study provided feedback on the events in the classroom, critiqued the observed teacher's own classroom management strategies, and offered their own solutions.

Here's how expert teachers approached classroom management-plus six teacher-tested strategies to make changes in your own classroom this year.

SEEING THE BIG PICTURE

While both novice and expert teachers relied on reactive strategies to address student misbehavior-for example, by giving a reprimand like "Eyes on me!" if students were being disruptive-expert teachers were far more likely to consider how proactive strategies could have prevented the misbehavior in the first place.

New teachers tended to view classroom management narrowly, as a way to respond directly to disciplinary problems, while expert teachers had a "more comprehensive understanding of classroom management and its complexity," the researchers found-conceiving of discipline in the broader context of how lessons were organized and executed, how clearly the teacher communicated expectations, and even how the physical environment was arranged.

SEEKING ROOT CAUSES

Expert teachers were more adept at interpreting the causes and influences behind student behavior. If students weren't paying attention, for example, inexperienced teachers were more likely to focus solely on correcting behavior, while expert teachers entertained the idea that the behaviors were situational and sought strategies to improve the learning environment to short-circuit future disruptions.

Compared with novice teachers, experienced teachers tended to have a "more elaborate and interconnected" understanding of student misbehavior, forming a holistic picture of their students.

STRIKING THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN AUTHORITY AND AUTONOMY

Establishing a set of rules and then demanding compliance doesn't work, especially with older students. Eventually, expert teachers come to see the classroom as an ecosystem involving a delicate balance between teacher authority and student autonomy. "They viewed student behavior in the context of teacher behavior, thinking about reasons and solutions" instead of overemphasizing "order and discipline."

Sometimes when students act out they are merely exhibiting normal, healthy developmental behaviors. For the most experienced teachers, a healthy classroom is one in which students are allowed some reasonable leeway in their behaviors and are taught how to think of others and regulate themselves.

FINDING YOUR PLACE AND TONE

All teachers made efforts to monitor the room, but expert teachers were more proficient, often because they also had greater positional awareness, making sure that they occupied locations where students-and student work-would be in view. For example, one teacher noted that he frequently "walks through the rows and looks at what they (students) are doing"-a common strategy to ensure that students are on task when doing independent work.

Expert teachers were also mindful of how their body language, facial expressions, presence, and ability to control their own emotions affected the emotional state of their students.

"Emotions are contagious, and when a teacher is able to model a calm presence through their tone, facial expression, and posture, students are less likely to react defensively," writes Lori Desautels, a professor of education at Butler University. Work to project enthusiasm, and try to keep cool if at all possible.

GETTING ADAPTIVE

"Successful classroom management requires the adaptive application of a repertoire of different strategies," the researchers explain. If a student is acting out because they're having a bad day, that's going to require a different approach than if they're frustrated by the difficulty of a lesson or are confused by the instructions-researchers discovered that the latter issues account for 20 percent of classroom misbehavior, according to a separate 2018 study.

As teachers become more experienced, they undergo a "shift in perspective" from "seeing parts versus seeing the whole," the researchers report. While novice teachers relied more on routines and consequences, essentially following a script when it came to managing students' behavior, expert teachers had "adaptive expertise" that allowed them to draw from a variety of strategies depending on the context.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

1. Plan your environment. Your classroom plays a key role in shaping the behavior of your students. A 2018 study, for example, found that heavily decorated classrooms made it harder for students to focus on a lesson, leading to off-task or disruptive behavior. While certain visual elements of the classroom can support learning-anchor charts, maps, images of role models, and displays of student work, for example-an overabundance of decorations can overstimulate.

Seating plans also matter: A 2012 study found that students were three times more likely to be disruptive if they chose their own seat rather than being assigned one. If you're going to offer seating choice-many teachers say it ultimately improves classroom behavior-consider doing so only situationally, and provide clear rules to let students know the consequences of frequent misbehavior.

2. Co-create norms. A common classroom management mistake is to display a list of rules and expect compliance. It can be more productive to have a conversation with your students about the reasons why rules exist, and then produce a set of governing principles by consensus. In California, high school English teacher David Tow instills a sense of shared responsibility and ownership over the classroom's civility by co-creating classroom norms with his students. Together, they identify guidelines like being respectful of others, and then they evaluate the guidelines' feasibility throughout the year, discarding the ones that don't seem valuable, meaningful, or useful.
Conscious Teaching
3. It's not one size fits all. Find ways to measure the size of the problem, and respond accordingly. When a student misbehaves, Grace Dearborn, a high school teacher and the author of Conscious Classroom Management, has developed a series of tiered choices framed "as consequences, not punishments" to give students more autonomy. For example, low-level misbehavior might receive a "gentle" response, such as using nonverbal hand signals to encourage students to pay attention, or Dearborn might try "drive-by discipline," like saying the child's name quickly to disrupt the behavior without getting drawn into a bigger battle.

Consequences are clear to the students and increase in intensity if the misbehavior persists: Students may be asked to change seats or take a time-out to reflect on their actions. Ultimately, the most severe consequences-detention or a meeting with parents-are used if the student's behavior doesn't change.

4. Consider what's unspoken. Nonverbal communication like eye contact, body language, and even how you position yourself in the room has an impact on student behavior.

"Presence is crucial to maintaining classroom management and to effective delivery of instruction, and it's a skill we can develop with effort," explains Sol Henik, a high school teacher. Develop your teaching presence-you can record yourself while you're teaching or solicit advice from trusted colleagues-circulate in areas where you can see and be seen, and make productive use of eye contact, not as a tool for surveillance but as a way to connect with your students, project confidence and accessibility, and build rapport.

5. Relationships, relationships, relationships. Ultimately, classroom management begins and ends with strong relationships. A 2018 study found that greeting students at the door set a positive tone for the rest of the day-for example, dramatically improving academic engagement and behavior. Another study concluded that engaging in prosocial activities throughout the school year-such as regular check-ins or morning meetings-can reduce disruptions by up to 75 percent.

Finally, learning a little about students' personal lives through get-to-know-you surveys and identity activities can provide insights into the root causes of behavior. Students can draw their own "identity portraits" to share both visible and invisible details about themselves, like religion, ethnicity, or the hobbies they enjoy. You can also use writing prompts like "What inspires you?" or "What dreams do you have for after high school?" to mine information you can use to deepen relationships and connect classroom lessons to students' interests.

6. Pick your battles (but do battle when you have to). Students who are frequently the target of negative attention-being called out if they're not paying attention or are chatting with another student, for example-are more likely to become disengaged and apathetic, which leads to more behavioral issues in the future, according to a 2016 study. Don't try to fix all misbehavior in your classroom-pick your battles, avoid escalating the situation if you can, and remember that the most effective classroom management strategies are based on building relationships and increasing engagement with the content.

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How Novice and Expert Teachers Approach Classroom Management Differently

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In the study, researchers asked 39 novice and expert teachers-school leaders and mentors in charge of training new teachers-to watch video clips of a high school classroom. In each video, an educator could be observed giving instructions or walking through the class while students worked.

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Providing Rich Educational Experiences for All Students

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With proper scaffolds, students with learning differences benefit greatly from challenging opportunities like project-based learning.

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After months of remote and hybrid instruction, many teachers have become accomplished technology users, leveraging sophisticated tech tools to facilitate learning both in and out of the classroom. But like any area of expertise, there are always smart ways to sharpen skills, streamline workloads, and increase accessibility.

We combed through dozens of tweets and how-to videos from educators to build a lean list of teacher-tested tips focused on getting more from your everyday tech tools. While social media can tend to feel like an #edtech firehose, it can also be a rich resource-especially once you home in on teachers curating useful advice they've learned on the job.

Here are seven standout teacher-sourced tech tips:

1. Present Google Slides With Live Captions
To boost accessibility in Google Slides, try switching on automatic captioning, which displays the speaker's words alongside each slide. After entering presentation mode, hover your cursor in the bottom left corner of your screen to bring up the menu. Click the three dots, then select Captions preferences, and Toggle captions (English only). Google will listen as you present and transcribe your words as you speak. Tip courtesy of@jessicaradams.

2. Magnify Your Caption Size in Youtube
When playing a Youtube video in class, it might be difficult for all students to see and read the captions clearly, but this simple trick eliminates the problem: After selecting closed captions, simply press the + (plus) key on your keyboard to increase the text size. Pressing the - (minus) key decreases the text size. Tip courtesy of@tonyvincent.

3. Teach Organization With Interactive Checklists
Checklists can help build students' organizational skills, allowing them to monitor multistep tasks or track progress on complex projects. Click on the Checklist icon in the toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+9 (Command+Shift+9 on a Mac). Be sure to show students how to check off completed items or tasks by clicking the displayed box on the left, which updates the line with a strikethrough. Tip courtesy of@jessicaradams.

4. Quit Endless Scrolling
No more scrolling down to page 158. A new feature in Google Chrome makes it possible to send readers directly to a specific section in a text.

On a PC, highlight the section you want students to read within a text, right-click and select "copy link to highlight." On a Mac, click your trackpad and the Ctrl button on your keyboard at the same time then select "copy link to highlight."

This generates a URL ending in a # symbol, which you can then share with others. Upon visiting the new URL, readers are taken directly to the highlighted portion. Tip courtesy of@mr_stitzel.

5. Keep Your Documents Pristine
Eliminate the possibility of students or colleagues inadvertently typing directly in your document by granting users access only after they make their own copy to work in. First, make sure you've shared your document as either "anyone with the link" or "public." Next, click the URL in the search bar and replace the word edit at the end of the URL with the word copy. Then click enter (or return on a Mac) and you're all set! Share this new URL and it will force users to make a copy of the document prior to opening it. Tip courtesy of @tonyvincent.

6. Liven Up Google Forms With Audio
Have a hunch your Google Forms could be a bit more engaging? The application Mote allows users to add audio to questions or answers. While you can use the app for free on a limited basis-there's a 20-motes-per-month cap and 30 second recording time limit for each entry when used for free-the ability to access additional features requires paying a fee.

Once the app is installed, the Mote icon will appear when creating a new question. Tapping the icon once will begin recording audio instantly and when you've completed the message, click the Done button. You can then click anywhere else on the page and Mote will create a clickable voice note card that can be listened to immediately. Tip courtesy of@edtechwithlisa.

7. Eliminate Distractions From Youtube
Youtube can be a powerful tool for teaching and learning, but using it in the classroom can be a bit of a gamble, with ads popping up and distracting video suggestions lining the page. Adding a simple hyphen to the Youtube link, so that youtube appears as yout-ube, solves this problem, allowing students to view content on the site without interruptions. Tip courtesy of@tonyvincent.

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After months of remote and hybrid instruction, many teachers have become accomplished technology users, leveraging sophisticated tech tools to facilitate learning both in and out of the classroom. But like any area of expertise, there are always smart ways to sharpen skills, streamline workloads, and increase accessibility.

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How to Give Positive Feedback to Students (With Examples From Teachers)

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Are you interested in helping your students embrace mistakes and learn from them? Read our tips (with examples!) for how to give positive feedback.

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Empowering Students to Own the Assessment Process

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Many educators believe that group work and collaborative learning are effective in academically and linguistically heterogeneous classrooms, and the evidence for the academic and social benefits of these instructional strategies is substantial (Sharan, 1990; Slavin, 1983). Too few educators, however

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When students have a say on behavior expectations or how to demonstrate their learning, they can help create a positive, engaging classroom culture.

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What Are The Best Graphic Organizers For Promoting Critical Thinking?

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Graphic organizers allow students to visualize, order, and categorize concepts using verbal representations & visuals.

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Most educators are familiar with Think-Pair-Share, a popular technique used to ask questions in class and promote peer collaboration and communication. Yet, as with all classroom practices, it can be executed in a number of ways-some more successful than others.

We highly encourage weaving Think-Pair-Share into your regular classroom routine for all ages. But to do it well, keep the following in mind.

Don't Skimp on the "Think"

One of the biggest challenges to implementing Think-Pair-Share is making sure to not skimp on think. When you pose a question to your class, the first impulse for students will be to turn and talk to a peer, skipping the thinking stage. Ensuring that ample think time is provided before the pair and share steps take place can prevent this impulse.

During thinking time, students can write down their initial responses and engage in necessary retrieval practice-recalling information from long-term memory without any notes or support to make the memory stronger and more accessible in the future. But retrieval practice requires each student to recall information individually. If students are asked to recall information in pairs or groups, some students will miss out on the chance to strengthen their memory of the material. It can also be difficult to gauge whether an individual student recalled the information correctly themselves or is relaying something said by a peer.

Think time prepares students so that when they do talk to their partner, they have something to share, potentially adding another factor: think, pair, compare, and share.

When Pairing, Listen

Make certain that during the pair and share stages,students listen attentively to their talk partners. Students can be tagged "A" and "B" (for example, by the alphabetical order of their names) so that when the teacher tells the "A" students to talk, "B" students listen and then switch. A particularly powerful way of making students accountable for listening to their peers is to make it clear that they are likely to be asked to report to the class what their partner said ("Emily, can you tell us what Sarah told you?").

The response from the peer partner during the pair discussion might prompt students to add further points that they didn't include in their original answer or add depth to existing points. Pair time also provides students with a safe space to discover if their answers and thoughts align with their partner's or to discuss any questions they may have. This can be a powerful method for activating students as learning resources for one another in the classroom. And it provides the chance for students to rehearse the vocabulary that they will use in reporting back to the class.

Listening requires effort, attention, and time. Teachers should actively support student listening, as it's often an underrated element of Think-Pair-Share. In order to learn from each other, students have to listen to each other.

When Sharing, Pause

After the pair discussions have taken place, students share their thinking with the rest of the class. To further boost student confidence before whole-class discussion, award praise to students when walking around the classroom listening to conversations and individual responses, so students feel excited later to share with the whole class. Although overpraising students is ineffective, confirming to students that what they have said is worth sharing with the class is likely to make students more willing to share their ideas, and boost their confidence.

To start group discussion, the teacher can "" a term coined by Doug Lemov, for picking a student at random to answer a question. By this point, the students will have had the chance to recall information independently and rehearse their answer with their partner, making them more likely to be ready for wider discussion.

The teacher can then provide "response time"-at least several seconds-for students to listen and reflect on what others have said. This response time allows for further thinking, before students share their reactions, responses, and elaborations.

After an appropriate interval, a particularly useful technique is "Add. Build. Challenge." or "ABC" for short. Is there anything else that could be added? Can you build on that answer? Does anyone want to challenge the answer, for example, by providing an alternative response?

A particularly powerful way to do Think-Pair-Share is to use mini dry-erase boards. During the think stage, students write down what they can recall or jot down some initial thoughts. During the pair stage, students can add or remove thoughts from their board. Then, in the share stage, students hold up their boards to share what they wrote with the class. Dry-erase boards work best when student responses are short (about four words on each board), so they can be easily read.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, Think-Pair-Share is like all other aspects of teaching, in that the key is careful planning. While a very useful technique, Think-Pair-Share takes more time than traditional classroom questioning, so to make sure that this time is well spent, it is important that the questions posed to students are well-designed and carefully considered. They must be communicated so that students fully understand what is being asked and that the question homes in on key points linked to the lesson.

By making sure that the teacher asks "questions worth thinking about," Think-Pair-Share increases engagement, improves learning, and provides the teacher with actionable evidence about next steps-a uniquely powerful combination.

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Getting the "Think-Pair-Share" Technique Right

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Most educators are familiar with Think-Pair-Share, a popular technique used to ask questions in class and promote peer collaboration and communication. Yet, as with all classroom practices, it can be

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The idea that teachers stop getting better after their first few years on the job has become widely accepted by both policymakers and the public. Philanthropist and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates popularized the notion in a 2009 TED Talk when he said " once somebody has taught for three years, their teaching quality does not change thereafter." He argued that teacher effectiveness should be measured and good teachers rewarded.

That teachers stop improving after three years was, perhaps, an overly simplistic exaggeration but it was based on sound research at the time. In a 2004 paper, economist Jonah Rockoff, now at Columbia Business School, tracked how teachers improved over their careers and noticed that teachers were getting better at their jobs by leaps and bounds at first, as measured by their ability to raise their students' achievement test scores. But then, their effectiveness or productivity plateaued after three to 10 years on the job. For example, student achievement in their classrooms might increase by the same 50 points every year. The annual jump in their students' test scores didn't grow larger. Other researchers, including Stanford University's Eric Hanushek, found the same.

But now, a new nonprofit organization that seeks to improve teaching, the Research Partnership for Professional Learning, says the conventional wisdom that veteran teachers stop getting better is one of several myths about teaching. The organization says that several groups of researchers have since found that teachers continue to improve, albeit at a slower rate, well into their mid careers.

"It's not true that teachers stop improving," said John Papay, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University. "The science has evolved."

Papay cited his own 2015 study with Matt Kraft, along with a 2017 study of middle school teachers in North Carolina and a 2011 study of elementary and middle school teacher s. These analyses all found that teachers continue to improve beyond their first five years. Papay and Kraft calculated that teachers increased student performance by about half as much between their 5th and 15th year on the job as they did during the first five years of their career. The data are unclear after year 15.

Using test scores to measure teacher quality can be controversial. Papay also looked atother measures ofhow well teachers teach, such as ratings of their ability to ask probing questions, generate vibrant classroom discussions and handle students' mistakes and confusion. Again, Papay found that more seasoned teachers were continuing to improve at their profession beyond the first five years of their career. Old dogs do appear to learn new tricks.

The debate over whether teachers get better with experience has had big implications. It has prompted the public to question union pay schedules. Why pay teachers more who've been on the job longer if they're no better than a third-year teacher? It has encouraged school systems to fire "bad" teachers because ineffective teachers were thought to be unlikely to improve. It has also been a way of justifying high turnover in the field. If there's no added value to veteran teachers, why bother to hang on to them, or invest more in them? Maybe it's okay if thousands of teachers leave the profession every year if we can replace them with loads of new ones who learn the job fast.

So, how is it that highly regarded quantitative researchers could be coming to such different conclusions when they add up the numbers?

It turns out that it's really complicated to calculate how much teachers improve every year. It's simple enough to look up their students' test scores and see how much they've gone up. But it's unclear how much of the test score gain we can attribute to a teacher. Imagine a teacher who had a classroom of struggling students one year followed by a classroom of high achievers the next year. The bright, motivated students might learn more no matter who their teacher was; it would be misleading to say this teacher had improved.

Many other things can affect student test scores from year to year, such as unexpected snow days or natural disasters. We wouldn't want to say that most teachers in America became worse at their jobs in 2020 and 2021 because test scores declined during the pandemic. Other changes, such as switching to a new curriculum, can affect test scores too. Broader population changes at the school also complicate the math. If a city is gentrifying, the test scores in a teacher's classroom might rise a lot because test scores are generally higher in richer neighborhoods. Higher test scores, in this case, would probably not be a signthat the teacher is getting a lot better at teaching.

Economists need to make assumptions when they try to disentangle how much of the classroom's test score gain should be attributed to the teacher and how much should be attributed to all the other stuff that's going on. In Rockoff's influential 2004 paper, he assumed that there were diminishing returns to job experience. It's a reasonable assumption, given that we all have a steep learning curve when we first learn something new and then annual improvements are smaller as we refine our practice. In Rockoff's data, annual improvements were so tiny by a teacher's 10th year that he effectively assumed that teachers stopped improving any more and plateaued. Arguably, Rockoff assumed what he was trying to study.

When Papay and other economists relaxed the assumptions about how much teachers typically improve each year, they found that teachers tended to get better and better well into their mid careers. But they had to make other assumptions. For example, Papay assumed that new teachers start at the same starting line every year. That is, the cohort of rookie teachers in 2001 were just as effective as the cohort of rookie teachers in 2009. That might not be true if teacher preparation programs have improved.

I emailed Jonah Rockoff to see if he agrees that the science has evolved and that teachers improve throughout their careers. He told me that he still stands by his 2004 analysis and he generally sees a consensus among researchers, not a debate. According to his reading of the research, everyone is finding thesame patterns: student achievement increases the most during the early part of a teacher's career and tends to plateau after 10 years of experience. Whether teachers plateau or continue to improve at a very sluggish pace isn't a meaningful difference to him.

Papay agrees that the story is "nuanced" and that mid-career teachers aren't showing "tremendous improvement."

"It's not like teachers continue to improve at the same rate that they do early in their career," Papay said. "It's more modest."

Regardless of whether teachers plateau or slowly improve, the more interesting policy question is whether there are better ways to help teachers improve throughout their careers. Papay and other scholars are trying to pinpoint the kinds of working conditions and on-the-job training that help teachers flourish. For example, Papay is finding promise in pairing teachers together to learn from each other and Kraft has studied whether every teacher should have a coach.

Just because inexperienced teachers are improving the fastest also doesn't mean that professional development should be targeted at them. Rockoff thinks it might be "too early in their careers" for them to get much out of some types of training.

And most importantly, teachers late in their careers might be improving student outcomes in ways that test scores - or even classroom observations - cannot capture. They might inspire students to go to college or to become scientists or artists some day. That's an impact that's priceless but harder to measure.

This story about teacher improvement was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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PROOF POINTS: Debunking the myth that teachers stop improving after five years

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Get important education news and analysis delivered straight to your inbox The idea that teachers stop getting better after their first few years on the job has become widely accepted by both policymakers and the public.

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A few months ago, I posted a few screenshots from two of my 10th graders' analytical essays on Twitter. I was bursting with pride, and I just had to show someone. These sophomores had used a strategy that I had been gently encouraging my classes to try, but hadn't yet required: They had thoughtfully quoted their classmates' comments from class discussion in their essays. The reason I was so thrilled? They had added these quotes not for a grade, but because they were starting to recognize the inherent value of the approach.

Over my career, I've realized that in order to lead reliably productive classroom conversations about important issues, I've got to teach good listening before anything else. It's safe to assume that the adult world hasn't reliably modeled patient listening. Any thoughtful analysis of both traditional and social media makes this clear. Likewise, it's safe to assume that, in their prior schooling, most of my students were not consistently asked to critique and improve upon their listening skills-that their participation grade measured how often they spoke, not how thoughtfully they listened. Because of this reality, I've got to build foundational listening skills brick by brick, good habit by good habit. These habits, like listening patiently, must be modeled, practiced, assessed, and reflected on as reliably as any of the tested skills that I teach.

Adding foundational listening skills to my teaching repertoire required me to shift some of my most basic practices-starting with how I direct my attention when my students speak. When a student raises their hand in a typical whole-class classroom conversation (not fishbowls, Socratic seminars, etc.), our focus tends to go to the speaker. The only time we teachers pay attention to the rest of the class is when they interrupt-or otherwise act up-during the contribution. The bar for classmates, then, is quite low: Don't be rude and you're good. If the student happens to have a particular interest in the speaker's contribution, they might listen, but they don't really have to. If we want to get the most out of our classroom conversations, this quietly polite, seemingly benign disengagement must be the first unproductive habit to break.

The first adjustment I made in my own classroom was shifting my energy from the speaker to their classmates. While maintaining a broad connection with the speaker through sporadic eye contact, head nods, and spoken affirmations, I also started intentionally locking eyes with folks around the room. Not in a "caught you not paying attention!" way, but with an enthusiastic "Are you hearing this?" energy meant to include them in the moment. In the same vein, I'd make sure to verbally praise how well classmates were listening (by looking at clues like eye contact) as often as I praised speakers for cool contributions to the discussion. Through practice and reflection, I started to get good at making these connections (it took a while). Then I started hunting for organic moments where students cited each other in the conversation. The first moment when it happened, I lost it. "Whoa, everybody! You know what made me excited about what Sarai just did? Who knows?" The students laughed and had no clue. Bubbling over, I said, "She cited Marc! He said ___, then she built on it by saying, ___! I love the way you did that, Sarai! Let's go!" I needed them to know that citing each other was a quick and easy way to impress me (and in turn, impress and encourage each other).

While both the subtle shift of my focus and the habitual celebration of informal citations were impactful, I knew there had to be a next step. But I didn't discover it until I saw how my colleague Amal incorporated notetaking in physical notebooks into her ELA class. Adapting her approach, I decided I would encourage, and then possibly require, students to cite their classmates' contributions to class discussions in their writing. This would accomplish a few goals.

First, meaningful citation requires good notetaking, which gives students a clear task while someone is speaking: actively collecting ideas they agree or disagree with or find enlightening or intriguing. Second-and frankly most important to me-formal citation adds academic gravity to our class discussions. I often got the sense that my students considered class discussions to be a break from "real" work like reading and writing, the same way they'd view show-and-tell or pizza parties held after reading a certain number of books.

Once we got to a conversation, all they had to do was raise their hand once or twice to collect participation points. Much easier than writing an essay. Even students who were rigorously committing to our conversations, authentically engaging their classmates' ideas, and sharpening their views by gaining new perspectives didn't consider these actions to be "learning." They'd leave class saying things like, "That was fun, Mr. Kay. Can we continue that conversation tomorrow, or do we have to do work?" Asking students to cite our conversations in graded assignments allows them to better realize that thoughtful discussion isn't a vacation from learning.

There's also a related, and perhaps humbling, bonus for teachers. Requiring this kind of citation forces us to keep most of our planned class discussions threaded by a big idea, and to make sure that the final project (or activity) asks students to somehow engage with this big idea. This is the only way our students' conversation notes will remain useful. For instance, as I write this, my freshmen are reading Trevor Noah's Born a Crime (Spiegel & Grau, 2016). There are so many ways to discuss the book, but my student teacher and I have decided to apply the lenses in Ibram X. Kendi's book How to Be an Antiracist (Random House, 2019). A good portion of our planned conversations will ask kids to analyze the different forms of racism that Noah and his mother encounter and how they resist. These conversations are the steak and potatoes that keep the kids engaging each other and lead to a final essay. I'm grateful that this citation policy keeps my more tangent-chasing tendencies in check.

Finally, discussion citation makes kids feel like true scholars, philosophers, and critics. There's nothing like seeing your observation cited in a classmate's essay alongside Octavia Butler's or Richard Wright's. We show them that they are not too young for their opinions to matter. This establishes an environment where it's common for students to be impressed by each other's ideas. It's not a weakness to admit that your idea has its roots in someone else's truly great point. Considering today's hyper-individualistic culture, it feels good to actively teach kids to show (and receive) love for one another's thoughts and ideas.

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Classroom Conversations / Listen Up! A Strategy for Student Discussions - ASCD

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A few months ago, I posted a few screenshots from two of my 10th graders' analytical essays on Twitter.1 I was bursting with pride, and I just had to show someone.

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How To Regain Control Of Your Classroom: The Hard Reset

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Since returning to in-person learning, respect has taken a nosedive.

Students are just different.

We all see it. We all know it. The question is, what to do about it?

Well, the usual keys are still in play.

Clear Boundaries

100% Consistency

Calm Enforcement

Keeping your cool regardless of what a student does or says, and doing what you say you're going to do, are now more important than ever before. Fail on this front and the battles will be constant, the disrespect unrelenting.

However, the time has come for something more.

Not strategies, per se. Those we recommend here at SCM don't, and shouldn't, change. It's the way you interact with students that needs to take on greater significance.

With that in mind, what follows are seven teacher behaviors that when combined will reduce or eliminate any surge in disrespect upending your classroom.
1. Body Language
Timid and weak postures, stances, and movements don't cut it. You must take up space by standing tall with your shoulders back and head up. Walk and move with purpose or stand still and in one place.

Face your students head on. Don't fidget or pace. Never show displeasure or frustration. You must not only follow through like a leader, but look like one also. Thus, how you dress matters.

Your clothes need not be expensive, but clean, sharp, and pressed is a must. Some formality shows class and consistency. Sloppiness, casualness, or resembling your students does not.
2. Eye Contact
Eye contact has always been important, but now you must direct it purposefully. Turn to look at-even bore in on-every speaking student. Seek out visual connections as you teach and move about your room.

Look into students as you interact with them. Yes, they may squirm at first until they get used to a strong leader. They may feel uncomfortable.

But they'll be far less likely to be disrespectful to you. They'll be less likely to lie, make excuses, and shirk responsibility, which are behaviors that are also on the rise.
3. Voice
Light, hesitant, apologetic, mousy . . . Speak this way around students in the post-Covid age, and they'll disregard you with a roll of the eyes and wave of the hand. They may even pretend you're not there.

You must speak boldly. Use your adult voice, even with younger students. Be clear and unwavering. This doesn't mean raising your volume, necessarily. Rather, deepen your sound and enunciate fully.

Clarity in manner and projection afford you greater esteem and politeness and will enhance your natural charisma and leadership abilities.
4. Directness
Tell students what you want and what you expect. Add nothing more. Refrain from qualifiers, suggestions, and thinking out loud. Be straightforward with your directions and instruction.

Use as few words as possible. Lean on plain yeses and nos and avoid hemming and hawing and showing uncertainty. Make up your mind quickly or tell students you'll get back to them with your decision.

Never let them see you unsure of yourself. Vulnerability may have worked in the past, but it's no longer helpful if you're among the many teachers experiencing an increase of incivility.
5. Pause
Here at SCM, we've long promoted the importance and power of strategic pausing. Now it's vital. Pause often and for longer periods of time than you ever have.

When you speak, let your instructions and directives hang heavy in the air. Wait them out. Let them settle. Say your peace and then zip it. Your students will regard your words with more weight and relevance.

They'll listen better. They'll move to fulfill your directions faster. They'll approach you politely and with greater appreciation.
6. Listen
If a student does behave disrespectfully, do not react. Stand your ground and wait. Maintain strong eye contact. Stay silent and impassive.

Let their disrespect echo and breathe so they and everyone within earshot knows what it is. Let them feel it. Let their attention fall to you to see what you'll do.

Then handle it with strength by simply enforcing. Offer no other reaction. Follow your classroom management plan as written, then turn and walk away. Return to what you were doing as if nothing happened.

When you show that it doesn't get under your skin, that you don't take their disrespect personally, students stop doing it.
7. Debrief
Here at SCM, we don't recommend talking to students about their misbehavior-lectures, whys, questions, hash-it-outs, should-have-dones, etc.-except under certain specific circumstances.

However, many students nowadays don't even know they're being disrespectful. In this case, be sure to let them know later in the day that the way they spoke to you isn't okay.

You don't have to go on and on or show your disappointment. It isn't a discussion. You're merely informing, educating. It's a courtesy for their benefit and future reference. There is no need to wait for them to respond or apologize-though they often will.

Just let them know that if it happens again, a rule will be enforced.
You, Not Them

There is a clear crises of disrespect sweeping the country. Every day it seems we hear stories from teachers of remarkable brazenness and rude behavior.

Maybe it's the year spent at home. Maybe it's the lack of human connection. Maybe it's the addiction to social media and smart phones. Maybe it's the anger and frustration that seems to be affecting everyone from airline passengers to highway drivers.

Regardless, we have to adjust.

This doesn't mean that you can't still have a kind and pleasant personality. You can and should still use humor and get excited about your subject matter.

But no longer can you tiptoe your way around your classroom. You can't shrink away like a frightened wombat or allow yourself to be bullied and intimidated.

Nor can you fight against disrespect with your own brand of fire and fury. Revenge may be sweet in the moment, but it will encourage more and more of what you don't want.

Instead, you must be a strong presence. You must be a leader of a higher purpose and plane your students can't help but look up to.

It doesn't take a lot, mind you.

Following the suggestions above, many of which you're probably already doing, is enough. It's enough to push back the wave of disrespect and bring peace to the kingdom.

But you must take charge. Not in an aggressive or angry way, but in a way that leaves no doubt that you're the leader of the classroom.

And you, not them, set its tone and culture.

If you haven't done so already, please join us. It's free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.

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How To Handle The Student Disrespect Sweeping The Country - Smart Classroom Management

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Since returning to in-person learning, respect has taken a nosedive. Students are just different. We all see it. We all know it. The question is, what to do about it? Well, the usual keys are still in play. Clear Boundaries 100% Consistency Calm Enforcement Keeping your cool regardless of what a student does or says, ...

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This can be a hard thing to hold on to when we are not only romanticized when we act as a martyr but are also encouraged and expected to do so. Many teachers report that they are gaslighted by everyone from their administrators to their colleagues when they raise the question of addressing their own needs. They are repeatedly told how important they are and how they should prioritize their well-being, and then asked to do the exact opposite. From being told they can't leave a professional development session to go to the bathroom to being expected to use their own money to create classroom libraries to being reminded to only take thirty minutes for lunch during online pandemic learning, these "little" things can collectively destabilize a teacher to the point of burnout. Each of these things feel normal, somewhat doable, sometimes inspirational . . . in theory. Sometimes they come with bragging rights, "I haven't peed since I left my house this morning!" or "I can't remember if I even ate today" or "My family conferences went so long the custodial staff kicked us out." And administrators or peers impressed with our dedication or commiserating in good-natured ways about the lack of time for ourselves can make it hard to see just how unhealthy these practices become when they become an expected and accepted part of the way teachers work.

Teachers are told to take care of themselves, but then promptly told why they can't.

"The students need to see your face," a principal told one teacher who was considering taking a day off for a doctor's appointment. "And when you aren't around, those kids don't learn. When you get back it's such a mess that you'll make yourself sicker just trying to catch them all up." More often than not educators hear that by prioritizing their own needs they are somehow harming children or doing something wrong. Many of us are already prone to putting others first, so it does not take much gaslighting to convince us that putting our own needs off for as long as possible somehow makes us better teachers.

The Teacher Martyr Makes Mistakes, Avoids Risk, and Observes Less

I know this, preach this, and yet am also terrible at following my own admonishments. You may know that I have a disability. It's a congenital one whose only long-term solution is two major surgeries that the doctors want to put off for as long as possible. It's mostly manageable if I take care of myself. I need to balance between regular exercise and rest, stretches and physical therapy to stay mobile. I'll never be a sprinter, but if I take decent care of myself, I can still be fit enough to teach. My doctors and physical therapists have always been crystal clear-if I want to stay in education and be as active as I am, I need to prioritize my health.

And yet, it is so easy to fall into the habit of doing everything else that seems more important than taking care of ourselves. Day after day on social media and in the news, we hear of teachers martyring themselves for the good of their students and their profession. Those are the teachers whose social media posts we share and inspire us. So, by ignoring my own needs and focusing solely on my students, I found myself crawling out of a New York subway train, across a Brooklyn platform, and dragging myself to a bench. It was a busy work week. There was a family night and grading and an end-of-unit celebration. I was staying at school every night until at least 7:00, then getting home and not eating dinner until nearly 9:00, doing some planning and grading before I'd finally collapse in a heap only to repeat the same self-punishing routine the next day. I did this day after day for over a week. No time for healthy eating, resting, stretching, or gentle exercise. Or so I thought. It shouldn't have come as a shock when I stood up to leave the subway car at my stop that my leg suddenly protested with agonizing pain and an inability to hold my weight. I had no choice but to crawl off. Some kind New Yorkers who saw me crawling helped me find a bench and stayed with me until the school secretary could come pick me up. I don't know how or when I got to the emergency room, but I do remember my principal standing over me, after he was assured I would be OK, his finger pointed in my face, saying, "You can't do this. It's not good for you. And it's not helping anyone."

You probably know all this. You have probably either lectured someone else or been lectured on how important it is to take care of yourself. Maybe you even have your own version of my subway crawling story. Perhaps for you it was pneumonia, bronchitis, or dizzy spells so bad you were hospitalized. You promised yourself you would never let it get that bad again because you saw how bad it was for everyone. But you might not have been considering how not prioritizing self-care affects the topic we've been considering throughout this book: mistakes.

When we are depleted, we are so much more likely to make mistakes we regret. These mistakes might just be the sloppy ones like leaving the cap off our beloved whiteboard purple marker or forgetting our keys in the teacher's lounge. But they can also be very high-stakes mistakes-ones that can dramatically affect children's lives. We might not have the capacity to write all of the letters of recommendations our students request. We might not carefully read the accommodations on a student's individualized education program and miss key provisions. As you sit there reading this paragraph, you might be thinking about mistakes you have made recently, or maybe ones you made a long time ago that still haunt you. Before you begin to flagellate yourself for that error that just bubbled up again, is it possible that when you made that mistake, you hadn't been your best self in terms of selfcare? That you might have been tired, hungry, stressed, overwhelmed, or all of the above before you made that regrettable error?

When I look back at the mistakes I made in my own classroom or with teachers in theirs, I have to admit most of them wouldn't have happened if I had taken care of my physical, mental, and emotional state a bit more. Use the chart in Figure 3-1 to help think about your own examples.

I know that I can never hear too much about how the best defense against mistakes is a good offense. If I want to be the best educator (parent, friend, spouse, citizen) I can be, I need to take care of myself first. All other tacks and strategies will be useless without those things. I know you know this. And, if you spend any time on social media at all, you have no doubt seen the countless memes and articles extolling you to focus on self-care. If you are at all like me, you swing from rolling your eyes at people's self- centeredness to working so hard you hit a point if you don't do something (bubble bath, sip of tea, just one night of eight hours of sleep) you feel you will implode. That said, we are human and our souls and bodies need to be fed. We need time to laugh with loved ones, fill our minds with rich ideas and art, yes, and even time to rest and recuperate. Even lying on the couch losing ourselves in a great binge-watch can be soul-feeding self-care. Pleasure is more than a treat. As the legendary performance artist Penny Arcade says, "Pleasure is a radical value" (2016). It is a value that goes a long way toward helping us to lead meaningful and joyful lives. If we do not do the work of prioritizing our own mental and physical health outside the classroom, there might be a time where we start to look for affirmation, connectedness, and care from the students in our own classrooms. As Jaleel Howard, Tanya Milner-McCall, and Tyrone Howard (2020) wrote in their book No More Teaching Without Positive Relationships (full disclosure, I coedited this book with Nell Duke), "Teachers need to share themselves with students but have their emotional needs met elsewhere." We should not expect our kids to make us feel good about ourselves. If educators are spending all day with students and then every waking moment preparing to work with them again, there is no way we can prioritize our other adult relationships. And that need for connection may unconsciously lead us to seek affirmation from our students.

Even if it's just feeling good whenever we go above and beyond. Although it might feel right or somewhat saintly to give everything we've got to our students, in the end if we do not care for ourselves outside of the classroom or are not bringing our best selves to the classroom, we might instead feel bitter and taken for granted. Or, even in some cases, we might become emotionally needy around students, seeking their approval, comfort, and affirmation, which sets up an unhealthy dynamic where kids are unknowingly trying to fulfill an adult's emotional needs and also developing an unhealthy sense of what a healthy teacher-student relationship should look like.

Although it is completely understandable to realize after the fact that the likely cause of an error was that we were not taking care of ourselves the way we should, it is less understandable and yet still very common to then not try to prevent another error by taking steps to put ourselves first. It feels strange. It feels selfish. Even our own mentors and teachers were probably models of martyrdom, and although they very likely encouraged us to take care of ourselves, they probably rarely if ever modeled it. The script everyone shows us to follow is teacher martyr.

Yet, we know in our marrow that our last regrettable mistake was very likely made because of our lack of self-care. The thing is, not prioritizing ourselves doesn't just make us vulnerable to regrettable mistakes. When we are depleted, we are also much more likely to not take the risks we need to take to make the good mistakes.

Think about it. Think about your limited energy and the level and depth of energy it takes to try something new, be creative, or take a pedagogical risk. When you do not prioritize your own health, rest, and happiness, you are less likely to have the energy to take the sorts of risks that lead to our aha moments or stretch mistakes. When you spend hours reading through summative assessments without a break, racing against the clock to get them all marked in time, you are significantly less likely to decide now is the time to try some of the latest ideas around high-quality and growth mindset-based feedback. That sort of work requires energy to take a risk as well as time to fix any trouble spots. So instead, you might do a quick online search for "great feedback for students" and click on the link that offers "100 positive phrases to use when giving student feedback." (See Figure 3-2 for other options.)

Contrary to popular belief, stretching past our comfort zones for most of us requires a calm, rested, focused self. Very few of us are tempted to push ourselves and our thinking and to challenge our most dearly held beliefs when we are feeling bad emotionally and physically. Those stretch mistakes that we encourage our kids to make require a basic foundation of self-care to be practiced.
Excerpt from Risk. Fail. Rise.: A Teacher's Guide to Learning from Mistakes by M. Colleen Cruz. Copyright © 2021 by M. Colleen Cruz. Published by Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

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Why Setting Boundaries is Helpful for Teachers and Their Students - MindShift

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This can be a hard thing to hold on to when we are not only romanticized when we act as a martyr but are also encouraged and expected to do so. Many teachers report that they are gaslighted by everyone from their administrators to their colleagues when they raise the question of addressing their own needs.

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Like so many other teachers, I've found that keeping my third-grade students engaged in virtual learning has been a bit of an uphill climb. Along the way, I've experimented with new strategies that worked so well in my virtual classroom that I will use them in my physical classroom. Not only do they engage students, but also they promote feelings of inclusion and belonging, both of which are so central to social and emotional learning and a positive classroom climate.

Strategies That I'll Be Keeping

Encouraging writing by hand: When we went virtual, my students still needed ways to tangibly engage with the material, and they needed to continue to practice their fine motor skills. So I decided to go old school: We took notes in actual notebooks using pencils, crayons, and markers.

We take notes about what we are learning each day in actual notebooks, and we do it together. Rather than copying what I write, my students provide input and examples as I write, so we are co-creating notes.

Since there is compelling evidence that writing by hand rather than on a keyboard promotes better recall and comprehension of new information, I'll continue this practice long after remote learning winds up.

As a bonus, this practice can have a family connection and SEL aspect: My students' homework is to share their notebooks with their caregivers and explain what we've covered. They can ask questions that extend the learning-for example, "Mom, today we learned how Cesar Chavez stood up for the rights of migrant workers. Can you tell me about a time when you stood up for someone or someone stood up for you?"

Soliciting feedback: When I solicit students for feedback, I ask, "What can I do to make virtual learning more fun for you?" Typically I get requests for more classroom jobs, more opportunities to eat lunch together, and more time to play games (Kahoot is a favorite).

Going forward, I'll continue to ask them for their feedback via chat and Google Forms, and I'll likely ask them to share video responses, too, with Flipgrid.

Encourging students to keep a diary: When my students shared that they would like more time to write about a topic of their choice, I created a blank Google document for each one that could serve as a diary.

Things got really interesting when I realized that I still have my own writing journal from when I was about their age. Now, before I send them off to write on their own, we often read an entry or two from my journal as a mentor text. Turns out sharing my 11-year-old self's cringeworthy musings motivates my students to write in their own journals.

Welcoming international visitors: One unexpected bonus of virtual learning is that it's much easier to welcome visitors to our classroom. In addition to occasional visiting instructors and motivational speakers, we've hosted several students from around the world. These exchanges with students elsewhere provided us with authentic opportunities to study geography, maps, and languages-and reminded my students that they aren't alone in experiencing the pandemic.

Organizations like PenPal Schools and ePals can connect your class with other classes around the world; Narrative 4, a nonprofit dedicated to telling and sharing stories, can help build connections and empathy between groups of students.

Guiding students to have a study buddy: During remote learning, some students showed up for class but didn't hand in their assignments. To remedy this, I asked students to choose a study buddy with whom they could work in a breakout room; study buddies took turns sharing their screen and talking through their assignments together. Since my students are happy to have some one-on-one time with classmates, and I see more of their work getting done, I'll continue this online practice, and I may pair study buddies in the classroom as well.

Holding virtual concerts and celebrations: One of the biggest losses for children during the pandemic was that of events to look forward to. During one particularly miserable point in the pandemic, my grade partner and I planned a virtual performance that our students could invite their families to. We spent weeks practicing a song and dance related to the book we were reading ( Charlotte's Web); then, when the big day came, the kids were giddy with excitement.

While I imagine that once we go back to in-person learning, we'll still be able to squeeze in one or two in-person performances a year, I'll continue to create virtual performances so that we can do them a bit more often.

Incorporating music: In their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, Emily and Amelia Nagoski suggest several activities that can help us to move through the stress of difficult experiences. They suggest engaging in some form of artistic expression; since my students love music, I raised funds to buy them plastic recorders so that each one had a holiday gift from me. Now, during lulls in instruction, we sometimes pull out the recorders and play the couple of songs we've learned-I'm sure much to their parents' delight.

Dance has been another hit. My favorite playlist of songs comes from Playing for Change. Many of these songs and videos get the kids excited to move; more self-conscious students have the option to turn their cameras off while dancing.

The kids also love to participate in what I call "Guess Whose Song." I collected a list of their favorite songs and play one during lulls in instruction or while we wait for everyone to sign on after lunch. The kids take turns guessing whose favorite song it is. That challenge gets everyone participating, and it's been fun for me to discover their musical tastes.

These brief musical interludes can easily be used as brain breaks back in my actual classroom, so I will keep them in my toolbox.

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Virtual Teaching Practices With Staying Power

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Like so many other teachers, I've found that keeping my third-grade students engaged in virtual learning has been a bit of an uphill climb. Along the way, I've experimented with new strategies that worked so well in my virtual classroom that I will use them in my physical classroom.

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KEYS to Great Teaching - Gradual Release of Responsibility

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May 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 8
Learning and the Brain Pages 14-20

Carol Ann Tomlinson and David A. Sousa

Indeed, the psychology-neuroscience pairing is rich with potential for many reasons, one being the specific role each domain plays in informing classroom practice. It's quite rare for research findings from education neuroscience to contradict research findings from psychology; rather, that newer field often helps us understand the physiology behind the psychology. This linkage gives educators an additional level of assurance about commonly used practices or new practices educators may be considering trying. Neuroscience can help us understand why particular education strategies might, or might not, support learning.

Let's look at four examples of how this pairing of knowledge from psychology and neuroscience gives us insight into popular education approaches, discussing specific findings from each area that can and have guided teaching.

1. Why Does a Growth Mindset Boost Motivation?

For one example of brain science providing insight into why a principle derived from research in psychology works as it does, consider the broadly accepted practices associated with "growth mindset" (Dweck, 2006). The theory of growth mindset-itself supported by neuroscience-begins with the understanding that the brain is quite plastic; it can grow significantly in capacity over time. When learners understand and act on the premise that they can "build" brain capacity, similarly to how people build physical capacity, they're more likely to persist in learning and less likely to be deterred by setbacks along the way. For instance, in a recent study, psychological researchers studied more than 12,000 9th graders. They found that even a short intervention that taught students that intellectual abilities can be developed improved lower-achieving students' grades (Yeager et al, 2019).

Meanwhile, recent scanning investigations in neuroscience have explored the brain regions that respond to components of a growth mindset, such as corrective feedback and error monitoring, and to those of intrinsic motivation processing, such as response to reward. Although these regions are largely separate physically, there are two activated areas associated with both growth mindset and intrinsic motivation (Ng, 2018). Researchers theorize that because of the brain's plasticity, cerebral changes resulting from growth mindset interventions may also affect the neural regions responsible for intrinsic motivation.

These findings provide insight into the physiological basis of a psychological theory. They also remind us that, while educators teach students, we also teach brains-and those brains will likely change, for better or worse, as a result of how we envision and support the learning process.

Tapping This Finding to Inform Practice

To draw on these findings to promote growth mindsets in students, educators might:

Explain, teach, and reflect often with students on the key aspects and benefits of growth mindsets.

Teach students the skills, attitudes, and habits of mind that help someone develop a growth mindset. Dweck cautions that a growth mindset not only requires a person to work hard, it also requires them to work wisely. Hard work in the absence of intelligent work is like beating one's head against a stone wall.

Establish a classroom culture of achievement and quality work. There is no magic bullet for this. But when students are part of a group in which peers pull together for mutual growth and success, it's far more likely that individuals will believe in their ability to succeed and will work toward such success.

Understand your own mindset. Observe yourself in action. Reflect on which students you easily respond to with interactions that foster confidence and an expectation of improvement, and which students you find it more challenging to believe in. Then grow, as you hope your students will grow.

Know that teaching with a growth mindset also involves belief, hard work, and smart work. Wanting to believe in the capacity of each student in your care is a great start. Enacting those beliefs is tougher; it involves ensuring that, every day, each student moves one step beyond where they began the day or class period. Your students must consistently observe themselves progressing, which will fuel their motivation and effort. Such progress can only happen when we begin where a student is currently functioning along their trajectory of learning. You will face the challenge of learning to help each student move ahead starting from that learner's point of entry into the lesson-what John Hattie (2012) calls "plus one teaching."

2. Linking New Knowledge to Prior Knowledge: Why It Works

Studies in neuroscience reveal the strong influence past learning has on the acquisition of new learning. Cognitive psychologists refer to this principle of learning as transfer, and some teachers tap into it almost instinctively. Some studies in neuroscience suggest that when new learning is connected to past learning and presented in a novel way, the likelihood of students remembering that learning significantly increases (Fernández & Morris, 2018). Imaging studies have even revealed which parts of the brain are involved in making these connections, such as activity often commencing in the hippocampus and extending to long-term memory areas for encoding. This is further evidence that the more teachers can do to connect new learning to students' past learning, the greater the chance students will understand and remember that new knowledge.

Tapping This Finding to Inform Practice

When you conclude the exploration of a topic during a class period, resist the urge to move immediately on the to the next topic. Give students time to talk with peers about the new learning, to facilitate the brain's consolidation process. Quickly moving to something unrelated may slow down or stop this important activity. Students' new learning may just fade away.

Work to know your students as individuals. Through conversations, interest surveys, observation, and formative assessment, develop a good sense of your students' varied backgrounds of knowledge, strengths, and interests. Knowing what your students bring with them to class provides you with a sense of their past learning-and how to connect it with new learning.

Keep in mind that knowledge must be extended at least "plus one" for student growth, and that students will have varying degrees of prior knowledge. As you connect to each learner's prior knowledge, ensure you're building on it, not just reviewing what's already mastered.

3. The Importance of Social-Emotional Skills

Research in psychology points to the importance of interactions with others in promoting learning. Vygotsky (1934, 1986) found that learning benefitted from a student working a bit ahead of his or her current readiness level while interacting with peers or others who could help the student surmount the task difficulty. More recently, one of the American Psychological Association's Top 10 Principles from Psychology for PreK-12 Teaching and Learning (2015) states, "Interpersonal relationships and communication are critical to both the teaching-learning process and the social-emotional development of students"-a principle noted in other seminal psychology publications.

Neuroscience research confirms the importance of the social aspect of learning, a finding that has increasing urgency in this era of digital devices. Research suggests that technology is rewiring the brains of those who spend many hours connecting to the world through electronics rather than through people, or connecting with others only through screens (Sousa, 2016). Brains have specialized cells called mirror neurons that are activated both when an individual performs an action and when he or she observes that action being done by another person. Sometimes called "empathy neurons," these cells help us understand the intentions of others and are active during social encounters. Scanning studies show that these neurons can help our brain synchronize with the brains of individuals around us. So a group of students working on a project together may find their brains synchronizing with each other, supporting and even extending their learning (Dikker et al., 2017). However, some research suggests that frequent contacts with technology at the expense of face-to-face interactions may affect the mirror neuron system in developing brains (Dickerson, Gerhardstein, & Moser, 2017).

Much recent research in neuroscience has focused on the influence emotion has on learning. Structures in the limbic system generate emotions, which are then moderated by the frontal lobe's control functions. Emotions have a strong influence on attention-and attention drives what the student's brain decides to learn or ignore. Emotions also modulate long-term memory, and thus can enhance or impair what is stored there. When new learning has minimal or no emotional component, the chances of long-term memory consolidation and storage are low (Tyng et al., 2017).

Said a bit differently, emotions are a gateway to cognition and learning. When curriculum and instruction evoke enjoyment, surprise, empathy, personal relevance, and so forth, the gateway opens and learning is likely to proceed more effectively and durably.

Tapping This Finding to Inform Practice

To strengthen learning by activating the social and emotional aspects of students' lives-and brains:

As you plan for instruction, move beyond teaching information to understanding the affective significance of what you ask students to learn. Help students connect their emotions to what they're studying. One way to do this is by encouraging students to use the arts in learning, such as by writing a song or portraying what they've learned through a dramatic monologue or skit. Another is to teach content with its human significance foregrounded. Share the personal stories of people who experienced historical events, have students probe the motives and feelings of characters in literature, or enable students to see ways in which science can improve people's lives. Such meaning-rich approaches are far more likely to tap into student emotion and enhance learning.

Create assignments that call on students to use essential knowledge and skills to solve problems or use resources productively-together. Ensure students work with a variety of peers so they can learn from the thinking representative of the class as a whole. Help students understand, practice, and sharpen the skills of collaboration.

4. Neuroscience and Diversity

One of the challenges (and opportunities) of contemporary classrooms is the broad diversity of experiences, languages, identities, strengths, and needs our students represent. Research in psychology has long indicated that treating students of a given age as though they were essentially alike is likely to fail many, if not most, students. In diverse classrooms, especially, we must individualize how we teach learners.

Teaching and learning practices that promote student success in diverse classrooms-and are informed by research in psychology and neuroscience-share three attributes: Educators create positive classroom environments that propel learning, recognize the importance of attending to learners' varied readiness levels, and plan instruction with students' interests in mind.

Creating classroom environments that are accepting, affirming, challenging, and supportive for each learner has long been supported by research in psychology. Now neuroscientific research has found that negative emotions often shut down cognition so the brain can focus its energy on protecting its owner in the face of a threatening event. Conversely, positive emotions associated with learning can reinforce or strengthen memory, enhancing learning (Desautels, 2016). We now know that the nature of the environment, as a given learner experiences it, literally alters brain chemistry-and, as a result, brain functioning.

Tapping into This Finding

Provide opportunities for students to use and build on their strong points. Offer consistent support for working through learning difficulties.

Practice empathy. Make a consistent effort to see the classroom through your students' eyes, and plan accordingly.

Make students your partners in creating a learning environment that works for them. Regularly seek feedback on how the class is going for them.

A second critical area for teaching in diverse classrooms relates to providing students whose needs differ varied entry points into any lesson. Once again, on this principle of instruction, psychology points to what teachers need to do to honor different readiness levels, and neuroscience illuminates what happens in a student's brain in response to work that is consistently too demanding or too easy for that student-as well as why differentiation, or providing work at just above a learner's current level of performance, is effective.

Psychology has provided us with the concept of a learner's "zone of proximal development" (Vygotsky, 1934, 1986), meaning that new challenges are necessary for growth in learning, and that each new challenge must be slightly ahead of a learner's current proficiency. Scaffolding helps the learner traverse the gap of uncertainty that separates the old learning from the new. That theory, now over 80 years old, continues to be affirmed in ongoing research and guidance on teaching with readiness in mind.

More recently, neuroscience indicates that when a task is within a student's zone of proximal development, and thus feels "accessible," the learner feels less stressed and more motivated to tackle the task than if it felt out of reach. When support exists to help a student achieve at the more complex level, the student is more likely to perceive the process as pleasurable, and to learn (Baars & Wijnia, 2018).

To draw on these principles as you plan instruction:

Don't equate readiness with ability. Readiness is fluid and has to do with where a student is relative to a task at hand. Ability is a much more pervasive notion, at best very loosely linked with any given assignment.

Use ongoing assessment that's tightly aligned with learning targets to understand a student's development through a learning progression.

Create flexible teaching and learning routines so each student has ample opportunity to work with the teacher independently or with small groups of peers. This allows students to work on different tasks and at various levels of difficulty, so each learner's assignment can most often be in that student's zone of proximal development.

Finally, psychology and neuroscience both indicate that linking learning with students' interests is not a luxury, but a necessity. For years, psychology has pointed to links between connecting learning to an individual's interests and increased motivation to learn, pleasure in learning, productivity, and achievement (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Neuroscience research reinforces these conclusions. One imaging study identified the area of the brain (the putamen) where motivation is activated and concluded that activity in the putamen may be critical to academic achievement and success (Mizuno, et al., 2008). So it's essential to boost achievement by connecting to students' interests and agency in various ways.

Besides making it a priority to know students and their interests:

Provide frequent opportunities for student voice and choice. Offer options for ways students can demonstrate learning, help students form interest-based inquiry or reading groups, or create expert groups though which students can investigate particular aspects of a class-related topic and share findings with the class.

Build teaching and learning around big ideas or key concepts of the discipline and invite students to make interest-based connections with those concepts as well as cross-disciplinary connections.

Regularly include interest-based groups in plans for flexible grouping.

Deeper Learning

The partnership between psychology and neuroscience, in terms of research revelations, gives us deeper understandings about what works in learning-and why. Teachers shape young lives and build young brains every day. The more we know about the how and why of doing those two things, the more the learners in our care will benefit.

References

American Psychological Association, Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education. (2015). Top 20 principles from psychology for preK-12 teaching and learning.

Baars, M., & Wijnia, L. (2018). The relation between task-specific motivational profiles and training of self-regulated learning skills. Learning and Individual Differences, 64, 125-137.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row.

Desautels, L. (2016). How emotions affect learning, behaviors, and relationships. Scholarship and Professional Work - Education, 97.

Dickerson, K., Gerhardstein, P., & Moser, A. (2017). The role of the human mirror neuron system in supporting communication in a digital world. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.

Dikker, S., Wann, L., Davidesco, I., Oostrik, M., Rowland, J., Michalareas, G., et al. (2017). Brain-to-brain synchrony tracks real-world dynamic group interactions in the classroom. Current Biology, 27, 1375-1380.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books.

Fernández, G., & Morris, R. G. M. (2018). Memory, novelty and prior knowledge. Trends in Neurosciences, 41(10), 654-659.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learners. New York: Routledge.

Mizuno, K., Tanaka, M., Ishii, A., Tanabe, H. C., Onoe, H., Sadata, N., et al. (2008). The neural basis of academic achievement motivation. NeuroImage, 42(11), 369-378.

Ng, B. (2018). The neuroscience of growth mindset and intrinsic motivation. Brain Sciences, 8(2), 20.

Sousa, D., (2016). Engaging the rewired brain. West Palm Beach, FL: Learning Sciences International.

Tyng, C. M., Amin, H. U., Saad, M. N. M., & Malik, A. S. (2017). The influences of emotion on learning and memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). (A. Kozulin Ed. & Trans.). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published in 1934).

Yeager, D., Hanselman, P., Walton, G., Murray, J., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., et al. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573, 364-369.

Carol Ann Tomlinson is William Clay Parrish, Jr. Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education in Charlottesville. David A. Sousa is an international consultant in educational neuroscience. They are each the authors of many books, including coauthoring Differentiation and the Brain: How Neuroscience Supports the Learner-Friendly Classroom (2nd Ed., ASCD, 2018). Carol is also author of How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms (3rd Ed., ASCD, 2017), and David is the author of How the Brain Learns (5th Ed., Corwin, 2017).

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May 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 8 Learning and the Brain Pages 14-20 Carol Ann Tomlinson and David A. Sousa Indeed, the psychology-neuroscience pairing is rich with potential for many reasons, one being the specific role each domain plays in informing classroom practice.

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How do you feel about the phrase soft skills? For me (and for many), skills such as critical thinking, empathy, creativity, and teamwork are not soft skills. These are essential skills or center skills. Decision-making, self-awareness, and self-regulation are at the center of learning and life. We need to start with, build from, and embed social and emotional learning (SEL) into safe, equitable, empowering learning experiences for all students.

Regardless of your teaching and learning situation (fully online, hybrid, or in person), we know that the intentional and explicit weaving of SEL into the fabric of our everyday learning and life is critical. Below are three SEL signature practices from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) that we need to bring in whenever we come together as a community of learners. Included are examples that are simple, portable, and customizable. Consider your scenario as well as the needs and size of your group when deciding whether to take turns sharing out loud, use the chat, or break into small groups or pairs.

3 SEL Practices for Every Day

1. Welcoming or inclusion activities. Rather than jumping right into instruction, starting with brief routines and rituals provides us with interactive experiences that give everyone a voice and connects the community of learners. A few examples:

Use opening check-ins to give students an opportunity to identify their emotions (self-awareness). We can provide scaffolding by using tools such as Zones of Regulation or the Mood Meter. We can also use images and word banks to help build vocabulary.

Have a kindness conversation asking everyone to share an act of kindness they have given or received recently (social awareness).

Inspired by Brené Brown, permission slips help us set our intention and focus. Share examples such as, "I give myself permission to make a mistake and try again." Then ask students to create their own permission slip (self-management).

2. Engaging strategies. There are many SEL opportunities throughout learning experiences where learners are naturally engaged both individually and with their peers. As educators, we often use engaging strategies like breakout rooms/small group discussions, wait time, brain breaks, jigsaw, etc. However, we still need to be explicit with SEL. A few examples:

Cocreate shared expectations ahead of time for collaborative work, and revisit regularly to ensure that everyone's needs are being met (relationship skills, responsible decision-making, social awareness).

Design for inquiry with voice and choice to provide opportunities for learners to construct meaning through communication and collaboration with their peers. Using an approach like Discover, Discuss, Demonstrate gives learners opportunities to explore content before direct instruction (relationship skills, responsible decision making, self management).

Incorporate movement breaks to refresh and reset the brain. These brain breaks could be a stretch or a mindful breathing practice. Depending on what suits the situation, the break could be to calm or to energize (self-management).

As we plan to use engaging strategies, activities, and protocols, we need to offer both interactive and reflective options. It is also important to make time to debrief these experiences, allowing us to identify and connect what we are doing to SEL competencies and specific skills. Notice that so much of this is also aligned with Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

3. Optimistic closure. The name of this practice often leads to the misconception that we need to end on a happy note. The reality is that what is most important about this practice is the intentional and authentic reflection and understanding of the learning experience. This allows us to both collectively and individually appreciate what we have accomplished and anticipate what comes next. A few examples:

We can reflect doing a closing check-in on emotions by simply asking something like, "Which one to two words sum up your feelings about our time together?" (self-awareness).

Another way to reflect is through a gratitude practice (social awareness). Ask learners to acknowledge something or someone that they are thankful for. Guide them to think deeply and name the feelings they are experiencing (self-awareness).

The goal of looking ahead is to get us excited moving forward, and it is also an opportunity to hold ourselves accountable through goal setting and organization. Use a planner and/or set a reminder to execute next steps. You could even use a service like FutureMe.org to send your future self a reminder of long-term goals (self-management).

These are just a few ways to implement the three signature practices, and additional examples are available here. The reality is, there are countless ways to use these practices. Collaborate with your learners and your peers to adapt and create practices to meet the specific goals and needs of your community. Your team can even use the "Getting It Down PATT!"-Purpose, Alignment, Transparency, Target (created by Micaela Gerardin-Frey) as a tool to thoughtfully select, adapt, and prepare strategies, activities, and protocols.

Emotions matter, and the research on how emotions impact learning is clear. But it isn't just about accepting SEL's necessity as a means to increased academic performance. Using the three signature practices as part of a systemic SEL approach allows us to create safe, equitable, empowering learning experiences for all, kids and adults.

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3 SEL Practices Teachers Can Use Every Day

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How do you feel about the phrase soft skills? For me (and for many), skills such as critical thinking, empathy, creativity, and teamwork are not soft skills. These are essential skills or center skills. Decision-making, self-awareness, and self-regulation are at the center of learning and life.

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What's the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? Saying to students, "Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday." Yikes! No safety net, no parachute-they're just left to their own devices.

Let's start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things. Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk. When scaffolding reading, for example, you might preview the text and discuss key vocabulary, or chunk the text and then read and discuss as you go. With differentiation, you might give a child an entirely different piece of text to read, or shorten the text or alter it, or modify the writing assignment that follows.

Simply put, scaffolding is what you do first with kids. For those students who are still struggling, you may need to differentiate by modifying an assignment or making accommodations like choosing a more accessible text or assigning an alternative project.

Scaffolding and differentiation do have something in common, though. In order to meet students where they are and appropriately scaffold a lesson or differentiate instruction, you have to know the individual and collective zone of proximal development (ZPD) of your learners. Education researcher Eileen Raymond says, "The ZPD is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance."

So let's get to some scaffolding strategies you may or may not have tried yet. Or perhaps you've not used them in some time and need a gentle reminder on how awesome and helpful they can be when it comes to student learning.

1. Show and Tell

How many of us say that we learn best by seeing something rather than hearing about it? Modeling for students is a cornerstone of scaffolding, in my experience. Have you ever interrupted someone with "Just show me!" while they were in the middle of explaining how to do something? Every chance you have, show or demonstrate to students exactly what they are expected to do.

Try a fishbowl activity, where a small group in the center is circled by the rest of the class; the group in the middle, or fishbowl, engages in an activity, modeling how it's done for the larger group.

Always show students the outcome or product before they do it. If a teacher assigns a persuasive essay or inquiry-based science project, a model should be presented side-by-side with a criteria chart or rubric. You can guide students through each step of the process with the model of the finished product in hand.

Use think alouds, which will allow you to model your thought process as you read a text, solve a problem, or design a project. Remember that children's cognitive abilities are still in development, so opportunities for them to see developed, critical thinking are essential.

2. Tap Into Prior Knowledge

Ask students to share their own experiences, hunches, and ideas about the content or concept of study and have them relate and connect it to their own lives. Sometimes you may have to offer hints and suggestions, leading them to the connections a bit, but once they get there, they will grasp the content as their own.

Launching the learning in your classroom from the prior knowledge of your students and using this as a framework for future lessons is not only a scaffolding technique-many would agree it's just plain good teaching.

3. Give Time to Talk

All learners need time to process new ideas and information. They also need time to verbally make sense of and articulate their learning with the community of learners who are engaged in the same experience and journey. As we all know, structured discussions really work best with children regardless of their level of maturation.

If you aren't weaving in think-pair-share, turn-and-talk, triad teams, or some other structured talking time throughout the lesson, you should begin including this crucial strategy on a regular basis.

4. Pre-Teach Vocabulary

Sometimes referred to as front-loading vocabulary, this is a strategy that we teachers don't use enough. Many of us, myself included, are guilty of sending students all alone down the bumpy, muddy path known as Challenging Text-a road booby-trapped with difficult vocabulary. We send them ill-prepared and then are often shocked when they lose interest, create a ruckus, or fall asleep.

Pre-teaching vocabulary doesn't mean pulling a dozen words from the chapter and having kids look up definitions and write them out-we all know how that will go. Instead, introduce the words to kids in photos or in context with things they know and are interested in. Use analogies and metaphors, and invite students to create a symbol or drawing for each word. Give time for small-group and whole-class discussion of the words. Not until they've done all this should the dictionaries come out. And the dictionaries will be used only to compare with those definitions they've already discovered on their own.

With the dozen or so words front-loaded, students are ready, with you as their guide, to tackle that challenging text.

5. Use Visual Aids

Graphic organizers, pictures, and charts can all serve as scaffolding tools. Graphic organizers are very specific in that they help kids visually represent their ideas, organize information, and grasp concepts such as sequencing and cause and effect.

A graphic organizer shouldn't be The Product but rather a scaffolding tool that helps guide and shape students' thinking. Some students can dive right into discussing, or writing an essay, or synthesizing several different hypotheses, without using a graphic organizer of some sort, but many of our students benefit from using one with a difficult reading or challenging new information. Think of graphic organizers as training wheels-they're temporary and meant to be removed.

6. Pause, Ask Questions, Pause, Review

This is a wonderful way to check for understanding while students read a chunk of difficult text or learn a new concept or content. Here's how this strategy works: Share a new idea from discussion or the reading, then pause (providing think time), and then ask a strategic question, pausing again.

You need to design the questions ahead of time, making sure they're specific, guiding, and open-ended. (Even great questions fail if we don't give think time for responses, so hold out during that Uncomfortable Silence.) Keep kids engaged as active listeners by calling on someone to give the gist of what was just discussed, discovered, or questioned. If the class seems stuck on the questions, provide an opportunity for students to discuss in pairs.

With all the diverse learners in our classrooms, there is a strong need for teachers to learn and experiment with new scaffolding strategies. I often say to teachers I support that they have to slow down in order to go quickly. Scaffolding a lesson may, in fact, mean that it takes longer to teach, but the end product is of far greater quality and the experience much more rewarding for all involved.

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6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

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What's the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? Saying to students, "Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday." Yikes! No safety net, no parachute-they're just left to their own devices. Let's start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things.

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Copyright and fair use law has become a topic of concern as technology has increasingly lowered the barriers to sharing, copying, and creating at any time, making us all potential publishers and distributors of content. It's become a lot easier to break the rules. Particularly in the digital age, copyright is about collective responsibility and protection-and digital citizenship.

WHAT'S PROTECTED AND WHAT'S NOT

American copyright law originates in the U.S. Constitution and automatically protects all original, creative work in a fixed form; the moment a work is created, it is protected. Generally speaking, works created after January 1, 1978, are covered by copyright for a term equaling the life of the author plus 70 years after their death. The original works by Shakespeare, Dickens, Frederick Douglass, and just recently F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Alain LeRoy Locke's The New Negro: An Interpretation, for example, are in the public domain and are no longer protected by copyright. In addition, copyright doesn't apply to facts and public information, print maps, or government documents or pictures, so images and text from sources like NASA, the Smithsonian, and the National Archives can be used without permission.

The copyright for works that are not part of these exceptions is invisible and active at all times, of course, so it can be helpful to think about it like this: In most contexts, works created by others have a "No trespassing" sign on them. If you simply ignored a "No trespassing" sign on land, you'd be in violation of the law, right? Same thing with creative works, whether it's a doodle or the selfies you took with a friend's phone.

Within the context of educational and classroom settings (including online classes), copyright is a little more nuanced. There, even copyrighted material can be used if it's for face-to-face, instructional purposes and the educational institution is a nonprofit.

Teachers and most schools are therefore protected fairly broadly, allowing them to make use of films and articles from sources like the New York Times or Scientific American, as long as they do so in the context of instruction. Sharing a link to a recent Washington Post article in your learning management system, or to a video from PBS or CNN, is permissible if it's for the purposes of instruction and the educational institution is a nonprofit. Copying and distributing works created by others, however-for example, printing out whole articles and distributing them to your class-is generally riskier. In such cases, copyright law is more lenient when the copied material is not copied in whole or is not distributed to the whole class.

Be careful, as well, with any so-called creative works that you use in the classroom, like books, poems, movies, or songs. Generally speaking, even if you're using them for instructional purposes, these types of creative work are protected. In most cases, school systems purchase copies of those assets-or the students themselves are asked to purchase them-which gives everyone rights to consume them. Meanwhile, if you're using anything in this category for purposes that are not instructional, like showing a Pixar movie as a reward or during recess on a rainy day-without any instruction-then you're clearly infringing on copyright.

MAKING SENSE OF FAIR USE

To add to the confusion, there's the fair use doctrine, which is designed to promote freedom of expression (which is critical in educational settings) by permitting "the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works under certain circumstances"-a sort of legal counterbalance to copyright that allows for creativity. If there is a dispute about copyright, then judges use four factors to determine if something is protected by fair use.

Generally speaking, courts factor in the purpose of the use (did you use it for instructional purposes, for example); the nature of the original (was it fiction or more factual, for example); the amount of the work used (using all of the work, or especially important parts of the work is risky); and the value of the work (if your actions materially impact the ability of the artist to make a living, that infringes on copyright).

An important caveat: Use of content in the service of satire is OK, so if you're using or creating memes as part of your lesson plan, you're in the clear.

QUICK TIPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF

Given how nuanced copyright and fair use are and the complexities of digital use and sharing, these tips can help keep you in the safe zone.

Limit your exposure: Use a password-protected space like Google Classroom or any learning management system (LMS) to share published materials with your students, instead of using your class webpage. That way, you're sharing to the students in your class only.

Use Google's Tools setting: After a search for an image has produced results, click Tools/Usage Rights/Creative Commons license to filter images.

Install browser extensions: Install add-ons from Flaticon's Icons for Google Slides and Docs and Noun Project so that you can easily search and insert free images.

Use Project Gutenberg: It's a library of over 60,000 free e-books (and counting) for which copyright has expired. You can read them in a browser or on Kindle, or opt to download them. All of Shakespeare's work is there, for example, in addition to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and works of many other authors.

Bookmark Creative Commons sites: The emergence of the internet spawned an innovation in copyright management called Creative Commons, which allows the creators of photos, videos, and text to apply transparent copyright rules and make the content available broadly. The Creative Commons search tool is invaluable for finding content you can use legally. Also bookmark sites that collect images, videos, or text that is shared under liberal Creative Commons rules-like Flickr, Pixabay (images, videos, and music), and Unsplash (photos); Noun Project (icons and photos); and Bensound, which has a library of free audio files-in addition to higher-quality files you need to purchase. Share the bookmarks with your students.

Don't forget Wikipedia: It's the grandfather of Creative Commons sites. You can copy or alter the text of this comprehensive resource, updated by volunteers who are often experts, if you include the backlink. Students should be warned, of course, that Wikipedia is subject to hacks (both malicious and comical), and the information should be verified with other sources.

Make use of free audiobooks: Multiple sites like Librivox and Spotify share free audiobooks. Titles on Spotify range from George Orwell's Animal Farm to Hans Christian Anderson's The Fir Tree.

Use resources from government sites: NASA, the National Archives, the Smithsonian, primary sources from the Library of Congress, and materials from state or local government agencies are a treasure trove for teachers.

Know that there isn't an urgency exemption: No matter how desperate the situation or noble your intentions, don't make and distribute copies of entire books, workbooks, study guides, practice books, or even an entire page from a textbook. Purchase enough copies for each student, or obtain permission from the owner to make copies.

Avoid copying and distributing "creative material": Novels, plays, movies, and poems are far more likely to be exempt from fair use.

Use published sources: Never copy and distribute unpublished material.

When in doubt, reach out: If a publication or resource you need is out of print and you cannot buy it (e.g., an out-of-print book), reach out to the publishing company and ask permission to make copies.

Plan ahead: Don't wait until the last minute and use something in haste.

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A Teacher's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use

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Copyright and fair use law has become a topic of concern as technology has increasingly lowered the barriers to sharing, copying, and creating at any time, making us all potential publishers and distributors of content. It's become a lot easier to break the rules.

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The first days of school should be centered around building community through authentic relationships. We believe that students need to trust their teacher in order for the relationship to give way to learning and growth. It is important for teachers to build these relationships responsibly by treating their students with respect and using a culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP).

NCTE's Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English turns to this pedagogical stance as one of the columns of our foundational beliefs because we aim to meet the needs of all students in our classrooms considering the demographic shifts taking place throughout our country's public schools.

Authors Dr. Django Paris and Dr. Samy Alim explain, "CSP seeks to perpetuate and foster-to sustain-linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the schooling for positive social transformation." One critical way to enact a culturally sustaining pedagogy is through the design of a classroom's physical space.

Think about what it's like to walk into and through your classroom before class has begun. What do students see on the walls? What do they hear? What welcomes them? These spatial elements are important and set a clear tone even before the bell has rung.

Here are some of our committee's suggestions on how to achieve a space that indicates a culturally sustaining pedagogy:

Your library: Think about which books students will see when they first walk to the shelves. Will all of your students see themselves? It is critical to feature texts that represent ALL students on your bookshelves. Make sure books face forward or outward in a way where they strategically catch students' attention. Reflecting student identity through literature is a strong bridge to learning more about who your students are and building relationships with them.

Share your reading journey: Show your students that you are actively engaged in reading texts that highlight the stories and experiences of people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, women, and other groups that have been historically silenced throughout US history and English class text selections. You can hang a sign on or near your desk that says "I am currently reading ______." It is critical to update this regularly. This will help to invite a conversation with students about what you're learning.

Communicate intentions: Write a "safe space" commitment and list on your syllabus. Or hang a sign that shows why your room and curriculum are safe spaces for students. Make sure they know, visibly, that they are welcomed and that their identities will be affirmed.

Intimate spaces: At some point in the first day or week, try removing all the chairs and desks and have circle time. It can work across all grade levels. In that circle time, ask students what they like about your subject, what they like about school, how the day is going, and create space for a positive moment in your community. A student-centered moment within a shifted physical space communicates that this is their room and that you want to hear their voices. You might have students brainstorm the ways the physical space should look and what it should include. Teachers should prioritize student voices from the first day. You can engage in dialogue by asking what they value and then ensuring that those values have a place. You might visualize this by leaving your "rules" poster half empty as a way to show students that the rules are not done because their voices are still missing.

The walls: Consider waiting to fill up the walls until after the first day of school. Leave room for students to contribute their works. Be intentional with what you put on the wall on the first day. You may want to use images featuring real people representing the students in the room, but also the ones who are missing. Posting those pictures versus cartoons or animals demonstrates intentionality in wanting to be inclusive. Post poetry or quotes that are from authors of color, women, LGBTQ people, and be intentional about the art in the room. You might even start the year off with a poem. Having students begin with "Where I'm From" poems is a great way to build community and allow the voices of their families to permeate the classroom space. After they're done writing, students can create broadsides of their poems that can be displayed in class for the first month, semester, or quarter of the year. This shows students that teachers care to learn about their community and/or other places that are important in their lives.

Stickers & More Art: Consider using stickers that are representative of multicultural people groups, too, such as Robert Liu-Trujillo's art. Think about what is displayed on your desk and how that communicates that you love and respect all of your students and their home communities, and are sharing some of yourself.

Sounds: If possible, you might feature some music that comes from marginalized communities. That might be music from the Caribbean or hip hop, for example. You can play it while students are doing some ice breakers or a short writing prompt. We know that there is power in music and that creating a space in your room where students are welcomed could be enhanced by them hearing music that comes from their country, for example. You could ask students to send you links to favorite music so that you can broaden your listening repertoire.

Free goodies: Have the Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English's up somewhere on the wall and have ready to be handed out on that first day. Send them home with a free gift from your classroom!

Curriculum: Have a PowerPoint (or some visual) where you feature the texts you'll cover with pictures of the authors. Share topics you'll be covering this year and how students will get to have in-depth and challenging conversations. This shows students your commitment to featuring texts and authors who are people of color, LGBTQ, women, and others during the school year.

We hope that this list has been useful and that you are ready to think about how to set up your classroom in a way that is culturally sustaining.

If your year has already begun, don't hesitate to slow down the pace and try some of these changes. Communicate to your students why you're making these modifications and use that as a conversation starter. It is important for these changes and physical elements in your classroom to be ones you've made out of your own interest to connect with them and genuinely welcome their voices. If it's performative and simply a way to seem "hip," students will sense this, and it won't build true relationships or understanding.

Our nation's tensions and ongoing social conflicts require that we take a stance and be intentional about fighting against racism and bias in the teaching of English. We are rooting for you!

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First-Day Actions for a Culturally Sustaining Classroom Environment

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Suggestions for planning your classroom space to support culturally sustaining teaching

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It's not just subject-matter expertise, according to a new study.

Yevgenia Nayberg

Until recently, nothing conclusive. Some scholars even suggested that mentorship had troublesome side effects, including favoritism and "cloning," mentors' tendency to push protégés toward career paths exactly like their own.

But new research from Brian Uzzi, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, shows that mentorship is indeed beneficial-especially when mentors pass down unwritten, intuitive forms of knowledge. The study, which analyzes the careers of more than 37,000 scientist mentors and protégés, suggests that mentors who pass on tacit knowledge gained through their work experience rather than codified skills produce mentees who are significantly more likely to become superstars of their fields.

What's more, "mini-mes" don't necessarily thrive. Protégés are most successful when they work on different topics than their mentors.

For many of us, that's a new way of thinking about mentorship. "People almost always think of the mentor as the really active element. The mentee is the passive element, absorbing the mentor's knowledge," Uzzi says. "Some of that's true, but it turns out it's really not a one-way arrow. It's incumbent upon the mentee to branch out, take their mentor's tacit knowledge, and do something that breaks new ground. The mentee has a big responsibility for their own success."

Yet strong mentorship is currently facing a serious threat: COVID-19. Since the tacit knowledge that makes mentors valuable is best imparted face-to-face, Uzzi worries that the loss of in-person communication may hurt mentees' career prospects.

Quantifying the Value of a Mentor

Uzzi and his collaborators- Yifang Ma of Southern University of Science and Technology, China, and Satyam Mukherjee of the Indian Institute of Management Udaipur, both former post-doctoral fellows at Kellogg-were able to conduct the study thanks to a new digital tool. In the last decade, scientists have created massive databases of their fields' intellectual "family trees," tracking which scholars advised which students.

Uzzi, Ma, and Mukherjee pulled data from these family trees and linked them to other relevant information, such as job placements, grants and awards, and publications. Their data set ultimately included 37,157 scientists and mentees and the 1,167,518 papers they produced between 1960 and 2017.

But the researchers had a major hurdle to overcome. Mentees aren't randomly assigned to mentors, so it's hard to know whether their successes or failures can be attributed to mentorship or other factors. "The mentors who generally have the best records and the best reputation tend to attract students who have the most talent coming into the program to begin with," Uzzi says.

This phenomenon, called assortativity, had thwarted previous studies of mentorship. Fortunately, their massive data set allowed Uzzi and his coauthors to undertake analyses that weren't possible before.

First, they identified six groupings of mentors who looked "exactly like each other on paper," Uzzi says: they taught in the same fields at equally prestigious institutions, advised the same number of students each year, published the same amount, and were cited the same amount. As expected, these statistically identical mentors attracted students of similar talent, as measured by their first job placements, lab sizes, and IQs (obtained from Mensa International).

With the assortativity problem accounted for, Uzzi says, "we still had one other problem, which was, how are we going to see if mentors pass on valuable information to their mentees or not?"

A "Hidden" Skill That Sets Good Mentors Apart

The researchers wanted to understand what mentors were or weren't passing along to their mentees. So they came up with an idea: They had already identified groupings of identical mentors. What if, within each grouping, they could identify one mentor with a special, hidden trait and see whether or not they passed it to their students?

Eventually, they hit on the perfect "hidden" skill to study: the ability to produce research that goes on to win scientific prizes. Prize-winning papers "tend to go after really particular and important problems and answer them in not just competent but stylish ways," Uzzi explains.

Of course, once a scholar has won a major scientific prize, they will attract stronger students. So the researchers confined their analysis to the years before researchers received their prizes.

They focused their statistical analysis on "groups of essentially indistinguishable mentors attracting students of the same quality, except one mentor in each of these groups has a hidden quality: they're going to be a future prizewinner," Uzzi says. That meant they could compare how the students of future prizewinners and non-prizewinning mentors fared.

The Best Mentors Pass Along "Special Sauce"

When the researchers analyzed the performance of protégés of future prizewinners and non-prizewinners, the differences were striking: students who studied under a future prizewinner were almost six times more likely to become superstars in their field than equally talented students of non-prizewinners. (The researchers defined "superstars" as scientists who had won major prizes, were members of the National Academy of Sciences, and were among the top 25 percent most-cited scholars in their field.) Clearly, prizewinning mentors did indeed pass along what Uzzi calls the "special sauce" to their students.

But as they went deeper into their statistical analysis, the researchers found other intriguing patterns. To their surprise, the differences between the students of future prizewinners and non-prizewinners didn't emerge right away. In fact, in the first ten years of their careers, the students of non-prizewinners published more papers, were cited more, and had more coauthors than the students of future prizewinners. But in the second decade of their careers, the students of future prizewinners begin to outflank them.

Uzzi has a theory as to why. "In science, it's generally easier to publish solid work that isn't controversial in any way," he says. "It takes time for the best ideas to mature and for scientists to begin to see the real value of work that is more controversial. That may explain why the students of the future prizewinners eventually overtake the students of the non-prizewinning mentors."

Another surprise: the most successful protégés of all are those who study under future prizewinners but ultimately go on to work in different subject areas.

In some ways, this goes against conventional wisdom: students who are successful and carry on their mentors' work are often perceived as rising stars. But in the long run, the most successful scientists are those who chart their own paths.

"When a student gets this 'special sauce' and they apply it to being a mini-me of their mentor, they still do well. But if they apply it to an original new topic of their own, they do even better," Uzzi says. "You want the special sauce, but if you also apply it to something new, the special sauce is even more valuable to you."

Great Mentors Offer More than Just Expertise

So, what exactly goes into the special sauce? The current research doesn't provide a full recipe, but offers a few hints. First, it's clear that the best mentors pass on something that goes far beyond subject-matter expertise. (If that were the case, mini-me mentees would have been the most likely to succeed.)

Uzzi and his coauthors believe that what's being passed between future prizewinners and protégés is tacit knowledge. Mentees aren't just learning concrete skills from their mentors. They're also picking up how their mentors come up with research questions, how they brainstorm, how they interact with collaborators, and so on-knowledge that is difficult to codify and often learned by doing.

That's especially important to consider in the age of COVID-19, when more and more of our interactions take place through screens, and some have begun to question whether remote mentorship can replace the in-person variety.

"As far as we know, the fullest transfer of tacit knowledge is conveyed in person," Uzzi says. "What this research says to me is that you really want to respect the value of face-to-face interaction."

Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change; Co-Director, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO); Faculty Director, Kellogg Architectures of Collaboration Initiative (KACI); Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, McCormick School (Courtesy); Professor of Sociology, Weinberg College (Courtesy)

Susie Allen is a freelance writer in Chicago.

Ma, Yifang, Satyam Mukherjee, and Brian Uzzi. 2020. "Mentorship and Protégé Success in STEM Fields." PNAS. 117(25): 14077-83.

Read the original

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What's the Secret Ingredient to Great Mentorship?

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It's not just subject-matter expertise, according to a new study. Yevgenia Nayberg Until recently, nothing conclusive. Some scholars even suggested that mentorship had troublesome side effects, including favoritism and "cloning," mentors' tendency to push protégés toward career paths exactly like their own.

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13 Effective Study Strategies to Help Students Learn - MindShift

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Daniel Willingham outlines effective study strategies to help students learn in person and via remote learning.

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Oakley recognizes that "many educators are not at all comfortable with or trained in neuroscience," so she breaks down a few key principles that teachers can use in the classroom and share with students to help them demystify the learning process.
1. The Hiker Brain vs. The Race Car Brain
Start by teaching students the difference between focused and diffused thinking, says Oakley. When the brain is in focused mode, you can get started on the task at hand. But deep understanding is not fully accomplished in this mode.

Diffused thinking occurs when you allow your mind to wander, to imagine and to daydream. In this mode, the brain is still working -- consolidating information and "making sense of what you are trying to learn," says Oakley. If a concept is easy for you to grasp right off, the focused mode might be sufficient, but if a new skill or concept "takes consideration, you have to toggle back and forth between these two modes of thinking as you get to true understanding of the material -- and this doesn't happen quickly."

Because toggling is essential to learning, teachers and students need to build downtime into their day -- time when learning can "happen on background" as you play a game, go on a walk or color a picture. It's also one reason why sleep is so vital to healthy cognitive development.

Since students tend to equate speed with smarts, Oakley suggests sharing this metaphor: "There's a race car brain and a hiker brain. They both get to the finish line, but not at the same time. The race car brain gets there really fast, but everything goes by in a blur. The hiker brain takes time. It hears birds singing, sees the rabbit trails, feels the leaves. It's a very different experience and, in some ways, much richer and deeper. You don't need to be a super swift learner. In fact, sometimes you can learn more deeply by going slowly."
2. Chains and Chunks
In cognitive psychology, "chunking" refers to the well-practiced mental patterns that are essential to developing expertise in a topic. Oakley prefers the image of a "chain" when she explains this to students.

Learning is all about developing strong chains. For example, says Oakley, when you are first learning how to back up a car, you have to consciously think about each step, from how to turn the steering wheel to how to use your mirrors. But "once that process is chained, it's easy" -- it becomes automatic. Similarly, once solving certain equations becomes automatic in math, students can apply these equations to more complex problems.

Teachers can help students identify the procedures in a unit of study that they to master in order to take their learning to the next level -- from the steps of the scientific method to fundamental drawing techniques.

"Any type of mastery involves the development of chains of procedural fluency. Then you can get into more complex areas of fluency," says Oakley. Here's another way to think about it. We all have about four slots of working memory that we can use to problem-solve in the moment. One of those slots can be filled with an procedural chain -- and then you can put new information in the other slots.
3. The Power of Metaphor
"Metaphor and analogy are extraordinarily powerful teaching tools and very often underused," says Oakley. "When you are trying to learn something new, the best way to learn it is to connect it with something you already know."

The formal term for this is " neural reuse " -- the idea that metaphors use the same neural pathways as the concept a metaphor is describing. So familiar metaphors allow a learner to draw on a concept they have already mastered and apply it to a new situation. Or as Oakley says, metaphors "rapidly on-board" new ideas. For example, says Oakley, comparing the flow of electrons to the flow of water is a way to "jump-start students' thinking."

As part of her research, Oakley reached out to thousands of professors who are considered top teachers in their fields. "Many of these professors had a secret that they used in their teaching: metaphor and analogy. It was like a secret shared handshake." Oakley encourages teachers to not only use metaphor but to challenge students to develop their own metaphors as a study strategy.
4. The Problem of Procrastination
Oakley says that procrastination is the number one challenge facing most learners. To train the brain to systematically focus and relax -- to -- she recommends the "Pomodoro Technique."

Developed by Francesco Cirillo, this strategy uses a timer to help the learner work and break at set intervals. First, choose a task to accomplish. Then, set a timer for 25 minutes and work until the timer goes off. At that point, take a five-minute break: stand up, walk around, take a drink of water, etc. After three or four 25-minute intervals, take a longer break (15 - 30 minutes) to recharge. This technique "trains your ability to focus and reinforces that relaxing at the end is critical to the process of learning," says Oakley. Teachers and administrators can build a similar rhythm into the schoolday, providing brain breaks and movement time to help students toggle between focused and diffused thinking.
5. Expanding Possibilities

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5 Strategies to Demystify the Learning Process for Struggling Students | KQED

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Oakley recognizes that "many educators are not at all comfortable with or trained in neuroscience," so she breaks down a few key principles that teachers can use in the classroom and share with students to help them demystify the learning process. 1. The Hiker Brain vs.

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Editor's note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched "The Acceleration Imperative Recommendations ," an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders' efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. It comprises four chapters split into nineteen individual topics. Over the coming weeks, we will publish each of these as a standalone blog post. This is the fifth. Read the first, second, third, and fourth. Rationale
Family engagement has always been critical to student success, but never more so than now. In the current pandemic, many families have been through significant trauma, from illness, losing loved ones, financial hardship, or losing a job or a home. And of course, many children have been away from classrooms for over a year. Schools and families will need to rebuild in-person connections and shore up trust-first, so parents can feel secure in sending children back to school buildings full time, and second, so families can support educators' efforts to accelerate student learning. Some of the digital tools that schools and families have put in place to keep connected over the last year can help.

Regularly communicate to parents and caregivers expectations for student attendance, behavior, and grade-level academic performance-and why these are important factors in children's development and success as adults. In addition, share the concrete steps the school or district is taking to support students to meet these expectations and make up for pandemic-related learning losses, particularly how families can support these efforts at home. Accessible forms of communication like text messages can build trust and "nudge" families, to the benefit of students.

Work to build or rebuild trust at the system level, including by soliciting families' goals for their children and including those goals in program planning. Many of the least-connected parents already distrusted schools before the pandemic, given their own negative experiences with schools or other institutions. Publicly listening and acting on family priorities is one way to build trust, such as by surveying families and publicly sharing how those responses inform decision-making.

Open two-way lines of communication between parents and teachers and prioritize staff time to maintain them. Family engagement cannot be seen as something "done" to families. True engagement is mutual and relies on open and frequent communication about what's working and what's not, with students' needs at the center. Successful tactics can include arranging regular "office hours" when families can contact staff for any reason, scheduling regular virtual parent-teacher conferences, and stepped-up outreach efforts by school counselors to check in with families about their needs and expectations.

Work with community service providers to anticipate and respond flexibly to a variety of family needs, including social-service and mental-health supports. And partner with expert organizations to support highly effective instruction using high-quality curricula.

School disconnection has played out differently for different families during the pandemic. While some families gained insights as daily instruction played out over Zoom, even the most engaged students have experienced some degree of physical isolation from school environments, and the least engaged students have experienced no schooling at all.

Understanding the cultural factors that shape families' immediate concerns and priorities is important. Schools and families can more easily agree on short-term objectives, like daily attendance, homework, and reading, when they are connected to a shared goal of a meaningful future for students.

A 2016 report by the Pacific Regional Education Lab suggests that two-way communication that includes frequent data sharing with parents about children's general academic progress, including both formative and summative assessment scores, has a particularly high impact on students' academic success. These positive impacts are enhanced when schools ask families about students' interests, behaviors, and challenges. For example, a 2019 study out of Germany found evidence that frequent communication between schools and families, wherein schools share data on students' homework completion on a recurrent basis, can increase students' completion of homework assignments. The study found that simply assigning homework without a strong and sustained school-family relationship did not result in high homework completion rates.

Though there is some debate over the value of homework, especially in the younger grades, we know that well-designed homework assignments are beneficial to students and can communicate with parents what their children are learning at school, particularly when teachers review assignments and offer clear feedback. In addition, reading at home for at least twenty minutes a day has significant academic benefits. A compelling 2020 longitudinal study from the Oxford Review of Education found significant academic benefits correlated with students reading at home, but only when the materials read are books and not other printed materials, such as comics or newspapers. Schools should therefore consider ways to provide low-income families with books.
Reading List
Finally, both families and schools have a role to play in reducing student absenteeism. A 2007 study from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University points to the devastating academic costs of chronic absenteeism. Chronically absent students score 5 percent lower, on average, on math and reading standardized assessments compared to their peers.

In short, family engagement should be based on principles of transparency and mutual trust, as articulated in the following delineation of roles and responsibilities:

Dettmers, S., Yotyodying, S., and Jonkmann, K. (2019). Antecedents and Outcomes of Parental Homework Involvement: How Do Family-School Partnerships Affect Parental Homework Involvement and Student Outcomes? Frontiers in Psychology. 10.

Simply assigning a lot of homework does not necessarily lead to its being completed. Robust family engagement (family-school partnerships in a German context) leads to improved homework completion.

Garcia, M.E., Frunzi, K., Dean, C.B., Flores, N., & Miler, K.B. (2016). " Toolkit of resources for engaging families and the community as partners in education. Part 4: Engaging all in data conversations. " Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific.

Speaks to the importance of sharing data with families about how their children are doing in a meaningful way as a key part of a family engagement strategy.

Hill, N., Liang, B., Price, M., Polk, W., Perella, J., and Savitz‐Romer, M. (2018). Envisioning a meaningful future and academic engagement: The role of parenting practices and school‐based relationships. Psychology and the Schools, 55(6), 595-608.

Jerrim, J., Lopez-Agudo, L., and Gutiérrez, O. (2020). Does it matter what children read? New evidence using longitudinal census data from Spain. Oxford Review of Education. 46(5), 515-533.

It's widely stated that reading every day is essential for kids' literacy development. This longitudinal study makes the compelling case that this is only the case when students read books and not other printed material.

Pondiscio, R. (2019). How the Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice. Avery.

Points to the important role of being transparent and direct with parents, among other successful aspects of Success Academies Charter Schools.

Romero, M., and Lee, Y. (2010). " A National Portrait of Chronic Absenteeism in the Early Grades." New York, N.Y.: National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University.

Confirms the detrimental effects of chronic absenteeism in elementary school on school success by examining children from across various incomes and race/ethnicity groups in a nationally representative sample of children entering kindergarten.

Sharkey, P. (2010). The acute effect of local homicides on children's cognitive performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(26), 11733-11738.

Sheldon, S. (2007). Improving student attendance with school, family, and community partnerships. Journal of Educational Research, 100(5), 267-275.

A robust family engagement strategy plays a key role in improving attendance.

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Family engagement is critical to student success-especially now

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Editor's note: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently launched "The Acceleration Imperative," an open-source, evidence-based resource designed to aid instructional leaders' efforts to address the enormous challenges faced by their students, families, teachers, and staff over the past year. It comprises four chapters split into nineteen individual topics.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Self-Assessment: A Powerful Tool to Improve Student Learning and Understanding

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Self-Assessment: A Powerful Tool to Improve Student Learning and Understanding

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Elementary school teachers use number talks to guide students to engage deeply with concepts, and they can work online, with a little creativity.

Before the coronavirus forced schools to close, if you walked into any elementary classroom during math instruction, you would notice students interacting with concepts through by using math manipulatives, playing games, engaging in discussion while problem-solving, and evaluating their own work as well as the work of their peers.

The sudden and swift transition to remote learning due to the Covid-19 pandemic required educators to adapt the idea of school to work in a digital environment. Among the many challenges of remote learning is providing elementary mathematics instruction that is engaging, rigorous, and equitable.

While there is no universal solution, one strategy is to use virtual number talks as a way to provide students an opportunity to critically think about math concepts. Based on the work of Sherry Parish, a number talk is a classroom conversation about mental math problems. In a number talk, teachers pose a problem to students and use lean prompting and questioning to elicit student thinking and dialogue. As students present their solutions, the class as a whole evaluates their work and considers the variety of methods one can use to generate a solution.

I'm an instructional coach working with classroom teachers in grades K-5, and when we first considered adapting number talks to be done virtually, we thought of the barriers that could impede student success and ways to address them.

Establish Norms

Just like in your classroom, students need to be explicitly taught how a productive number talk works. Working with our students, we developed and explained our norms, modeled them, and practiced. The three norms that worked for us are as follows. First, we are "all in," meaning that we are all in a good spot to focus on math and that we will remain focused on our number talk.

Our second norm, "one speaker," means there is only one speaker at a time and we take turns so that everyone has an equal chance to participate. Finally, our last norm, "step in, step out, and hold your thought," means that when it is a student's turn to talk, they make sure to say what they need to about the problem and then pass to the next speaker. If a student has a new thought or question that they want to share, they wait until it's their turn.

Think Beyond Mental Math Problems

While a number talk is traditionally done using mental math problems, physical classroom environments generally have scaffolds readily available, like number lines and anchor charts-tools that can assist students with their thinking. In order to successfully adapt number talks to a remote environment, encourage students to model their thinking by using pencil and paper or by creating their own at-home math tool kits of everyday items that can be used as math manipulatives, such as counters made of dried beans or pasta.

Furthermore, present your problems digitally with a presentation slide using easy-to-read fonts and, if possible, provide visual anchors like pictures to help support all students, including English learners, with comprehension.

Facilitate Discussion and Elicit Thinking

As educators, we often default to wanting to help our students by doing the heavy lifting. In challenging circumstances like remote learning, we may find ourselves doing this even more. However, during a digital number talk, we need to remember that our role as educators is to facilitate and guide discussion. Students may present an incorrect solution, and that is OK. The goal is to get students to critically evaluate their own work as well as their peers'. You can use lean prompts, like "Tell me more," "Is there anything you might change?" or "Can you explain it in a different way?"

At the conclusion of the digital number talk, have the class reflect on the work and articulate the different strategies you can use to solve a problem. You may find yourself at the end modeling a different strategy that students did not use or highlighting the work of students.

Practice With Digital Tools

You will want to find a teleconferencing application that meets your needs and your district's technology requirements. Once you've found that platform, practice and get to know the features. One of our teachers found it useful to practice number talks with her colleagues during meeting times. Just as in the classroom, technological issues may happen; however, practicing it made our digital number talks much more seamless for all participants.

We found it very helpful to learn how to utilize the "mute all" feature to eliminate background noise that can make it hard to hear students, as well as the hand-raising and chat box features. Students were made aware that they would be muted and when called on would need to unmute themselves. For our much younger students in kindergarten and first grade, our teachers found themselves manually doing this for students.

You may also want to utilize the digital whiteboard features to record student responses as the number talk progresses so that students have a visual reminder of the discussion.

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Bringing Number Talks to the Online Classroom

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Elementary school teachers use number talks to guide students to engage deeply with concepts, and they can work online, with a little creativity.

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Molly Ness
"The author doesn't come right out and say it, but I can infer that the narrator is a girl." "I believe the most important idea here is that Yoon is homesick." "I don't understand what just happened. Maybe if I keep reading I can clear up this confusion."
In John Logan's 2nd grade classroom, daily read alouds provide the opportunity for students to internalize the metacognitive moves that a proficient reader employs. As he reads aloud to the class, Mr. Logan provides multiple think alouds: he uses "I" language to model the thinking that builds his comprehension and provides quick explanations of what is going through his mind at periodic stopping points. With this transparent effort, his students are more likely to internalize these strategies and apply them to their independent reading.

When teachers think aloud, students benefit. Research suggests that students who are exposed to think alouds outperform their peers on measures of reading comprehension. Think alouds are beneficial for a variety of readers across a variety of texts; these benefits have been documented for struggling readers, for English language learners, for different text genres and content areas, and for students encountering online text. The think aloud serves as a brief, energizing instructional burst that helps young readers take on the strategies the teacher is modeling.

Despite their benefits, however, think alouds are not commonplace in K-5 classrooms. In my work as a teacher educator, I have found that the explicit modeling component of think alouds requires deliberate planning-we cannot assume that effective think alouds will come to us naturally. In a year-long research project with a teacher study group, I created a three-step process to help teachers think big with think alouds. I then refined and tweaked this process in my work with K-5 classrooms. As I plan my think alouds, I skim through the selected text three times-each rereading is described in the steps that follow. Just as training wheels provide stability and confidence when learning to ride a bike, so does the script of a think aloud. The end goal is to be able to think aloud independently with comfort, ease, and skill.

1. Identify Juicy Stopping Points

The first step in planning a think aloud is a close examination of the text. With a stack of sticky notes in hand, I peruse the text, searching for places to make inferences, synthesize information, monitor and clarify my confusion, ask a question, or think through the author's purpose. I see these spots as "juicy stopping points" that can either lead to comprehension opportunities or stumbling blocks. In my first reading, I may identify more than 15 juicy stopping points in a standard children's picture book.

2. Determine Where and When to Think Aloud

In my second reading, I examine each stopping point and critically reflect on the need for that point. The goal here is to narrow down the stopping points to a more manageable number so I do not overwhelm students and detract from the comprehension process. I keep several factors in mind, including my purpose for selecting the text, my learning objectives for the lesson, and which comprehension strategies are familiar or unfamiliar to my students prior to reading the text. I might eliminate stopping points that focus on minor details or occur after very short portions of text. After my second reading, I typically end up with about five to seven stopping points. These are the bare bones of the think aloud I will model in front of my students.

3. Write Scripts on Sticky Notes

The goal of my third reading is to identify exactly what I will say in front of students. I literally write out, in first-person narrative, what I will say in response to a text to give students the chance to eavesdrop on the reading process. The use of "I" statements-as shown by Mr. Logan in the opening vignette-encourages students to emulate purposeful reading.

Go Below the Surface

Each read aloud-whether of a storybook or of a few paragraphs in a science textbook-provides the opportunity to model our metacognitive processes. Typically, we ask surface-level questions like "Where does the story take place?" and "Why do you think he left the town?" These questions serve merely to assess students' understanding of the text. As we think aloud, however, we can mentor students in building the comprehension skills they need to become successful independent readers.

Molly Ness is an associate professor of education at Fordham University and author of Think Big With Think Alouds, Grades K-5.

KEYWORDS

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Molly Ness "The author doesn't come right out and say it, but I can infer that the narrator is a girl." "I believe the most important idea here is that Yoon is homesick." "I don't understand what just happened. Maybe if I keep reading I can clear up this confusion."

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FAME is an exciting professional learning initiative sponsored by the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) that promotes teacher collaboration and planning for effective formative assessment practice. A cadre of Michigan educators serves as coaches for site-based learning teams of teachers and administrators in Michigan schools.

Learn More about FAME
Learn More about Formative Assessment
Building and Sustaining FAME Professional Learning

How would you define the formative assessment process and describe its application in the classroom?

How has your work with FAME helped you become a more effective teacher?

What do assessment literate individuals need to understand about formative assessment?

What teacher assessment practices are prioritized in an effective Assessment for Learning model, and how do these practices position teachers?

Supporting Online Teaching

View the webinars in two series designed to support Michigan educators in using the formative assessment process during online teaching and learning.

View Webinars

Interested in becoming a FAME Coach?

Become a FAME Coach and form a Learning Team! The application for the 2023-24 school year (available only to Michigan Educators) is now closed, but inquiries are accepted at any time.

What is the Formative Assessment Process?

Formative assessment is a planned, ongoing process used by all students and teachers during learning and teaching to elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve student understanding of intended disciplinary learning outcomes and support students to become more self-directed learners.
(CCSSO FAST SCASS Austin, Texas June 2017)

FAME's components and elements are framed by three guiding questions:*

*(Sadler, 1989; Hattie and Timperley, 2007; Gotwals et al., forthcoming)

Where Are We Going?

PLANNING is a complex process that enables a teacher to plan student engagement with content that promotes student learning. LEARNING TARGETS written in student-friendly language are used to help students understand what they are learning, how to reach the target, and what success looks like once the target is reached.

What Does The Student Understand Now?

Student EVIDENCE OF LEARNING is used to help teachers know where students are in relation to the learning targets, help students see what they know and need to work on, and help teachers and students make decisions about where to go next with the learning.

How Do We Get To The Learning Target?

FORMATIVE FEEDBACK, verbal and written, helps students understand how close they are to the learning targets and what they can do to move closer. INSTRUCTIONAL DECISIONS, as part of the formative assessment process, are made by teachers to alter or verify instruction based on student evidence and their progression toward learning targets. In addition, students make learning decisions in the formative assessment process when they use formative feedback about their progress to make adjustments in their learning and set goals to reach the learning target.

For more, visit MDE Formative Assessment

Planning

On-going Analysis of Instruction & Learning

Increased Student
Motivation & Learning

Formative Assessment Process Overview Module

Find out more about the formative assessment process! Explore the definition of formative assessment, key features of the process, the three questions that guide it, and the five main components that comprise the formative assessment process.

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FAME Components and Elements At-a-Glance

In this document, FAME Components and Elements and the three questions that guide the formative assessment process are presented in a concise table. A graphic of the formative assessment process is included.

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Overview of the FAME Formative Assessment Process

This resource includes a definition and other information about the formative assessment process, a description of the Formative Assessment for Michigan Educators (FAME) program, and a collection of FAME Learning Points about each Element of the FAME formative assessment process.

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Formative Assessment Process - Discipline Guides

The FAME Program is prepared to support Coaches and Learning Teams within Michigan in use of the formative assessment process. FAME has newly developed Discipline Guides in Early Literacy, Fine Arts, and Science. Discipline Guides for other content areas are in planning stages.
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FAME Research & Development

FAME continually invests in program improvement by studying the program's effects on teachers and students and developing, evaluating, and refining resources used in the program.

Case Studies

Michigan Great Lakes Virtual Academy: A Case Study in How Participation in FAME Cultivates Teacher Leadership

This case study looks at teacher leadership within the FAME Learning Team at the Michigan Great Lakes Virtual Academy (MGLVA). It describes how the FAME program helps to build the teacher leadership needed for the enactment of the formative assessment process, specifically, and for school improvement more broadly.
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Report Abstracts and Articles

Blakeslee, Chandler, Roeber, and Kintz - Accentuate the Formative

This article showcases Michigan teachers using rubrics and video to improve their practices.

More FAME R&D

FAME taps in to a network of experts. What are they saying?

Brookhart & Lazarus - Formative Assessment for Students with Disabilities

This paper from the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) discusses formative assessment practices for students with disabilities, illustrated with text and video examples. The strategies work for all students, including those who are low-performing, with or without disabilities.

Collins - Reaping the Benefits of Deep Formative Assessment: Lessons from Around the World

New insights are emerging about the critical role students play in maximizing the effectiveness of formative assessment practices; about how to help teachers develop and hone their formative assessment skills; and about how education policy can be used more effectively to deepen and scale up the use of classroom-based assessment practices.

Heritage - Formative Assessment and Next-Generation Assessment Systems: Are We Losing an Opportunity?

All too often, the term "formative assessment" conjures images of quizzes and tests, but formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning. With this paper, the Council of Chief State School Officers seeks to illuminate and enrich the discussions around student assessment and help lead the development of more effective ways to assess student learning.

Meet the Formative Assessment Experts

Margaret Heritage

Margaret Heritage is an internationally recognized expert in formative assessment. Currently, she is an independent consultant in education and a senior advisor to WestEd. She spent 22 years at the University of California, Los Angles (UCLA), first as principal of the laboratory school of UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and then as an assistant director at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing. Her work is published in peer-reviewed journals, edited books, and practitioner journals. Her most recent book, Formative Assessment in Practice: A Process of Inquiry and Action, and a co-authored book, English Language Learners and the New Standards, are published by Harvard Education Press.

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W. James Popham

James Popham began his career in education as a high school teacher in Oregon. He is professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He is the author of twenty-five books and a former president of the American Educational Research Association. In 2002 the National Council on Measurement in Education presented him with its Award for Career Contributions to Educational Measurement. In 2006 he was awarded a Certificate of Recognition by the National Association of Test Directors.

Featured Works

Rick Stiggins

Rick Stiggins founded the Assessment Training Institute (ATI) in 1992 to provide much-needed professional development in assessment for teachers and school leaders. ATI can help assessment users at all levels learn how to (a) create high-quality assessments, and (b) use them in the service of student success. The most unique feature of the ATI philosophy remains our advocacy of and professional development in "assessment for learning"; that is, the use of student-involved classroom assessment, record keeping and communication to promote success for all students. The ATI programs, materials and services in classroom assessment for student learning are specifically designed to draw teachers and administrators into local learning teams to master principles of balanced assessment and assessment for learning. Rick is the author of numerous books, articles and papers on assessment practices in the classroom and its impact on students and student success.

Featured Works

Dylan Wiliam

Dylan Wiliam is Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at University College London. After a first degree in mathematics and physics, and one year of teaching in a private school, he taught in inner-city schools in London for seven years. In 1984, he joined Chelsea College, University of London, which later merged with King's College London. From 1996 to 2001, he was the Dean of the School of Education at King's, and from 2001 to 2003, Assistant Principal of the College. In 2003, he moved to the USA, as Senior Research Director at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. From 2006 to 2010, he was Deputy Director of the Institute of Education, University of London. Over the last 15 years, his academic work has focused on the use of assessment to support learning (sometimes called formative assessment). He now works with groups of teachers all over the world on developing formative assessment practices.

Featured Works

Paul Black

Paul Black earned his first degree in physics, and subsequently obtained his PhD in crystallography at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge in l954. Between 1956 and 1976 he was a faculty member in the Department of Physics in the University of Birmingham (England), but his interests gradually moved from research in physics to research and development in science education. He left Birmingham in 1976 to become professor of science education and director of the Centre for Science and Mathematics Education, at Chelsea College in London, and when Chelsea College merged with King's in 1985 he became the head of the King's Centre for Educational Studies, King's College London (KQC). He retired in 1995, but is still active in research and development work.

He has been a visiting Professor of Education at Stanford University, California. For many years he was involved closely with curriculum development work with the Nuffield Foundation in science and in design and technology, at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. He was chair of the government's Task Group on Assessment and Testing in 1987-88, and deputy chairman of the National Curriculum Council from 1989 to 1991. He has served on three committees on the USA National Research Council. He is a member of the Policy Advisory Group and of the Technical Advisory Group of the UK Examination and Qualifications Regulator, OFQUAL. He is currently engaged in research and development work to improve classroom practices in both formative and summative assessment.

Featured Works

Susan Brookhart

Susan M. Brookhart is an independent educational consultant and author based in Helena, Montana. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member in the School of Education at Duquesne University. She was the 2007-2009 editor of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, a journal of the National Council on Measurement in Education, and she is currently an Associate Editor of Applied Measurement in Education. She is author or coauthor of 17 books and more than 70 articles and book chapters on classroom assessment, teacher professional development, and evaluation.

Christine Harrison

Chris Harrison taught science in London schools for 13 years before gaining a position at King's College London, in teacher training. Her PhD study, supervised by Paul Black, looked at the assessment practices of two high school science teachers and explored how their pedagogy changed through strengthening the feedback evidence from their learners. Chris went on to co-direct the KMOFAP study, with Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, which looked at assessment for learning in science, English and mathematics classrooms. Several studies and consultancies on Assessment for Learning followed, where Chris developed a collaborative action research approach that enabled research and professional learning to benefit one another. She has written extensively on classroom assessment for teachers, researchers and professional developers and made two television programs on her work.

Chris is known, both nationally and internationally, for the ways she can relate research to practice, made possible through extensive experience of teacher education from both a research and teaching perspective and this means that she is often asked to do keynotes, run workshops, and write chapters and books for a wide range of educational audiences. She advised the English National Strategy on both iterations of the Assessment for Learning professional development materials for schools in England and Wales and was lead consultant on the Assessment is for Learning project in Scotland.

She now leads the UK expert team for the International Symposium on Classroom Assessment and Assessment for Learning forum, where academics and practitioners from across the world gather to share their work, ideas, projects, under three broad umbrellas - policy, professional learning and research. She has recently ventured into new realms of professional learning having designed a MOOC on Assessment for Learning in STEM subjects, which has had more than seven thousand participants sign up for it. With over 20 years of working in the field of classroom assessment, Chris remains enthusiastic and committed to helping teachers make this an effective aspect of their classroom practice.

Featured Works

Bronwen Cowie

Professor Bronwen Cowie is Director of the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, The University of Waikato, New Zealand. She began her career as a secondary maths, science and physics teacher and then moved to the university to work on the Learning in Science Project [LISP] (Assessment). Her particular interest was in student perceptions and experiences of classroom assessment. The LISP project highlighted that teachers and students perceived and experienced formative assessment as embedded in and accomplished through a combination of classroom interaction and planned activities. This study highlighted the role of teachers noticing, recognizing and responding to student learning as part of classroom interaction.

Featured Works

Jill Willis

Dr. Jill Willis is a full time continuing senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She teaches beginning teachers to embed AfL (assessment for learning) practices into their curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, and teaches aspiring leaders in the Master of Education Leadership program about leading educational change. Her AfL research and publications (http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Willis,_Jill.html) contribute significant findings about informal group tacit relationships in feedback and self-assessment structures that inform learner agency and identity. Over 1900 copies of her PhD thesis "Towards learner autonomy: An AfL approach" have been downloaded by readers in 60 countries.

Jill draws on her 20 years as a schoolteacher and leader to research alongside teachers to understand AfL issues in practice. With Dr. Lenore Adie she has researched with teachers in Queensland schools to understand how new national assessment standards are interpreted into classroom assessment practices, and how annotation of exemplar assessment responses can enhance a teacher's and the learner's understanding of assessment standards. She has also researched how digital feedback loops in largescale change can be a form of reflexive digital self-assessment that can enhance learner agency and inform system change. Her current research with Professor Bronwen Cowie (Waikato University, New Zealand) and Dr. Chris Harrison (Kings College, London) arises from issues raised through the international AfL network about promoting sustainable AfL change in teacher practice through inquiring into teacher noticing of AfL moments in action.

Jill is an experienced facilitator of teacher professional learning with a warm and inclusive approach. She is often invited to speak at national, state and local teacher professional learning events, and to lead cooperative programs between the Education faculty and innovation partners such the Mentoring Beginning Teacher program training 3000 state school teachers in mentoring (2014-15), the Teacher Education Centre of Excellence (2011-13), and the Transform project focusing on digital pedagogies in tertiary learning (2013-14). She facilitates professional learning that is active, reflective and builds on participant knowledge and evidence based research to inspire teachers towards ongoing inquiry into their own practice.

Featured Works

Ed Roeber

Edward Roeber, Ph.D., is a master change-agent, highly regarded as both an academician and practitioner in assessment and evaluation. His depth of knowledge and experience in formative and summative assessment and program evaluation is widely respected across Michigan and the U.S. Dr. Roeber currently serves as assessment director for the Michigan Assessment Consortium (MAC).

Before his time with the MAC, Dr. Roeber served for about 20 years as the Supervisor of the Michigan Educational Assessment Program and four years as Executive Director of the Office of Educational Assessment and Accountability (OEAA) for the Michigan Department of Education (MDE). In the latter role, he envisioned a more complete balanced assessment system and MDE-provided professional learning opportunities to help educators bring effective formative assessment strategies into classrooms. From this vision, FAME was created. By endorsing and financially supporting a statewide initiative, MDE sent a strong message of value for the formative assessment process. Since his retirement from that role, Ed has continued his involvement in formative assessment by leading the research and development team for FAME, and he frequently presents on the topics of assessment system balance and formative assessment.

He began his career as a consultant with the Education Commission of the States, working on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the areas of mathematics, music, reading, science, visual arts, and writing. His extensive career also includes experience as the Director of Student Assessment Programs for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) as well as service to the Education Commission of the States, Measured Progress, Michigan State University, and WIDA/WCER.

He has consulted with a number of states and national organizations on the design, development, and implementation of large-scale assessment programs. He has authored numerous articles, reports, and other publications, particularly on the development of innovative assessment programs and the use and reporting of student achievement information. In addition, he has made numerous presentations to various groups around the country.

Roeber earned his Ph.D. in measurement and evaluation with a minor in educational psychology from the University of Michigan.

Featured Works

Interested in becoming a FAME Coach?

Become a FAME Coach and form a Learning Team! The application for the 2023-24 school year (available only to Michigan Educators) is now closed, but inquiries are accepted at any time.
FAME Team Expectations PDF

Supporting Online Teaching

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FAME - Formative Assessment for Michigan Educators

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FAME is an exciting professional learning initiative sponsored by the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) that promotes teacher collaboration and planning for effective formative assessment practice. A cadre of Michigan educators serves as coaches for site-based learning teams of teachers and administrators in Michigan schools.

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Foster knowledge, skills, and attitudes across five areas of social and emotional competence; Establish equitable learning environments and coordinate practices across four key settings that support students' social, emotional, and academic development. Download more information on the framework (available in and Spanish).

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Resources for families during distance learning - Wakelet

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Social and emotional distance learning resources - Wakelet

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Plant the Seeds Early in the Year

Author and podcaster Angela Watson ends each episode with, "It won't be easy, but it will be worth it." I repeat this mantra as I compose an individual and personal email to each family during the first week of school. The first week of school is crazy busy. Who has time to compose dozens of emails? But you should find the time because it will be worth it. This is a sample of an email that I send to each family by the end of the first week of school:

Mr. Jones and Dr. Garcia,

It is such a pleasure having Sofia in my Grade 7 pre-algebra class this year. I can already tell that she has a fun sense of humor. I hope to see you at parent night scheduled for 6 p.m. September 14.

[Include your photo or a link to a short video introducing yourself and some class basics, especially if your class is virtual.]

Use your school student information system (if available) to correctly address the parents by their titles and last names. If you're not sure, use a generic greeting such as "Garcia/Jones Family." Also note if a student is new to the school. This introductory email is especially welcoming and reassuring for new families.

Mention one good thing you have observed about the student. You build relationships by making your first contact a positive one. Do this early in the year, because Sofia may perform poorly on a quiz or throw a pencil across the room the next week. You don't want that to be your first outreach to the parents.

If possible, remind them when they can meet you in person or online (open house, parent night, Zoom meet and greet, etc.). This will appease the overly eager parents who may want to schedule a meeting in the first two weeks of school when time is scarce.

Send Happy Notes

Periodically send "happy notes" to parents randomly throughout the year. Keep these notes succinct, informal, and specific. Explain how a student did something helpful or had an insightful comment during a class discussion. Copy or BCC an administrator on these emails if you feel it is appropriate. Aim to send a note to each family throughout the year.

When the News Isn't So Happy

OK, you've sent the introductory email, presented a stellar parent night, and maybe even sent a happy note, but now you need to reach out to a parent with not-so-good news. Hopefully, through your prior communications you have planted the seeds for a trusting and caring relationship. The parents may be more open to hearing your concerns at this point.

If the situation is minor, go ahead and send a quick email to parents. Be sure to conclude with suggestions on how the student can improve his or her performance or behavior. Use supportive language and come from a place of "I'm here to help."

If the email is longer than a paragraph or contains sensitive content, send a request for a phone call. Provide two possible time slots for the call and the reason for it.

Pick Up the Phone

In a phone conversation you can hear tone, volley questions back and forth, and end the conversation in a timely manner without dragging it out with a chain of emails. Write yourself a script to get started:

"Hello Ms. Vanwinkle, I am not sure if you have had a chance to review Kevin's recent quiz. It seems that he wasn't quite prepared. He left 10 out of the 20 questions blank. I was hoping to work together to see if we can find out more about what may have happened."

This introduction is nonblaming, fact-based, and cooperative. Once you have stated the issue, be quiet and let her talk. After answering her questions, suggest steps for improvement, and remind the parent how you will support Kevin at school and how they can support him at home.

The 10 Percent

Ninety percent of parents will be supportive and understanding. Then there's the other 10 percent. Some of these parents will be rude, overbearing, or poorly behaved because of factors that have nothing to do with you personally. Remain calm and kind, because you have no idea what life experiences they have been through, especially now as we all cope with the negative effects of Covid-19. That being said, you deserve to be treated with respect and should never allow verbal abuse.

Don't be shy about asking for help. If you fear that a parent may get out of hand, request that you meet with an administrator present, either in his or her office or via videoconference.

If a meeting was tense, follow up with an email to the parent and copy or BCC an administrator. Such an email provides documentation of what was discussed and also informs the admin team of the current status of the child's progress.

Thinking about the next school year, whether we teach face-to-face, virtually, or in a hybrid model, plan how you will plant the seeds of relationship building with parents. To welcome parents into your online class environment, consider recording periodic screencasts demonstrating how to access and utilize the learning management system, class calendar, or other features they might find helpful. Perhaps your happy notes can include screenshots of their child's work. No matter what the situation looks like for schools, take some time to consider how you might nurture your garden for the benefit of your students and your own well-being as a teacher.

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A Strategy for Building Productive Relationships With Parents

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Author and podcaster Angela Watson ends each episode with, "It won't be easy, but it will be worth it." I repeat this mantra as I compose an individual and personal email to each family during the first week of school. The first week of school is crazy busy.

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MyPronouns.org Resources on Personal Pronouns

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Usually, the "they/them" pronouns set is acceptable to use when you don't yet know if a person goes by another set or sets of pronouns. You can learn more about the centuries of history behind the singular "they" pronoun to refer to an individual in the resources section. It is also possible to avoid pronouns, as demonstrated below under "no pronouns."

Just because a person goes by a certain set or sets of pronouns is not indicative of that person's gender. A person could be transgender or not transgender (also called "cisgender" - the vast majority of the population is cisgender) and might share the pronouns they go by. A person could be a man or a woman or both or neither and share any number of these sets of pronouns as the correct ones to use for them, but which set they go by is not necessarily indicative of their gender, even though for most people there is an association between the pronouns they go by and the gender they are.

She/Her: " She is a writer and wrote that book herself. Those ideas are hers. I like both her and her ideas."

He/Him: " He is a writer and wrote that book himself. Those ideas are his. I like both him and his ideas."

They/Them: " They are a writer and wrote that book themself. Those ideas are theirs. I like both them and their ideas." Please note that although "they" pronouns here are singular and refer to an individual, the verbs are conjugated the same as with the plural "they" (e.g. "they are"). Also note that in this singular pronoun set many use "themself" rather than "themselves," although both are typically acceptable.

Ze/Hir: " Ze is a writer and wrote that book hirself. Those ideas are hirs. I like both hir and hir ideas." Please note that "ze" is usually pronounced with a long "e" and that "hir" and its forms are usually pronounced like the English word "here." Some people instead go by "ze/zir" pronouns because of the more consistent pronunciation and spelling - see the resources section for more pronouns sets.

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How Do I Use Your Pronouns Correctly? - MyPronouns.org Resources on Personal Pronouns

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Usually, the "they/them" pronouns set is acceptable to use when you don't yet know if a person goes by another set or sets of pronouns. You can learn more about the centuries of history behind the singular "they" pronoun to refer to an individual in the resources section.

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How a binary view of racism can inhibit productive conversations about race in school settings.

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For Schools: SEL Practices That Engage Families

To engage families in social-emotional development, teachers and school administrators can't just send home packets and to-do lists. They need to create strong relationships, partner with families on goals for their children, and receive and provide ongoing support.

1. Start by learning about families. Use surveys, open houses, or phone calls to find out about family composition, special skills, concerns, and likes and dislikes. This knowledge can help teachers connect with families on a personal level throughout the year.

2. Invite families to generate SEL goals for their children. Ask families to identify what specific skills they would like their children to develop, and what kind of characteristics they would like their child to personify. Ask children, too, to write down their goals and the challenges they might face in achieving them. These goals can be connected to school or home.

3. Designate internal capacity focused on SEL and family engagement. Have a designated staff person - an SEL or school-family partnership coordinator - who not only oversees SEL program development, implementation, and evaluation, but also serves as a liaison between educators and families. That position can be part of a larger school-wide committee that is involved in SEL planning and decision-making, and that includes people from every part of the school community, including families.

4. Create a resource center for families. Schools should create a physical space where family members know they can go to pick up resources or books related to social-emotional development. This designated space signals to parents that they are welcome at the school - and that the school values their role in their children's development.

5. Plan ongoing SEL initiatives. Create opportunities for families to learn more about social-emotional wellbeing. At other family engagement events, such as holiday celebrations or class presentations, hand out a one-page SEL resource or ask parents to participate in a short activity about developing a specific skill. Provide examples of ways parents can build those skills at home.

For Families: SEL Practices That Continue the Work of Schools

To build on the work of schools, families should think about social-emotional learning as an all-day idea - rather than as a strategy to manage a singular stressful behavior or situation. In the same way that a strong school-wide SEL program helps children develop key skills for many settings, families can use their everyday interactions to build critical competencies that will aid children throughout their day.

1. Focus on your child's strengths. Especially when it comes to academics, it can be tempting to focus on problem areas. First, though, ask your child what she thinks she did well. A focus on accomplishment can build self-efficacy and help children persist when things get difficult.

2. Use visual aids to help your child plan. When something is new or hard for your child-completing homework, keeping his room clean-make visual reminders or step-by-step checklists that you can display prominently in your home. By showing children what they need to do to succeed, these practices also help children develop self-efficacy - and contribute to a sense of pride when goals are met.

3. Ask about feelings. Together, talk about emotions-what it feels like to be frustrated, worried, or excited. The ability to identify and label negative emotions can grow self-awareness. Encouraging your child to use "I" statements - "I'm mad," "I feel sad" - can help build self-control and communication skills, teaching her to pause and think when she's upset.

4. Stay calm when you're angry. Learn to recognize your own "trigger situations" and talk about coping with anger as a family. Show your children how you calm down: i.e., "I'm feeling very upset, so I'm going to take a couple of deep breaths before we talk about this." Modeling these cool-down strategies can help your kids develop self-control.

5. Be willing to apologize. When you do get upset, or make a mistake, apologize to your kids. Explain what you meant to do or say. In these moments, you're teaching social competence - that conflict is a normal part of life, and that it can be solved respectfully and calmly.

6. Encourage helping and sharing. Regularly talk with your children about what others might need, and how you could be helping. Think about big and small ways that you can help - whether by taking out the trash for an elderly neighbor or by volunteering at a local food pantry or at your church, mosque, or temple. These acts build empathy, cooperation, and a community-oriented mindset.

This piece originally appeared on EdSurge on June 26, 2018. Read the original piece.

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To engage families in social-emotional development, teachers and school administrators can't just send home packets and to-do lists. They need to create strong relationships, partner with families on goals for their children, and receive and provide ongoing support. Start by learning about families.

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A few days ago, we found out that all of the schools here in Oregon will be off until the start of April. Many of the universities have asked professors to switch their courses from face-to-face to online. This is a move that school districts across the U.S. and throughout the world are making. Needless to say, these are unprecedented times.

As a K-12 teacher, I had extensive experience with blended and hybrid teaching. As a professor, I've helped professors pilot new online courses and transform their face-to-face courses to online courses. And yet, I was reticent about writing this article and creating the eBook and toolkit that accompany it.

Why?

Because I still have times when I mess up with online learning. I still have lessons that tank. I still have times when I haven't developed as tight of an online community as I would have hoped. I am constantly learning and evolving as I move through new iterations in distance learning. And yet, I also see value in sharing what I've learned along the way. With that in mind, I thought I would offer my perspective and share my free resources.

The bad news? You can't convert your course.

As an education professor, I had the opportunity to work as a Digital Fluency Mentor helping professors develop online, hybrid, and virtual courses. One of the most common questions people asked me was, "How do I convert my face-to-face course into an online course?"

The truth is, you can't convert it. Learning isn't like a file that converts between a .doc and a PDF and a Google Doc. We can't simply substitute new tools and do the same exact activity. In other words, that rich, spontaneous, Socratic Seminar simply won't work in a discussion board or through a video conferencing system. That amazing collaborative design challenge doesn't transfer easily when students move out of the makerspace and into their own homes.

See, the problem with the idea of converting instruction is that you only see the limitations. You take a great in-person activity and then you try to do your best to substitute it with digital tools. But this will always lead to a deficit.

The Mindset Shift: From Converting to Transforming

But what if we chose a different approach? What if we asked, "How do I transform my course?" rather than "How do I convert it?"
With transformation, you think about the creative and connective capacity of technology to design learning experiences that would have been inconceivable before.

This idea is at the heart of the SAMR Model. With the SAMR model, the first two layers focus on using technology to enhance the learning process while the next two layers focus on transforming the learning. The first level, Substitution, uses technology as a direct substitution for the learning task with no significant change. So, a student who types an essay on the computer merely swaps a pencil for a keyboard. With Augmentation, the technology acts as a substitution with some augmentation. So, that paper essay moves to a Google Doc, where students can not only type and edit but also comment on one another's work. With Modification, technology enables significant task redesign. So, that essay is now a blog post. Students engage in online research, work collaboratively on a shared document, and publishing to an authentic audience. It is no longer an essay for a teacher. Instead, it is an article crafted for the world. With Redefinition, the technology allows for tasks that were previously inconceivable. So, that same essay is now a multimedia package, with a blog post, a podcast, and a short video. The research, too, includes video conferences with experts.

Note that Redefinition isn't necessarily better. Sometimes you simply need to substitute or modify a task with technology. At the same time, we also want to avoid the trap of handing students digital worksheets and essentially shifting toward packet work.

Equity Matters

The following are ideas we need to consider ahead of time:

If you're reading this right now, there's a good chance your school is moving quickly from face-to-face to online instruction. With COVID-19, there are many classrooms doing a quick shift toward online instruction. You are likely a K12 educator but you might be a professor at a university where your school has suddenly shifted classes online without any warning.

It's easy to step into digital spaces and forget that they are not socially neutral. The systems that perpetuate injustice off-line exist online as well. With that in mind, I'd like to remind educators to remember the following:

1. Not everyone has the same access to technology. Not every student has the same device or the same internet connection. Not every student has the same access to a quiet workspace at home. Please work with key stakeholders to address the issue of equity of access.

2. Power dynamics exist online. Pay close attention to the role of gender and race in your online instruction. There's a tendency for people to assume a false social neutrality online but you need to address power dynamics. Please consider finding experts in culturally responsive pedagogy and ask them for a critique of your online materials so that you can find areas where you need to improve.

3. Be sure to provide linguistic support. Please remember that some of your students might not be native English speakers and they deserve access to sentence stems, visuals, front-loaded vocabulary and other accommodations that you provide in-person.

4. Embrace a Universal Access and Universal Design mindset. Re-read the IEPs and 504 plans to provide necessary accommodations. Lean in to the special education teachers and disability support staff to think through how you will make your instruction universally accessible. For example, you will need to check that closed captioning is available on all videos and that transcripts are available for podcasts. You might need to provide additional assistive support technology. Often, librarians and instructional designers will have key information for you in these areas.

Seven Big Ideas as You Shift Toward Distance Learning

The following are a few ideas to consider as you shift toward online / distance learning.

Big Idea #1: Students should be creating original content.

In education, we often use consumer language to describe instruction. How do you deliver the lesson? Did the students get it? And there is some truth to this. We need to engage in direct instruction. We often model a particular skill that students then copy. Other times, we help students attain knowledge by reading articles, watching videos, or listening to lectures.

This is especially common in online courses, where the predominant model is to consume content and then discuss the information afterward.

However, at some point, we want students to engage in meaningful projects. We want them to be problem-solvers and makers and designers. In other words, we want students to develop a maker mindset.

This is why, ultimately, they need to engage in creative work online. But what does this actually look like?

Blogging: Thematic blogs are blogs based on a student's interests, passions, and ideas. It could be a foodie blog, a sports blog, a fashion blog, a science blog, or a history blog. They choose the topic and the audience. It's a great way for students to practice writing in different genres (persuasive, functional, informational/expository, narrative) with specific blog topics they choose. They can also add multimedia components, like slideshows, pictures, videos, and audio.

Podcasting: With podcasts, students create audio recordings that they then share with an authentic audience. They can work individually, with partners, or in small groups. It can be more scripted or more open. If you want, you can have students edit the podcasts and add music by using Garage Band or Audacity. But you can also do a simple recording with smartphones.

Videos: Video creation is a little more complicated. They are often more time-consuming and sometimes require additional skills. However, if students are at home, they might just be willing to spend the additional time creating a video. A simple option for video creation is the annotated slideshow. Here, students create a slideshow and then record the audio as they move through it. They can do this on PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides.

Not sure where to start? One idea is a Wonder Day:
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You can also get the Wonder Day project as well as the blogging and podcasting resources when you download the eBook and toolkit at the bottom of this article.

Big Idea #2: Be sure to leverage the power of online collaboration.

We live in a world where there are countless online tools for communication and collaboration. We can send instant messages, edit on a shared Google Document, hop onto a video conference, and easily send files back and forth. And yet, when it comes to distance learning, teachers often craft tasks that are entirely independent and individual. To make the most out of online learning, we need to leverage digital tools for collaboration.

Synchronous:
Chats, including Gmail chat or Slack
Video chats, including any video conferencing software (Hangouts, Zoom, Skype)

Asynchronous:
Shared documents, such as Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Slides
Project management software, such Trello
Voice chats, including Voice Thread

Synchronous/Asynchronous Hybrids:
Walkie Talkie apps, such as Voxer

Note that you need to know ahead of time which tools are COPPA and CIPA compliant. You need to check in with your district about your local policies. However, you should find a few key areas where you can have students work collaboratively even if they aren't in the same physical space.
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For online collaboration, you might try a small mini-project, where students engage in shared research and then come together to make something new (think the previously mentioned Wonder Day). Other times, they might collaborate by working on independent projects and sharing their processes with others.

Big Idea #3: Empower your students to own their learning in an online environment.

We often talk about what it means to move from compliance to engagement. It's the idea of creating an environment where students want to learn rather than have to learn. But if we want students to be creative, self-directed learners we need to go beyond student engagement and into empowerment. But this requires some paradigm shifts.

That's right. We're going to be talking shift.

Here's what I mean: The empowered classroom is a shift from giving choices to inspiring possibilities It's what happens when you move from making the subject interesting to tapping into student interests; when you go from saying "you must learn this" to asking "what do you want to learn?" It's a shift from taking assessments to assessing your own learning, it's an iterative process full of mistakes that ultimately lead to success. It's a shift from the teacher asking all the questions to the students asking their own questions, where they chase the inquiry process and take learning off-road. It's a shift from uncritical consuming to critical consuming and creating. Here, students move from critical consuming to inspiration to creativity, where they use the design process to launch their work to the world. It's a shift from differentiating instruction to personalizing learning And it's a shift from rigid to adjustable systems so that students own the process. They can set their own pace, choose their own formats, and decide what resources they want to use to accomplish their goals. It's a shift in mindset from compliance to self-direction. In other words, it's a shift toward student ownership. When that happens, our students become the creative, critical thinkers who change the world.
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This is a challenge in a physical classroom, with each student learning at a different pace. But that's actually the hidden advantage of online learning. The physical distance actually makes it a little less chaotic as we embrace student ownership.

The following are a few areas where you can incorporate student ownership:

Students owning the assessment process

Students choosing the topics

Students selecting the scaffolds

Students choosing how they present their learning

I go in-depth into the process in the free eBook you can access at the bottom of this article. I also include the suite of assessments that you can use in online learning. Note that because you aren't available to do in-person formative assessment, it is even more important that students engage in self-assessment and peer assessment.
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Here's a small sample of what it looks like to incorporate student choice in your online class:

Traditionally, choice menus allow students to choose how they will present what they are learning. It's a great first step for students who aren't used to having as much voice and choice in their learning. While choice menus are great, I thought I would share a variation on the choice menu that goes beyond choosing topics and toward student ownership of the learning targets and resources. Here's what it looks like.

As a teacher, I would keep an ongoing online curation of resources for each unit that I taught. Any time I saw something fascinating or relevant, I would copy and paste the link into a document. Then, I would use that curated list of resources in the choice menus. When students chose podcasts, videos, etc., I would link the option to a one-page topic-neutral document with a list of best practices, tutorials with instructions, and rubrics for that particular option.

So, if students were learning about forces and motion in science, they might select a specific standard. Then they would watch a video or podcast and then click on the slideshow option where they could see reminders of best practices (remember to use visuals, use a solid contrast in colors, cite sources, etc.) and begin creating their product.

Notice that with this choice menu, students are deciding either the topics, concepts, or skills and then deciding on their own resources and strategies before ultimately deciding on their final product.

Big Idea #4: Provide opportunities for vintage and digital mashups.

When we think of online teaching, we tend to imagine a student sitting at a computer completing work. However, some of the best tools are low tech and lo-fi. Yes, we need students to use a laptop. But we also need students to use pencils and paper and cardboard. In other words, you need to take a vintage innovation approach.

Vintage innovation happens when we use old ideas and tools to transform the present. Think of it as a mash-up. It's not a rejection of new tools or new ideas. Instead, it's a reminder that sometimes the best way to move forward is to look backward. Like all innovation, vintage innovation is disruptive. But it's disruptive by pulling us out of present tense and into something more timeless

Vintage Innovation is a both/and mindset. It's the overlap of the "tried and true" and the "never tried." It's a mash-up of cutting edge tech and old school tools. It's the overlap of timeless skills in new contexts. Vintage innovation is what happens when engineers use origami to design new spacecraft and robotics engineers are studying nature for innovative designs.

As you move toward online teaching, consider how you might embrace this mindset of a mash-up.

Big Idea #5: Be intentional with the design of your online classes.

User experience design theory (sometimes abbreviated as XD, UX, UXD or UED) focuses on the user experience of a platform. This might include accessibility, usability, enjoyment, and the overall flow of the experience. UX design focuses on both on how we use digital tools and on how we inhabit digital spaces. It focuses on systems in a way that is deeply human. What does it feel like for people? What does it look like for them? What are their processes?

The best systems are the ones that feel invisible. You step into it and immediately know where to go and what to do. Don't get me wrong. Confusion can be a great thing in a classroom if it is leading toward deeper learning. But confusion caused by poorly designed courses leads to disengagement and frustration. It cuts learning short and disrupts creative flow.

There are a few key elements of UX Design that we can incorporate into our online instruction:
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One simple step is to do a UX Design audit. I've included a template in the toolkit and eBook that you can download at the bottom of this post. Use this form as a way to self-assess the design of your online course. Focus on using this diagnostic tool as a way to improve the overall design. It helps to picture your course through the lens of a student who is accessing it for the first time.

Big Idea #6: Take a "show and tell" approach.

We tend to assign homework that asks students to take schoolwork into their world. Often, students fail to turn in their work. But what if it's shows and tell? Suddenly, kids can't wait to bring in an item from their world and share it with the class.

Show and tell is essentially the opposite of homework. It's a chance for students to bring their world into the school rather than school into their world. This approach honors student agency. When I taught eighth grade, I encouraged a "show and tell" approach to homework. Here, they could bring in experts, resources, videos, or audio from their own community as they worked on projects in class. It was always optional but many students choose to complete it, since it was a chance to bring their world into class.

As educators, we need to remember that home learning doesn't have to require us to send schoolwork home. It's about building a partnership between school and home and recognizing the ways that students might learn within their own environment.

We can take this same approach as we design distance learning experiences for our students. One small example is to ask students to share their interests and passions through a Geek Out Blog.

Big Idea #7: Be present and available as a teacher.

Distance learning doesn't mean we have to be distant. As teachers, we can be intentional about creating a sense of presence with our students. Here are a few ideas that I've found helpful:

Video announcement: This starts with he first week, where you do an on boarding video of the course and explain how it will work. But after that, you can create a weekly or even daily short video with a preview of what students will do. Although pre-recorded, these short, unstructured videos create a sense of presence for you as a teacher.

Small group check-ins: Here, you can schedule small group meeting and use video conferencing to meet with groups and look at their progress.

Email check-ups: There are a few options here. First, you can send out a whole class email with expectations, deadlines, etc. But the second option is just a short email to each student asking how they're doing. If you have 180 students in a class, rotate with 18 per day and make sure each student gets an individual email every other week. You can create an email template and personalize it.

Short text check-ins: With this option, you can ask students to use the chat function to send questions or comments as you go.

Surveys: Ask students to fill out a course survey each day where they share what their experiences have been in an online course.

Scheduled conferences: On the next page, you'll see the 5 minute conference system. With a whole day of working from home, you can easily schedule these conferences with students and let them know you are there for them.

There are so many other ways to be present and I'm sure that you, as a teacher, have other ideas of strategies you can use to build relationships and be present with your students, even as you shift toward distance learning.

Ultimately, there is no one single way to do online teaching. It's an experiment and it varies depending on your subject, your context, and your students. You'll make tons of mistakes - and that's okay. The beauty is in learning from those mistakes and iterating toward better and better instruction. Lean in to the experts in your own institution and be humble about what you don't know. Ask students for their input along the way. And over time, you'll develop some amazing distance learning units.

Below, you'll find the a free eBook, along with a toolkit full of resources you can use as you shift toward online teaching. You'll find lesson plans, writing prompts, entire projects, protocols, and guides.

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7 Big Ideas as You Shift Toward Online Teaching

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A few days ago, we found out that all of the schools here in Oregon will be off until the start of April. Many of the universities have asked professors to switch their courses from face-to-face to online. This is a move that school districts across the U.S.

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For some students, school is not just a place of learning and growth but also a refuge from abuse.

Data suggest that, on average, every classroom has at least one student affected by trauma. According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, close to 40 percent of students in the U.S. have been exposed to some form of traumatic stressor in their lives, with sexual assault, physical assault, and witnessing domestic violence being the three most prevalent.

These types of stressors, known as complex trauma, have the added wound of being perpetrated by a person with whom the child or teen has an ongoing relationship. The very people who are supposed to support and protect are those who wound and abuse. This leads to continuing states of grief, loss, abandonment, and neglect as well as persistent anxiety, fear, and depression-all at a time when the brain is in crucial stages of development.

For some young people, school is the only place in their lives where they know they are safe and can form trusted, enduring relationships. It is, therefore, a cruel irony that many students who are affected by trauma also have trouble engaging at school. They may attend school with the best of intentions, hoping to form friendships, feel connected to their teachers, and succeed at the day's tasks. Yet they can find themselves defiant, demanding, and disengaged -unable to learn and confused about why they can't relate and bond with others.

What do the latest scientific findings from the fields of traumatology, neuroscience, and positive education tell us about how to best help students who are affected by trauma? Below, we highlight some of the new practices that teachers can use to not only help students heal but also help them grow.

Healing and repair

The new field of "trauma-informed learning" has made great strides in helping teachers to better understand the developmental, emotional, and social challenges that students who are impacted by trauma face at school. While teachers are not mental health professionals, trauma-informed learning trains teachers in therapeutic approaches that can be woven into the classroom to redress the delayed development, underdeveloped neural pathways, and over-regulated nervous systems that students experience as a result of trauma.

For example, teachers can directly teach students about their body's own stress activation response and help them find techniques to regulate their heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure. Teaching through rhythm-for example, learning about math to the beat of a drum, reading an English text while riding an exercise bike, or having a disciplinary conversation while walking around the school yard together-is now an accepted classroom technique that assists trauma-affected students to regulate their nervous system through rhythmic movement.

Feeling calmer in class has the knock-on effects of helping students get along better with others, think more clearly, and stay on task. These approaches nurture students' stamina and persistence, allowing them to better deal with frustration, which benefits their social behavior in class and their capacity to take on greater academic challenges. This is indeed a hopeful approach.

Growth and strength

Trauma-informed education has helped teachers to evolve from the question of "What is wrong with this student?" to "What has this student been through?" In the field of positive psychology, we add a further question: "What does this student need to reach their potential?" This allows teachers to extend the focus from what is wrong, to what is needed, to what is possible. Building the mental health and academic capacities of students affected by trauma requires more than repairing psychological disorder and developmental delays-it requires the dual mantra of healing and growth. Of repairing and rising up.

Research by Corey Keyes shows us that healing and growth can be simultaneous processes. We don't always need to wait until something is fixed before we work on building our strengths. Indeed, growing the psychological strengths of a student affected by trauma can be a core part of healing their psychological struggles.

Working with students who are affected by trauma requires schools to assist in providing individual counseling services, safety and crisis planning, behavior plans, self-care plans to address triggers, and case management. Most of these services are not provided by the classroom teacher, yet the teacher is the person who spends the most time with trauma-affected students. A key way in which positive psychology adds to the trauma-informed strategies above is by empowering teachers in the classroom to help their students on a daily basis.

Here are five teaching techniques that you can use in your class, knowing that these approaches also assist your mainstream students.

1. Positive relationships. Trauma-affected students have more relationship challenges to navigate than most. These students can be dealing with harmful relationships at home and then come to school to manage relationships not only with their teachers but also with social workers, police officers, and clinicians-all while living out their daily lives.

It is critical that we help these students feel safe and trusting where possible, so they learn to develop social intelligence and seek out positive bonds with others. Teachers may be the only people who help these students learn what a healthy, supportive relationship feels like. Building relational trust involves simple teaching practices such as smiling, sharing parts of your life with your students, getting to know your students as individuals, and using yourself as a role model of a reliable and regulated adult.

2. Positive physical space. The physical layout and look of your classroom can be used to build positive emotions. Putting up positive visuals and quotes can inspire creative thinking and teamwork in your students. Increased natural light or soft lighting can enhance an open, warm, and relaxing environment.

Consider how the furniture and seating is arranged in your class. Is it helping students to feel safe and connected? You could also bring plants into the room or create a mindfulness corner, a dedicated space that students can visit when they need to regulate their stress response. The corner can include a bean bag, mindful coloring books, squeeze toys, noise-cancelling headphones, and more.

3. Positive priming. Following the research of Barbara Frederickson, you can use simple priming techniques to foster positive emotions such as contentment, pride, awe, and wonder in class.

Brain breaks are one helpful technique. The teachers who work with us have found that brain breaks are most effective when students reflect on the type of energy they need at that moment for learning: Escalating brain breaks build positive energy and emotions such as joy, happiness, and wonder (e.g., clapping games, thumb wars, laughter yoga, racing around the desk), while de-escalating brain breaks build calm emotions such as contentment and serenity, which help a student to feel safe and focused (e.g., silently tracing the movements of a partner, triangle breathing, playing music or repeating mantras, and body movements such as shoulder shrugging or pumping your toes inside your shoes).

You can also use positive primers to boost positive emotion when students first enter the classroom (such as by greeting them with the healthy touch of a handshake or a high five), during transitions (by turning transition routines into a silent game such as "follow the leader"), or during independent work breaks (by having students deliberately savor their accomplishment and share with a peer).

According to Fredrickson's theory, helping your students build up their bank account of positive emotions over time changes their brain to help them learn more effectively, form better relationships, and become more resilient. Next time you are planning a lesson, think about how you can use positive primers throughout the learning experience.

4. Using character strengths. Teaching strengths in schools has been shown to increase achievement and well-being. All students, especially trauma-affected students, need opportunities to identify, recognize, practice, and use their character strengths, which include qualities like kindness, humor, creativity, and bravery.

Ways to help students learn about their own strengths and the strengths of others include strengths surveys (if their literacy skills allow), strengths cards, and strengths spotting exercises-like identifying strengths in their heroes or playing a secret agent game where they are invited to "spy" on a fellow student to identify the strengths of that student. To teach about particular strengths, you could focus on stories in English and Humanities curriculums where characters or historical figures displayed those strengths. Strengths can also be developed through performing arts, sports, and other co-curricula.

5. Building resilience. Sadly, you cannot always impact the life of a student outside of school, but you can teach resilience strategies that help a student affected by trauma to gain a better understanding of their situation and to counteract the negative messages of shame they often internalize.

Students can practice resilience skills through role plays that help them to act out skills such as setting boundaries and verbalizing their feelings, all while in the safety of a classroom. Literature, poetry, and song lyrics can help students identify examples of resilient thinking-for example, Ariana Grande's song "No Tears Left to Cry" following the London terrorist attack at her concert. Analyzing the ways in which media figures, sports heroes, and other high-profile people explain their successes and failures showcases the difference between optimism and pessimism.

Teachers can also use moments in the learning process when students feel frustration or self-doubt to coach them on how to dispute their pessimism and automatic negative thinking ( "I can't do this"; "I'm dumb") to make room for optimism and constructive thinking ( "Maybe I'm tired and I need a break"; "I solved the problem last week and I can do it again"; "It takes me a little longer than others, but I've come a long way"). Learning resilience skills can provide an internal psychological buffer for students when they are outside of school, as well as providing empowering experiences at school.

Every teacher wants to positively impact the lives of their students. For students who are affected by trauma, the teacher plays an even more vital role. The introduction of positive psychology into the classroom has huge potential to change the trajectories of the lives of many of these young people by moving beyond repair to also inspire growth.

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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Five Ways to Support Students Affected by Trauma

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Teachers can help students recognize their strengths and build resilience.

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The biggest paradigm shift in my teaching career was the day I found out one of my students was homeless. Robert was talkative, academically average, fooled around a little too much. Some weeks he turned in good work, and other times he didn't. Among the 134 students that filled my rosters in my third year of teaching, he was a pretty typical seventh grade kid. But in March of that year, Robert was getting on my nerves: not turning in some of his work, talking out in class more than usual. I responded as I often did, with reprimands and lunch detention and generally feeling disappointed in him.

Then one afternoon, our school counselor mentioned in passing that Robert's family was homeless. They had been living in a shelter for the last two months. My whole view of Robert changed in an instant. I thought about how much he'd probably gone through in the last few months, all the things he'd probably seen, how unpredictable and unstable his life was, and how all that time he managed to show up to school most days, turn in some assignments, and basically hold it together.

At that moment, I realized I didn't really know my students at all.

Building solid relationships with your students is arguably the most important thing you can do to be an effective teacher. It helps you build trust so students take academic risks, allows you to better differentiate for individual needs, and prevents the kinds of power struggles often found in poorly managed classrooms.

Although most teachers value relationship-building, most don't have any kind of systematic approach for making that happen. We get to know students whenever there's time to squeeze it in, and this yields uneven results: Extroverted students make themselves known right away, others we get familiar with on a surface level, and far too many go largely unnoticed.

You'll get to know your students faster and more thoroughly if you have a system in place, a way to make sure you give sufficient attention to every child and store the information you gather for easy access later. In my years teaching at the middle school and college level, I developed a 4-part system that worked beautifully for me, and I think it will work for you as well.

Part 1: Break the Ice

Classroom icebreakers are a classic strategy for helping everyone feel more comfortable on the first day of school. But not all icebreakers are created equal: Many can be irritating, others are embarrassing, and some do nothing to actually help students get to know each other, so it's important to choose icebreakers that really help you and your students get acquainted in a comfortable, fun way.

You may already have some go-to icebreakers that you like. If not, here are three classroom icebreakers that students love.

Part 2: Take Inventory

In the first few days of school, distributing a getting-to-know-you questionnaire to students (or to their parents, if you teach young kids), is the most efficient way to gather information about every child. Most teachers already have some version of this, where we ask about students' favorite books or music, learn about their favorite hobbies and sports.

On my forms, I have also asked about whether my students have any health or allergy issues, what kind of technology they have at home, and whether their time is split between more than one household. For older students, I would also ask about outside responsibilities like jobs or extracurricular activities, so I know what else is competing for students' time. If you don't already have a form you like to use, I have created a nice set of editable Student Inventories for six separate age groups that will get the job done.

While you're at it, take time now to learn how to pronounce each student's name correctly, and what they prefer to be called. This makes a big difference.

Part 3: Store Your Data

Now that you have gathered all kinds of information on students, you need to do something with it. For most teachers, that means reading over the student surveys, then filing them away somewhere, never to be looked at again. Instead of letting this valuable information slip away, I have found it far more useful to store it all in one spreadsheet like the one below (click to view a larger image in a new window).

The biggest advantage of having all the information in one place is that it makes it easy to occasionally refresh your memory. If I'm planning a lesson that has something to do with cooking, I can quickly glance down the "skills" column to see which of my students likes to cook. Imagine Jaylen's surprise when I casually mention something about omelets and say, "like Jaylen makes." Or how Toby would feel if I asked him how his cat Mooshoo was doing. The beauty of this kind of system is that it can, and should, be updated throughout the year. As I learn new things about my students, I can keep adding to the chart. Finally, it allows me to see which students I still don't know very well: Notice how many cells in Tim's row are empty. That's a signal that I need to spend more time with him.

If you have a lot of students-and in middle and high school, that could easily be well over a hundred-this kind of data entry can be time-consuming. Still, the effort is worth it, and I would argue that the more students you have, the more valuable this kind of chart can be, because the chances of spending quality time with each student are slim. So make a separate chart for every class period and do five students per class, per night. Use whatever shorthand you can to cut down on the typing time. Chip away at it until it's done. You'll be glad you did.

When I originally introduced this system in a post I did for Corkboard Connections, I called it the Deep Data at a Glance Chart. In the 2015 book I co-wrote with Mark Barnes, Hacking Education, we changed the name to the 360 Spreadsheet. Regardless of what you call it, it will make a huge difference in your relationships with students. To get an editable version of this chart to make your own, you can download one for free here.

Part 4: Do Regular Check-Ups

The beginning of the school year isn't the only time to touch base with students. Several times throughout the year, or at the halfway point at the very least, survey students about how things are going for them. Ask how they feel about class procedures and rules, whether the assignments are fair, and how challenged they feel. It's also useful to ask open-ended questions like "What would you like to see more of in this class?" and "What else should I know?" These kinds of questions can uncover all kinds of information that you might never have known about otherwise.

Teachers often administer a survey like this at the end of the year, but I've found it much more useful to ask partway through, while there's still an opportunity to make changes that can turn things around. If you'd like a ready-made form for this purpose, I have created a "How's It Going?" form for two age levels: Elementary and Secondary/College.

Getting to know students sounds like a simple thing to do, something that just comes naturally and doesn't require any planning. Unfortunately, we don't always end up putting as much effort into this as we think. As we teach classroom procedures, get bus and lunch forms filled out, and begin diving into our content, relationship-building can fall by the wayside. By putting this system into place, you ensure that one of your most important jobs-getting to know each and every student-is done exceptionally well. ♥

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A 4-Part System for Getting to Know Your Students

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The biggest paradigm shift in my teaching career was the day I found out one of my students was homeless. Robert was talkative, academically average, fooled around a little too much. Some weeks he turned in good work, and other times he didn't.

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Listen to an Extended Version of this Post in a Podcast:
Samira Fejz ic was used to people saying her name wrong, especially in school. "Through the years, as roll would be called, I would wait for that awkward pause-this is how I knew I was next. I accepted this ritual."

Fejzic (FAY-zich), whose family left Bosnia in the early nineties and moved to the U.S. in 1999, experienced this ritual for ten years, and she understood that people in her new town weren't used to names like hers, despite the fact that the area's Bosnian population had grown massive in recent years.

"It never hurt me until high school graduation," she recalls. "This was a big day for me. My grandparents from Bosnia came just to watch me get my diploma and of course, my name was butchered."

If you're in a position to say lots of student names-in your classroom, over the P.A. system, or especially at awards ceremonies and graduations-no one will be surprised if you mess up a couple of them. But this year, maybe you can do better. If you make the commitment now to get them all right, if you resolve this time to honor your students with clear, beautiful pronunciation of their full, given names, that, my friend, will be the loveliest surprise of all.

Three Kinds of Name-Sayin'

I grew up with a hard-to-pronounce name. Actually, it wasn't that hard; it just looked different from what people were used to: Yurkosky. (Kind of rhymes with "Her pots ski," minus the "t" in pots.) Year after year, i t threw everyone off. And the way they approached the name put them into one of three camps: fumble-bumblers, arrogant manglers, and calibrators.

The fumble-bumblers I didn't mind so much. They'd mispronounce the name, slowing down and making their voice all wobbly, not trusting themselves. They'd grimace, laugh, ask me how to say it, then try again. But then they sort of gave up. Over the next few attempts, they'd settle into something that was a kind of approximation, and that would be that. What made me not mind these people was that they put the mispronunciation on themselves- their demeanor suggested the fault was with them, not me or my name.

The arrogant manglers were another story. They assumed their pronunciation was correct and just plowed ahead, never bothering to check. In many cases, an arrogant mangler will persist with their own pronunciation even after they've been corrected. Adan (uh-DON) Deeb, whose family hails from Israel with Palestinian roots, experienced this as a middle school student in the U.S. "Every time I was called up to the office, EVERY SINGLE TIME, they would mispronounce my name, no matter how many times I corrected them. It made me angry. To me that shows that they just don't care enough to get my name right."

This group has a couple of sub-categories: One is the nicknamers-people who come across a name like Rajendrani and announce, "We'll just call you Amy." The other is the worst kind, the people who start with the first syllable, then wave the rest of the name away like so much cigarette smoke, adding "Whatever your name is," or just "whatever." I don't have a creative name for this group. Let's just call them assholes.

Finally, there was a small group I think of as the calibrators, people who recognized that my name required a little more effort. They asked me to pronounce it, tried to replicate it, then fine-tuned it a few more times against my own pronunciation. Some of them would even check back later to make sure they still had it.

My cousin Laura, who has the same last name I grew up with, remembers a professor who was a true calibrator. "It did take him a bit of time to learn to pronounce my name, but he was always apologetic when he said it wrong, and always insisted on the importance of getting such things right. He was easily the most inspirational and challenging teacher I've had...he just insisted that every student feel important."

If you're already a calibrator, keep up the good work. If you're not-if you've let yourself off the hook with some idea like "I'm terrible with names"-know that it's not too late to turn things around, and it does matter. Though it may seem inconsequential to you, the way you handle names has deeper implications than you might realize.

Kind of a Big Deal

People's reaction to this issue varies depending on their personality. If your student has a strong desire to please, wants desperately to fit in, or is generally conflict-avoidant, they may never tell you you're saying their name wrong. For those students, it might matter a lot, but they'd never say so. And other kids are just more laid-back in general. But for many students, the way you say their name conveys a more significant message.

Name mispronunciation - especially the kind committed by the arrogant manglers-actually falls into a larger category of behaviors called microaggressions, defined by researchers at Columbia University's Teachers College as "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color" (Sue et al., 2007).

In other words, Although most of your students may not know the word mutilating someone's name is a tiny act of bigotry. Whether you intend to or not, what you're communicating is this: Your name is different. Foreign. Weird. It's not worth my time to get it right. microaggression, they're probably familiar with that vague feeling of marginalization, the message that everyone else is "normal," and they are not.

In her piece What's in a Name? Kind of a Lot, writer Tracy Clayton (under the name Brokey McPoverty) rails against Ryan Seacrest's move to shorten the name of actress Quvenzhané Wallis to "Little Q." She points out that Seacrest and other media figures treat the names of some actors-who happen to be white-differently: "The problem is that white Hollywood...doesn't deem her as important as, say, Renee Zellweger, or Zach Galifianakis, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, all of whom have names that are difficult to pronounce- but they manage. The message sent is this: You, young, black, female child, are not worth the time and energy it will take me to learn to spell and pronounce your name."

This, by the way, is how you say Quvenzhané:

This issue goes beyond names rooted in cultures unfamiliar to the speaker. Whatever it is your student prefers to be called, it's worth the effort to get it right. I'm sure I've not only mispronounced my own students' names, but I've probably also called them something that was not their preference-realizing in April that the kid I've been calling Stephan all year actually prefers to be called Jude.

And before you get all defensive about the bigotry thing, let's be clear: Discovering that something you do might be construed as bigotry doesn't mean anyone is calling you a bigot. It's just an opportunity to grow. An opportunity to understand that doing something a little differently shows others that you respect them. At some point in your life, someone probably taught you to hold the door open for the person coming in behind you. Before then, maybe you didn't know. Opportunity to grow. It's that simple.

How to Get it Right

The best way to get students' names right is to just ask them. Pull the kid aside and say, You know what? I think I've been messing up your name all year, and I'm sorry. Now that graduation is coming, I want to say it perfectly. Can you teach me?

By humbling yourself in this way, you let them see that you're human. You're modeling what it looks like to be a lifelong learner, a flexible, confident person who is not afraid to admit a mistake. Regardless of the outcome, a genuine effort on your part will mean so much, and when the big day comes, they might even root for you to get it right.

If you have hundreds of names to learn, get systematic: Starting now, carry around a clipboard with all the names you'll need to say - even those you think you already know, and start checking in with kids in the cafeteria, in the halls, in the stands at a basketball game. And for God's sake, write down what they tell you. When the big day comes, the page of names you read from should look something like this:

Do whatever it takes, using whatever kind of symbols or notes you need to get the right syllables out in the right order. (The apple is there to remind the speaker to say that "a" like they would in the word apple.)

If you've run out of time to ask students themselves, or if doing that is too uncomfortable for you, you can get some help online. On Pronounce Names, you can find a huge collection of names and their pronunciations.

Whatever you do, do something. For some students, you may be the first person who ever bothered. If the only time you say their name is in the classroom, your correct pronunciation will help the whole class learn it, too. Eventually that will ripple through the school, making that student feel known in a place where before they felt unknown.

And if you have the honor of announcing them on the day they receive their award, their diploma, the day that marks some big achievement, you have a unique opportunity to make it even more special, but you only have two seconds: Make it count. It's a gift they'll remember for a long time. ♥
Reference:
Sue, D.W., Capodilupo, C.M., Torino, G.C., Bucceri, J.M., Holder, A.M.B., Nadal, K.L., & Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62 (4), 271-286.

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Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration - in quick, bite-sized packages - all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. To thank you, you'll get a free copy of my new e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half.

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How We Pronounce Student Names, and Why it Matters

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Listen to an Extended Version of this Post in a Podcast: Samira Fejz ic was used to people saying her name wrong, especially in school. "Through the years, as roll would be called, I would wait for that awkward pause-this is how I knew I was next. I accepted this ritual."

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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On a normal school day, you could walk into any middle school classroom in the world and find a group of young people with a wide range of experiences and identities, all in a unique moment of their development as human beings. The intellectual diversity of students is one of the most fun and rewarding aspects of working with this age group, but when students and educators can't gather in the physical space of a school, the classroom dynamics and activities teachers rely on to build the relationships that create a sense of equity are almost completely gone.

The task of "meeting students where they are" becomes much more literal and complex for educators; one of the first tasks for administrators has been to adapt breakfast and lunch programs to reach students who rely on their school to get enough to eat. The families that students typically leave at home during the school day are now ever-present as they are tasked with remote learning; for some, two parents are living and working at home, some have single parents caring for them, and some students are responsible for taking care of siblings. Most of these situations were very real and present for students before COVID-19, but now they are inescapable.

At the same time, teachers have a much harder time monitoring their students' engagement and well-being. In the virtual classroom, a struggling student may be completely un-responsive, giving no indication why they are not engaging with learning modules or turning in work. Other students fall between the cracks and their learning gap widens because they don't have the support they need to follow through and do their best. Assessing student work with equity in mind becomes a guessing game when each student has a different level of access to school materials and a different home experience.

If high-performing middle schools provide the best educational experience for their students when they create an equitable learning environment, how do we begin to translate those dynamics and practices to the digital space? When we get back to school, how do we use this experience to better adapt school services to meet students' needs? It's clear that taking a "one-size-fits-all" approach and giving all students the exact same learning opportunities is not sufficient to serve students from various backgrounds influenced by race, class, gender, and sexuality. That's why AMLE is engaged in revising our landmark position paper This We Believe, scheduled for release this fall, to take these differences into account as things to be respected and embraced rather than considered a deficit or ignored.

Educators should examine how they can build a school community that models equity for students and families through policies and a culture that acknowledges differences and ensures that students are not punished for them. Students should see themselves reflected in that culture and expect to be respected as individuals. ALL school staff, including teachers, counselors, aides, and administrative and support staff can affirm the voices of all students in the school community.

Educators who practice continuous self-assessment and improvement should always be asking "What am I not seeing?" Teachers need to acknowledge their own cultural background to see their blind spots and gain an understanding of the complex social realities that students are experiencing, as they are always influenced by social identities. Modeling this kind of social responsibility and giving students the opportunity to do so ensures a culturally relevant and respectful education, which colorblind pedagogies are rarely able to provide.

The conversation on making middle school education a truly equitable experience is only just beginning. We have prioritized discussions on equity in our webinars and #mschats, so check out our upcoming topics and get involved!

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On a normal school day, you could walk into any middle school classroom in the world and find a group of young people with a wide range of experiences and identities, all in a unique moment of their development as human beings.

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In the usual professional development structure, teachers teach and administrators or coaches observe and offer a list of areas for growth. Changing the design so that instructional leaders give teachers the opportunity to self-assess and self-reflect makes professional development more useful and meaningful. A teacher-driven PD plan gets teachers excited about learning and invested in the opportunity to grow.

Take Your Time and Plan

To create a teacher-driven professional development program, allow ample time to create sustainable plans. At my school, the Academy for Leadership at Millcreek Elementary, an instructional leadership team began the process for teacher-driven PD a full year before implementation.

To maximize the program, align the rubric and professional learning plans to any district-mandated professional growth plans. Teacher buy-in is a critical first step in the process. In order to get teachers on board, they need a voice in the process. Tie educational reading during team planning with classroom experience. Use the framework "What makes effective teaching?" to brainstorm goals.

In our experience, five characteristics of effective teaching emerged: differentiation, questioning, feedback, cognitive engagement, and academic rigor. Using the characteristics, we created a rubric to assess the different levels of performance for each one. The list captured what most teachers viewed as best practices.

Create a rubric to assess the different levels of performance for each. For example, we used these assessment criteria: ineffective, developing, proficient, and exemplary. Designing a framework allows teachers to provide input in an objective way. Once the plan is established, work with teachers to determine the best ways to implement what they have learned in their classrooms.

Use Real-World Examples

The instructional leadership team asked all teachers (classroom teachers, special education teachers, special area teachers, and intervention teachers) to videotape a lesson on a typical day of instruction. As a preassessment exercise, teachers watched their video before the professional learning began. The teachers rated themselves in all areas of the rubric. Teachers did this work on their own so that it could be a true self-assessment of their strengths and weaknesses on a regular day of instruction.

Several teachers thought of their classrooms as engaging, but after watching their videos and using the rubric, they realized that students might be compliant, but they were not cognitively engaged. Teachers used the notes section of the rubric to provide evidence of each rating. After they rated themselves in the five areas, they identified the weakest area according to the rubric, and the area became their priority component to work on in the coming months.

Encourage Collaboration

Teachers are assigned to professional learning groups based on the priority area of growth. Teachers work with other teachers receiving the same professional development to hold each other accountable between learning sessions. Some teachers chose accountability partners for the assignments. Others chose to have a teacher partner informally observe their class to get a perspective on something learned during the PD.

All conversations are structured around the rubric from evaluative to non-evaluative. Create a common language that is used in instructional conversations across the building. Because instructional coaches and administrators lead the professional development training throughout the year, they can use common language in all conversations, from evaluations to informal coaching cycle chats.

Once a month in our school, instructional coaches and administrators provide ongoing professional learning and development. It may be as simple as reading professional literature on cognitive engagement or collaboratively creating high-order questions aligned to specific standards. Because the activities center on areas the teachers previously identified as possibilities for growth, teachers are immediately involved in the process.

Encourage teachers to develop their own practices for assessing what they have learned. For example, teachers in the cognitive engagement PD wanted to see which students were truly cognitively engaged and which were just compliant, so they created a data-collecting tool that could be used by individual teachers to track progress. When they discovered a lack of cognitive engagement, they were able to focus on ways to make their day-to-day lessons more engaging for the students. The tool outlined specific characteristics of a cognitively engaged student and of a compliant student.

Creating a uniform framework for assessing students on these characteristics allowed teachers to observe their classes with specific goals in mind. Because teachers had a say not only in the overall PD but also in specific growth areas, they were more engaged. Establishing a plan with teacher buy-in allows teachers of all levels of experience to engage in professional development through a different lens.

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Creating a Teacher-Driven Professional Development Program

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In the usual professional development structure, teachers teach and administrators or coaches observe and offer a list of areas for growth. Changing the design so that instructional leaders give teachers the opportunity to self-assess and self-reflect makes professional development more useful and meaningful.

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As university professors and researchers who work closely with K-12 online teachers and learners, we've heard from many newly remote educators who are struggling. Recent class discussions have focused on the difficulties of getting through to students without in-person contact, especially during a time of enormous stress. Some teachers report that their students lack interest and in the worst cases, that students are dropping from classes entirely.

From our experience both in the online classroom and in training teachers to teach online, this is familiar territory and typically happens about six weeks into a new school session. The newness has worn off, the excitement around technology wanes and teachers often struggle finding ways to engage with their students.

The crucial question that has emerged is: how do we engage learners when we are not together physically? It's a complicated question, even in the best of times-one that has been at the forefront of our daily online teaching practice and our research into the online behaviors and interactions that can have the greatest impact on successful learner outcomes. Thankfully, research into online learning can provide us with a starting point to make sure our students continue to be engaged in the process of learning.

There isn't one solution for increasing learner engagement and motivation. Online teachers need to combine multiple strategies to reach learners, such as strengthening relationships with learners, engaging families and helping learners connect with their peers. But building strong relationships online is difficult.

What Is Engagement and Why Is It So Important to the Learning Process?

In its simplest form, engagement is a measure of how much we are attending to a purpose, task or activity. When it comes to learning, engagement is influenced by a learner's level of motivation, focus and cognitive ability as well as online course design and a teacher's decisions regarding facilitation style.

Grounded in the learning sciences, engagement is deepest in environments that support fostering relationships, productive instructional strategies, and social and emotional development. Engaged learners demonstrate stronger satisfaction with learning experiences, stronger achievement in courses and increased graduation rates.

Researchers identify three primary components of learner engagement for in-person and online settings: behavioral, cognitive and emotional. In other words, we know that learners are engaged if they exhibit behaviors, thinking processes or emotions that indicate they are connecting with course materials, with the teacher and with each other.

Measuring these types of engagement is easier said than done, though researchers have settled on some common approaches in traditional classrooms that can easily be translated to the online classroom, where research isn't as far along. Some of these measures will be more difficult for teachers to assess, and some may require teachers to understand and use the analytics capabilities of online tools. Teachers needn't collect data on every single measure, but having familiarity with the following common measurements will allow teachers to determine which factors they can reasonably assess according to the type of engagement they hope to spur.

Types of engagement with common measurements for virtual settings

How can we make the leap from this research to practical application in the remote classroom? The Adolescent Community of Engagement Framework proposed by Jered Borup, Richard West, Charles Graham and Randall Davies gives us one approach. These researchers argue that student engagement is created and enhanced by the involvement of three key players in any K-12 online learning experience: teachers, parents and peers.

Adolescent Community of Engagement Framework: A Lens for Research in K-12 Online Learning Environments hypothesizes that as parent, teacher, and peer engagement increase, student engagement will likely increase until it fills the area indicated by the dotted line. Image credit: Jered Borup, Richard West, Charles Graham and Randall Davies. Used with permission.

How Teachers Can Increase Learner Engagement in a Remote Classroom

One of the most consistent findings in engagement research is that a teacher has an enormous impact on the student's experience, influencing everything from students' perceived learning and self efficacy to their motivation. Being an engaged teacher online means being visible in the class, whether that's through discussion posts, announcements or assignment feedback. Teachers can emphasize their visibility and overall engagement in a remote classroom by implementing these practices:

Post regular announcements: A funny video or meme along with a hello and a weekly reminder of due dates can go a long way in reconnecting learners.

Reply early and often: Students need to feel that teachers are immediately available to help and may feel isolated when educators take a full business day to respond to a request for help. Quick communication builds connection.

Vary communication tools: Teachers should consider the communication preferences of individual students and make sure that their tools are best positioned to respond to students' questions. Phone calls, synchronous video tools, instant messaging or texting are all good options to use in combination, depending on the district's communication policies and student preferences.

Use feedback to build relationships: Providing personalized feedback to let students know their work has been reviewed can strengthen relations. Video feedback is also effective in building a connection with learners.

Physical connections under social distancing: Teacher parades and chalk messages on students' sidewalks are a great example of recent efforts teachers have taken to demonstrate their level of commitment to maintain high levels of engagement with their students. Similar online approaches such as recorded or live book readings and virtual office hours can be just as effective.

How Teachers Can Increase Parent Engagement in a Remote Classroom

Research has shown that the involvement of a responsible adult, typically a parent, is critical to the success of online learners. K-12 learners need the support of a caring adult to build executive functioning, manage their workload and maintain motivation. Teachers can support parents in this role by implementing a few key practices:

Connect with parents: Phone calls, texts and friendly emails help parents feel connected, realizing that the teacher is there to support the entire family.

Provide a schedule: Parents can use a schedule that shows the days and times of synchronous classes and includes what activities students should be working on each day to help keep students on task.

Offer tech support: Teachers can create short videos to help parents understand how to access their online content.

Less is more: Parents can quickly become inundated with well-intentioned emails from various teachers. Keeping emails short and focused is best.

Survey parents: Periodic, brief surveys can help teachers understand what support parents need.

How Teachers Can Facilitate Connections Between Students in a Remote Classroom

Research shows that students who feel connected to other learners are more engaged. In connecting with other learners, students feel that they are part of a classroom community. When motivation for the content itself is lacking, the desire to socialize with other learners can keep a student coming back to the work of a remote classroom. Teachers can improve peer engagement in a virtual setting by implementing these practices:

Use prompts to spark discussion: Discussion boards can be a great space for conversations, especially when teachers use prompts that are open-ended, stir debate or force deeper learning. Prompts can also be used to generate video discussions using a social learning tool like Flipgrid or an online debate tool such as Tricider.

Student talk during synchronous learning: Lectures and focused learning can happen through recorded videos but synchronous sessions offer an opportunity to share and talk to each other as a community. Sessions hosted through Zoom or Google Meet can incorporate traditional classroom activities like jigsaws, small group activities in breakout rooms or discussion protocols.

Group assignments: Learners can create collaborative group projects through a shared Google doc or Google site. For instance, students can collaborate on the creation of an Editor's Toolbox website with grammar tips by assigning groups of students to each page within the site.

Student-led tech support: Students who are exceptionally gifted in technology might troubleshoot or a teacher can create a "Tech Help" forum that students can moderate. Teachers should take care to set up structured guidelines for classroom use.

Carving out time to share: Teachers can allow time and space for students to showcase their expertise, hobbies or projects using a Padlet or Pinterest board.

Figuring out how to effectively engage learners has always been a complex challenge for educators like the ones that we instruct. Identifying ways to motivate students, help them maintain focus and get the most out of learning was difficult when we had physical classrooms and it remains a challenge now that our learning environments are entirely virtual. A savvy educator will employ a variety of strategies to build engagement. By recognizing the critical importance of engaging learners, parents and peers, and selecting the strategies that work for them and their contexts, educators can move toward deeper engagement in online environments.

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How Can Educators Tap Into Research to Increase Engagement During Remote Learning? - EdSurge News

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As university professors and researchers who work closely with K-12 online teachers and learners, we've heard from many newly remote educators who are struggling. Recent class discussions have focused on the difficulties of getting through to students without in-person contact, especially during a time of enormous stress.

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Strong communication between school staff and families is important in any school and has special relevance for schools committed to anti-bias education.

Communication built on misinformation, assumptions or stereotypes can create distance between schools, families and students. If handled with respect and cultural sensitivity, however, school-family communication provides an opportunity to live out the values of inclusiveness and equity, which are at the heart of anti-bias education. The following guidelines can help schools avoid communication pitfalls and support teacher-family relationships built on respect:

Assume good intentions, and approach all families as partners who want the best for their children.

Invite parents or guardians to share knowledge about their students' lives, interests, hopes and struggles.

Invite parents or guardians to share information about family cultures and traditions.

Recognize and respect differences in family structures.

Recognize the role that identity and background may play in shaping relationships between teachers and families.

Bring a sense of self-reflectiveness and cultural humility to all conversations and interactions.

View linguistic, cultural and family diversity as strengths.

In addition to setting a tone of respect and inclusivity, strong communication with families also offers teachers an opportunity to invite family involvement and share curricular goals, materials and resources.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Attending to culturally sensitive communication supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Identity and Diversity. Culturally relevant family engagement strategies communicate to students that their family identities are understood and valued. It also demonstrates respect for families with a diverse range of backgrounds and structures.

Strategies

Inclusive Terminology and Materials

Positive communication can be as simple as using inclusive language when writing and speaking to families. For example, instead of sending home a note that opens, "Dear Parents," use a greeting such as "Dear Families." All communication should be checked for assumptions about household resources, family traditions, cultural practices, political affiliations or other life circumstances. For instance, instead of asking for "mother's name" and "father's name" on a form, have a space for "names of parents/guardians."

Recognition of Key Relationships

Teachers should make a point of learning the central figures in each student's life-including those who may not be legal parents or guardians-and involving them as appropriate. This may include welcoming stepparents, parental partners (regardless of gender) or extended family members.

Use of Home Languages

Because language plays a crucial role in families' lives, teachers should communicate with parents in their home languages as much as possible. Whenever possible, family materials should be provided in students' home languages. When translation is needed, a school-provided translator should be employed, as asking students to translate can put them in an awkward position.

Beginning-of-the-Year Questionnaires or Conversations

Teachers can gather valuable information about students by connecting with parents and guardians early in the school year. Asking family members about students' strengths, challenges and lives outside of school-as well as about their own hopes and fears- provides important background, sets a collaborative tone and allows classroom practice to reflect student identities.

Incorporating family and community knowledge enhances student learning. Students possess tremendous experiential wisdom on issues related to identity, culture, history and justice. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, cousins, neighbors and community leaders frequently have stories to share about their lives and perspectives.

Family and community wisdom can put a personal face on historical or sociological material and help demystify unfamiliar topics, such as LGBT identity or living with a disability. Hearing from real people who have lived through eras of change or participated in social justice movements can provide inspiration as well as information.

Students also carry knowledge of their families and communities inside themselves. Making room to share this knowledge supports the development of student identities.

Family assignments must be envisioned and explained in a culturally sensitive manner. A seemingly harmless activity, such as creating a family tree, can marginalize students whose biological relations are distant or unknown. Such assignments can be modified to recognize the key relationships in students' lives. Other ways to incorporate family and community wisdom into the curriculum include community surveys, student conversations with family members, interviews, guest speakers, video projects, art projects, memoir or other family-based writing, oral histories, learning from family members' professional experiences, and incorporating family or cultural perspectives into the analysis of texts.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Drawing on students' family and community wisdom supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Identity and Diversity. By listening to the stories of their own families and communities, students can deepen their sense of self and make personal connections with historical, literary and sociological material. Hearing about different classmates' families and communities can also foster new perspectives on their own experiences and expand their understanding of other groups, cultures and communities.

Strategies

Family Interviews

Students can interview family members on a variety of issues such as historical events or eras, family experiences of justice or injustice, evolving cultural norms, social movements and identity. Interview format, questions and reporting practices should be customized based on grade level and educational goals.

Guest Speakers

Family and community members can visit the class to speak about a range of topics. Their connections to these issues may be personal, professional or both.

Community Research

Conducting community-based research can deepen students' understanding of social justice issues. This research might include opinion surveys or needs assessments, community interviews, visits to local sites or Internet research about community history.

As students learn and grow together over the course of weeks, months and years, parents and guardians can learn along with them. Strong connections give families the opportunity to support one another in nurturing their children's identities and values, adding richness to the work of anti-bias and social justice education.

There are lots of ways to bring families together, including in-school or community-based events, group email lists and social media. Teachers, school administrators, students, or parents and guardians can coordinate appropriate family connections based on the students' age and the composition of the community. Elementary school students, for example, may be more likely than high school students to enjoy attending events with their families. A given activity may resonate with some cultural communities more than others (though it might be good to offer "stretch" events as well). And some communities will have access to the technology and skills needed to support online interaction, while others will not.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Building connections among families supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Identity and Diversity. This practice deepens students' awareness of the personal and cultural contexts that shape personal experience. It also provides a "learning lab" for introducing different family structures and traditions. Making the curriculum more visible to classroom families helps generate support for anti-bias education work and provides opportunities for families to work with their children on social justice issues. These connections can also foster diverse relationships that echo and strengthen key messages from the curriculum.

Strategies

Family Events

Events that bring students and families together include family potlucks or picnics; family affinity events (e.g., for families from a certain cultural or ethnic group, for LGBT families, for families of color, for adoptive families); showcases of student work; student or community performances; film nights; game nights; and cultural or multicultural events.

Parent/Guardian Education Programs

Educational programming supports community building and engages family members. Possible programs include films, speakers or discussions for parents and guardians on topics such as bullying prevention, identity development, racial experiences, gender expression, sexuality, learning differences and family diversity. Events may stand alone or be part of an ongoing series.

Family Service/Engagement Projects

Service projects can include family action days at the local food bank, working together on neighborhood political and social issues, attending community events such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations or LGBT Pride events, and fundraising projects for community causes.

Pooling Resources and Sharing Support

In addition to organizing or publicizing formal events, teachers can encourage families to connect informally to share information and resources and to support one another in times of need (e.g., the birth of a new baby or a death in the family). The school can foster this type of support by naming it as an explicit priority and creating a user-friendly contact list or online directory.

All local communities have valuable resources that can enhance teaching and learning on social justice topics, even if these resources are not always explicit or obvious. They include events, people, places and organizations.

Events. Cultural and community celebrations, commemorations, political actions, artistic events, performances, student conferences and community education events.

People. Elders, artists, musicians, researchers, community leaders, policymakers, journalists, advocates, local historians, cultural workers and everyday people who have experienced and worked on social justice issues.

Places. Museums, cultural centers, libraries, neighborhood landmarks, and sites of historical interest or struggle.

Organizations. Formal or informal groups engaged in relevant cultural, artistic, social or political projects.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Drawing on local resources supports all four anti-bias domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. Witnessing marginalization, power dynamics and activism in their own communities strengthens personal connections with these curricular concepts. At a broader level, schools benefit from community connections and partnerships, and communities benefit when citizens are educated in matters of equity and justice.

Strategies

Classroom or School Presentations

Individuals or organizational representatives can be invited to speak about how their life or work experiences relate to social justice themes.

Neighborhood Explorations

Social-movement-based history and cultural knowledge often connect to specific cities and neighborhoods. For example, certain New York City neighborhoods offer windows into the lives of different immigrant groups during the 19th and 20th centuries. Montgomery, Ala., houses landmarks and monuments from the civil rights era. Visiting sites like these can add richness to students' curricular experiences. Neighborhood explorations can also be paired with classroom or school presentations.

Connecting with Community Organizations

Most cities and towns have local organizations that engage in cultural activities, community service efforts or social justice advocacy. Many of these organizations are happy to partner with schools, provide students with information and offer opportunities for students to participate in their projects.

A core component of anti-bias education is learning to take action against exclusion, prejudice and discrimination; it can be especially powerful for students to do this in their own schools and local communities.

Consider the following tips for ensuring that community engagement efforts reflect anti-bias values:

Create a community action project that addresses real needs. Community organizations can help articulate these needs and suggest ways to maximize students' time and talents.

Draw on students' knowledge of and personal connection to the issues involved. The more specific the project, the better.

Include a strong research component that ensures students' efforts to increase their knowledge and understanding are not simply based on what they already know.

Incorporate reflection about student attitudes to ensure the project doesn't reinforce assumptions or stereotypes about specific people or communities.

Provide writing prompts to help students consider personal changes they can make to challenge bias, exclusion and injustice.

Study the broader social context surrounding the community problem. Intervene if students "blame the victim" for challenges beyond individual control.

Use texts to spark student reflection about community challenges and issues.

Work "with," not "for," individuals or groups the class wants to support.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Expecting students to engage directly with community issues and problems supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Justice and Action.

Strategies

Personal Action Plan

After reading about prejudice or discrimination, the Personal Action Plan assignment asks students to reflect on these issues in their own surroundings and explore how they might help make their school and community more welcoming, inclusive and equitable. The Personal Action Plan can focus on one particular topic (e.g., name-calling and bullying, peer culture, diversity of gender expression or LGBT issues), or it can be more general. Plans should focus on acts of personal change, and students should share their plans with classmates to build accountability for implementation.

"Fighting for Fairness" Letters

The Fairness Letter Project (Live Oak School, San Francisco, Calif.) asks students to identify an instance of unfairness in their school or community, research the issue and write an advocacy letter to a person or organization with power to change the situation. In addition to developing issue-based analysis and critical writing skills, this project requires students to evaluate how change happens and where they can best channel their efforts for maximum impact.

Student-Designed Community Projects

Any social justice issue could inspire an individual or group project designed to support local people. Possible projects include designing a public service announcement, conducting a survey or opinion poll, providing direct service through a community agency, creating a workshop or event or hosting a justice-themed art show.

Ongoing Partnerships with Community Organizations

Semester- or year-long community partnerships offer students a chance to establish continuity and deeper connections with particular issues, populations or projects. A partnership spanning multiple years gives each class a chance to build on previous classes' work, multiplying the impact.

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Strong communication between school staff and families is important in any school and has special relevance for schools committed to anti-bias education. Communication built on misinformation, assumptions or stereotypes can create distance between schools, families and students.

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As educators, we often strive to find ways to increase family involvement in our classrooms. Research confirms that family involvement positively impacts students' academic experiences. And in this moment of crisis, especially, engaging our students means engaging their families: Including caretakers is one way to support our students from a distance.

But what should that inclusion look like? What do we mean, exactly, by family involvement?

In my dissertation, I examined how parents from marginalized groups defined their own involvement in their children's education. I discovered that, sometimes, this involvement aligned with educators' expectations-like when caregivers spent time reading with children, helping with homework and volunteering.

More often, however, the examples caregivers used to describe their engagement did not align with what educators frequently identify as family involvement. Parents and guardians described teaching cultural lessons and supporting social emotional learning, for example. They engaged with their children's schooling by relocating to change school districts and navigating social services to ensure their children's needs were met.

Educators must remember there are many ways for families to engage. We must recognize that all families care about their children's education and that engagement can vary based on many factors, including caregivers' cultures and beliefs, their own educational experiences, their types of employment, responsibilities to others and more.

The need to broaden definitions of family involvement would be necessary at any time. But during this crisis, questioning the assumptions educators make about family involvement-and how those assumptions shape what we expect from caregivers-is more important than ever.

In the past month or so, have you made one of these common assumptions?

Assumption #1: Caregivers are home with their children and can help direct distance learning activities. They are available to answer questions, help with assignments and navigate technology issues.

When designing engaging lessons, even the most well-intentioned teachers can make incorrect assumptions about family involvement. Not all caregivers are home with their children during this distance learning time. Many students are home alone, are being cared for by older children or are taking care of younger children. Caregivers who are at home may be adjusting to working remotely. Only a small percentage of students have a caregiver free of other responsibilities who can dedicate time to guiding them through their learning packets or navigating websites.

Of course caregivers want to be able to help their children. Many may feel guilt that they cannot be there to help with schoolwork or frustration that they can't navigate the technology their children are required to use. So while families likely appreciate the effort to make activities engaging-like that bird walk you asked your students to take or that recipe you assigned-it may be much easier for them to have their child complete some independent work than to supervise a scavenger hunt.

Educators can increase opportunities for family engagement by being flexible. Providing students with menus of activities that they can pick from will help them to be more independent. And many caregivers prefer having a week's worth of activities up front so that they can plan around their work schedules. Put the bird walk on there and the recipe, but also the e-learning and the reading pages. When students and their families have options, caregivers can create opportunities for distance learning that fit into their lives and current responsibilities, reducing feelings of stress or guilt.

Assumption #2: Caregivers understand your expectations and know how to motivate students to complete assignments.

Let's be honest: Anyone who has kids can probably tell you that even before distance learning, it was a struggle to get their children to complete daily homework. Many families are at a loss for how to manage all the work that is coming home, let alone how to convince students to complete assignments. Even families with education experience may be confused about expectations if they are overwhelmed by conflicting information from school districts, principals and multiple teachers.

Educators can keep caregivers involved by streamlining communication and offering clear expectations. Collaborate with colleagues ahead of time to send one message to families with all the pertinent information for the week. Explicitly tell caregivers what work students can and should do independently, how long it should take and what-if any-role should they might play in supporting their child in this work.

Educators can further support families by assigning work that students are able to complete independently. They should choose work that is engaging and confer with students to establish meaningful incentives. To ensure students aren't forced to rely on caregivers to complete their work, educators can reach out to provide more direct support with check-ins by email, phone or video conferences.

Assumption #3: Families expect teachers to assign a full day's worth of work.

For most families, meeting children's basic needs is their primary focus during this crisis.

Educators must recognize that families can prioritize their children's educations and still be more worried about keeping their employment, their financial security and access to healthcare than they are about their children completing every assignment.

Instead of expecting caregivers to become teachers, educators can complement family engagement by partnering with caregivers to address children's social and emotional needs. For families, educators can be the person who checks in on their child. We can be there to talk to their child about all that is going on when they are busy trying to make ends meet. We can be an advocate for their child when there is a need.

It's OK to put the worksheets down. It's OK to spend time checking on your students. Families trust your expertise-use it to ease their stress rather than add to it during this crisis. Assure parents that you are there to support their children and that their children won't miss any learning opportunities that cannot be made up when this moment passes.

Maybe you have been focused on trying to get all those positive learning experiences for your students that they will be missing. Maybe you have made some of these assumptions, not realizing their impact. That's OK. Like their families, you want the best for your students. You can offer yourself some grace, too. Then make some changes.

We are all finding our way in this new learning environment. It's OK to take a moment. It's OK to reach out to your families and ask them, "How are you? What do you need from me?"

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Rethinking Family Engagement During School Closures

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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As leaders plan for the fall, they must prioritize the vital community support that schools provide, especially during a pandemic.

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The beginning of the school day is an important time for students as they transition from home to school. Helping students make this transition is even more important when they're doing their school work at home. One strategy I use to set the tone for a day of learning is an interactive morning message. The morning message is a daily message from the teacher that is posted for students when they enter the classroom. It can be written on chart paper or projected on the whiteboard. It can also be shared via Google Slides to reach students who are distance learning.

The morning message welcomes students to school and helps reinforce academic skills. Adding an interactive component helps increase student motivation and engagement and builds classroom community. Students anticipate the message and know that their first task each day is to read and respond to it.

Creating an interactive morning message each day may seem like a lot of work, but it's not too difficult. I use a weekly schedule of message themes and repeat the same types of messages each week to streamline the process. This makes planning easy and offers the students predictability. I use alliteration in the theme names to establish a fun, simple routine that is easy to remember.

Math Monday

On Mondays, the morning message includes a math puzzle or problem for students to solve. It can relate to the current lesson or review a prior concept. It can be as simple as a math problem for each student to solve, like adding or dividing or simplifying fractions. Or it can be a complex, multistep word problem that students work together to solve.

Incorporating math into morning messages provides extra time for math. It also allows me to introduce or review topics in a fun and low-stakes manner. Even students who say they aren't good at math often enjoy participating in the morning message and will try problems they might otherwise be reluctant to do.

Tell Me About It Tuesday

On Tuesdays, I pose a question to the class and ask each student to respond. Students can respond directly on the message or, when we're in the classroom, on a sticky note that they stick on or near the message. I like to mix up the format. During distance learning, you can post these questions online and allow students to respond either during a class discussion or in a private message.

I use these questions for a variety of purposes, including getting to know the students, building classroom community, reinforcing academic concepts, and teaching social and emotional learning skills.

Examples include:

What is something a good friend always does?

What is your favorite book that we have read this year?

Which climate would you prefer to live in?

Tell me about a time you learned how to do something hard.

Would You Rather Wednesday

"Would you rather..." is a favorite activity of many children. It provides a quick and easy way for them to voice their opinions. Questions can be outlandish, tied to academic content, based on the season, or even completely random.

Examples include:

Would you rather have a pet unicorn or a pet dinosaur?

Would you rather battle a polar bear or a lion?

I use "Would you rather..." questions to discuss and review tally marks. For older students, they can also initiate a conversation about fractions or probability. Sometimes I ask the students to defend their choice or persuade someone else why their choice is better.

Think Outside the Box Thursday

On Thursdays, students flex their creative thinking muscles and think outside the box. I draw part of an object on the message and provide a photocopy for each student to complete. During distance learning, you can send your simple drawing online and have a parent or guardian either print it out or replicate it on a sheet of paper, and send you a photo of the completed drawing. I impose a time limit for the drawings, and students have the opportunity to share their creations with the class.

I often tie the drawing to the current season or holidays, and I restrain students' thinking by telling them what the object is not-they can turn it into anything else. For instance, if the message contains a drawing of a V, I might add, "It is NOT an ice-cream cone. What could it be?" The students complete their drawing based on the V making it anything but an ice-cream cone.

Thursdays are always my students' favorite morning message. I'm amazed by how creative and artistic they are. This activity also allows students who often struggle with academics to shine.

Figure It Out Fridays

On Fridays, the message contains a riddle or puzzle. Sometimes I use a simple brain teaser, "This is the longest word in the English language." (Answer: "smiles," because it has a mile between the first and last letter). I also introduce analogies, logic puzzles, and word play. These messages help develop critical thinking skills.

Sometimes the puzzle is simple, and students can guess the answer on their own. Other times it's more challenging, and students must work together.

The best morning messages are both fun and instructional. As you experiment with them, you'll figure out what works best for your students.

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Using Morning Messages to Start the Day in Distance Learning

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The beginning of the school day is an important time for students as they transition from home to school. Helping students make this transition is even more important when they're doing their school work at home. One strategy I use to set the tone for a day of learning is an interactive morning message.

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Where we learn matters. This truth has exploded as we have waded through the realities of emergency remote learning.

As a profession, we have honorably pivoted to meet the needs of students, but all of us have experienced the soft spots of our strategy. We have seen students lack access to technology and Wi-Fi. We have watched as students with additional challenges, including those with physical or learning disabilities, fade from technology-rich learning, and we have even seen our most driven students burn out from the daily grind of hours on video conferences and completing assignments online.

All of this has us eager to be back in the same physical space as our students as soon as possible. Nothing replaces proximity when it comes to fostering relationships and building trusted connections with students.

The realities of COVID-19 spreading in our communities without a vaccine or herd immunity means that a return to full schools without restrictions is simply out of our reach for many months. We will likely see students returning to school in shifts to classrooms that have been specifically designed to protect students and teachers. Cafeterias, gymnasiums, and libraries may be off limits. Practices we once took for granted, such as community supply stores, learning in groups and soft seating may be on hold for now. All of these things will stretch our ability to redesign our spaces so that students can explore, discover, and connect in meaningful ways.

As the number of things that remain out of our control grows (spacing of desks, movement in and between classes, scheduling), there are still a number space design considerations that we can control and which can allow our students to truly benefit from where they learn. Consider these five ways to craft your classroom in these unique moments when we need to balance the health and humanity of our spaces.

Signage and First Impressions

Returning to a school building for the first time since we were all jettisoned to emergency remote learning will be a stressful event. Many teachers and students haven't gathered in large groups since March, so this return to school will elicit a variety of emotions from everyone. To support students' emotional needs, it will be important to set the right tone with the signage that fills our spaces.

From the front doors of the school, through the hallways, and into our classrooms, do we have signage that cares for all or produces fear? Are we asking people to be a part of a responsible community or filling them with negative messages that lack empathy for the emotional stress of returning to school? There is definitely a need for everyone to understand the community health rules of a space, such as frequent hand washing and donning masks, but this doesn't have to be our leading message. Let all spaces acknowledge the reality, but stress belonging, community and the joy of being together again.

Optimizing the Perimeter

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments may have control over how we design the floor plan in our classrooms (i.e., six feet of space between desks, directional walking patterns, coordinated movement between spaces), educators have control over how we design the perimeter of our classrooms.

Fill the walls with only essential items for learning. During emergency remote learning, we have realized that students can learn without the anchor charts and inspirational posters on the wall. We shouldn't design a sterile space, but instead design with fresh eyes and ask these questions. Does having this item on the wall add to the visual clutter or support daily learning? Can I move more learning resources away from the front of the learning space to calm and focus students on presentations and content? In what ways, can I design with a color palette in mind that brings a coherence to the space? Answering these questions and focusing on the spaces that you can control will allow the classroom to be a place of normalcy during a time when all of the rest of school feels different.

Minimize Teacher Only Space

This was always a good idea, but with the mandated restrictions on space, we need to double down items that fill up space with no real purpose. Start by looking at the teacher-only space in the room-and if you don't know what spaces are teacher-only, ask students to go stand in spaces where they feel are implicitly off limits. This will give you a sense of what spaces have been removed from student use. If we are limited by the rule that only allows 10-15 people in a space, then every square foot matters. Consider ways to add 20-30 square feet back to the space available for students. This addition by subtraction will help give students some breathing room.

Movement and Choice

Intentional space design is anchored in the concepts of maximizing physical movement and providing students with choice over where they learn. This has resulted in the flexible, agile and active classroom efforts that had incredible momentum before COVID-19 disoriented all aspects of learning.

Learning science continues to show us that movement and choice are key to optimal learning. But in this sliver of life these optimal design elements must be put on hold to mitigate the risks of spreading the virus. Even so, we can't eliminate these elements in totality. Having students stand for 3-5 minutes behind their desks to listen to the teacher talk can keep the brain oxygenated and primed for learning. Giving students permission to stand along the sides or in the back of the room or even the chance to sit on the tops of their desks will promote choice and supply variation to a room that has been sterilized by its arrangement. In some locations, moving learning to an outdoor space is an option, and when available can provide the movement needed to greater engagement and joy to learning.

Space is Time and Time is Space

Space and time are interconnected, and when we talk about the aspects of space that we can control in these trying times, we should also talk about intentionally designing the time that we have with students. Face-to-face time shouldn't be a content blitz filled with the voice of the teacher, as most of this can happen in virtual learning; instead, use this time to connect and listen. Use in-class time to promote conversation and community. Use it to calm and lower stress. In the coming months, our time with students may not have daily consistency, so it will be essential to design the time in our physical spaces to support the whole child. It will also be a time to anchor learning in relevant, meaningful contexts. Sync time design and space design to support the academic and emotional needs of all students.

This will be a very non-linear return to our school buildings. In some locations, students will come to school with a new type of schedule. Their in-person learning may pause because of contagion or public health concern and then return to the physical space again. This cycle could happen many times throughout the upcoming school year. For other students and families, they will remain in a virtual only space because of their unique needs or the success that they have found in the virtual learning environment.

All of these variables will require educators to design with the flexibility that allows for students to fluidly move between physical and virtual learning spaces. Design with this reality in mind. Make sure that our digital learning spaces provide easy access to resources and learning tasks. Minimize the digital clutter in these spaces. Model the power of learning near natural light and bringing fresh air into the mix whenever possible, so that students carry this into their home learning spaces.

Where we learn matters, and as we consider the launch of the new school year, take time to listen to students, notice their needs and incorporate that in which we can't control into the design elements that we can control. With these efforts, we can heal, remain healthy and continue to bring a deep sense of humanity to our work to guide the learning for our students, students that are eager to be connected with their learning community again.

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What Does Good Classroom Design Look Like in the Age of Social Distancing? - EdSurge News

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Where we learn matters. This truth has exploded as we have waded through the realities of emergency remote learning. As a profession, we have honorably pivoted to meet the needs of students, but all of us have experienced the soft spots of our strategy. We have seen students lack access to technology and Wi-Fi.

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The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically upended traditional schooling and made remote learning the "new normal." Teachers are scrambling to offer some form of continuing education using virtual technologies, with the recognition that traditional approaches to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and grading must be altered. While it might be more expedient to present online lessons, electronic worksheets, and resource packets, we propose that the learn-at-home circumstance offers an opportunity to present students with more engaging and meaningful learning experiences. More specifically, we recommend providing students with assignments and tasks that challenge them to find information from various sources, critically appraise what they find, and use what they learn to address interesting issues and genuine problems.

The national scouting organizations offer a useful model for this vision of home learning. For example, the Boy Scouts offer 137 Boy Scout Merit Badge options and 58 of these are eligible for home completion. All the scouting merit badges are based on the challenges we experience in the world around us. They specify the criteria that must be met to earn a badge, yet they allow the scouts options and choices as they work on fulfilling the task requirements. Moreover, they are able to work toward the badge until they are ready to submit their evidence of completion, as opposed to being constrained by an arbitrary time frame.

In this blog, we offer seven strategies for planning and conducting remote learning. These strategies apply to all learning environments, but they are especially relevant in the context of remote learning. They support meaningful engagement, are flexible and responsive to different learners' needs, and promote the development of students' agency. While the description of each strategy is brief, we provide weblinks to additional information and related resources.

1. Focus tasks on worthy goals and meaningful learning.

There is certainly value for students working at home to practice their basic skills - especially younger learners. However, in general, we recommend that remote learning be framed around rich, engaging tasks that target more robust learning goals. We encourage teachers to plan learning experiences that focus on applying "anchor standards" of E/LA, the Practices in Mathematics and Science, Historical Thinking Skills in Social Studies, and the creative processes in the arts. We also endorse the use of assignments and tasks that concurrently engage the application of "21st Century Skills" including critical thinking, creativity, research, and communication using various media.

Associated assignments and tasks would, therefore, be performance-based, and set in realistic contexts as much as possible. Such performance tasks involve students in "doing" subjects and performing with their knowledge, rather than learning factual knowledge only. These tasks are open-ended, challenging and require "higher-order" thinking, not rote learning. Since they reflect authentic situations, they address purposes that students can relate to and that they recognize as important and useful in their present lives or in the future. Such tasks often include opportunities for students to generate and explore their own questions, make connections across disciplines, and consider the needs and characteristics of the audience for whom they are doing the work. Tasks that involve research, problem-solving, and decision-making can also promote habits of mind like open-mindedness, skepticism, and flexible thinking. When students are engaged in work that is meaningful and authentic, they are unlikely to ask: "Why are we doing this?" or "Who would ever use this?" as they might when only learning de-contextualized facts and skills.

While we recognize that not all tasks can be authentic, we have seen that many assignments/tasks can be rendered more meaningful and authentic when they include a realistic goal, a tangible product or performance, created for a target audience, within genuine constraints (e.g., schedule and/or budget). There are many resources of well-developed performance tasks that teachers can access to be able to act on this recommendation.

2. Specify the task directions and success criteria.

When presenting open-ended tasks, students need clear directions for the work they are being asked to do. This is particularly important for remote learning since teachers are less able to monitor students' non-verbal and verbal interactions and anticipate the kinds of questions students may have about an assignment. Consider questions like these when developing directions for assignments and tasks: What exactly do you want students to do? What is the purpose and audience for their work? What products and/or performances should they create? What should the work include? What elements are required? ... optional? How will their work be judged? What qualities are expected? How good is "good" enough?

In addition to clear directions, teachers should provide students with the success criteria in the form of checklists, rating sheets, and/or rubrics that describe expectations in a way that all students, regardless of their background or language level, can clearly understand.

Here is an example of a short performance task for secondary students with clear directions and associated success criteria:

Issue: Should drones be regulated?

Task: After researching possible commercial uses of drones and examining various opinions on the issue, develop your own position and develop a written product (policy brief, editorial or blog post) that argues for your position to an identified policy group (e.g., city council). Support your position with evidence from your research and your reasoning. Be sure to acknowledge and rebut opposing views.

Success Criteria: Your argument should

cite sound and relevant research

present accurate and sufficient evidence to support your position

contain logical reasoning

effectively identify and counter objections to your position

address your target audience

The written product should be mechanically correct.

Note: Whenever possible, we recommend including "anchors" - tangible examples of work to illustrate the various performance levels on a scale to help students better understand the desired qualities.

3. Provide differentiated support and encourage students' "choice and voice."

Students vary greatly when it comes to their background knowledge, prior experiences, interests, and preferences for learning. Accordingly, they will need different degrees, and types, of support as they work on authentic tasks. Knowing the needs of their students, teachers can offer targeted mini-lessons and coaching sessions as needed. They can also provide appropriate "scaffolds" to support individuals and groups; e.g., step-by-step directions, graphic organizers, outlines, simplified texts, models, and on-line tutorials.

In addition to such differentiated instruction and supports, we strongly encourage allowing students alternatives for the work they will pursue. Indeed, there are a variety of ways of allowing "voice and choice" for learners as part of open-ended performance tasks, including the topic of their work, the ways they approach a task, the means of gathering information, and options for the products or performances they will produce.

We have found that giving learners appropriate choices increases their personal motivation. It also helps create their sense of agency and cultivate the skills and habits of self-directed learning.

4. Provide feedback along the way.

Providing feedback to learners as they work has been conclusively shown to be one of the most effective of all educational practices. To have the optimal effect, feedback must be on-going, timely, specific, and descriptive, focused on the most salient attributes of the work, and understandable by the learner. Teachers can provide such feedback while students are working using questions, comments or suggestions that assist learners in refining their thinking and performance. In remote learning situations, parents, siblings and other students can also provide feedback by reviewing working drafts of products and performances. However, for such remote reviews to be successful, teachers need to model giving and receiving feedback, since students and parents may have never experienced this structured process. Of course, parents and siblings need to be reminded that their role is to provide feedback that will help the learner improve their work, not to do the work for them.

A checklist that can help teachers craft helpful feedback to students and a rubric that can help students provide feedback to each other:

5. Encourage students' self-assessment, reflection, and goal setting.

John Dewey noted that "We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on our experience." Students' work on meaningful and engaging tasks offers a natural opportunity for them to self-assess their performance, reflect on their learning and set future learning goals. McTighe and Wiggins (2004) offer the following set of prompts that can be used to stimulate students' self-assessments, reflections and goal setting:

What do you really understand about?

What questions/uncertainties do you still have about?

What was most effective in?

What would you do differently next time?

What are your strengths?

How does what you've learned connect to other learnings?

How has what you've learned changed your thinking?

How does what you've learned relate to the present and future?

By regularly posing such questions and expecting learners to respond, teachers can cultivate lifelong skills and the productive habits of self-directed learners.

6. Resist traditional grading.

Home learning offers the opportunity to take a break from the traditional A-F grading scale. When students are engaged in authentic assignments and performance tasks, try shifting to an alternative scale; e.g., CD = completed with distinction; C = completed; NC = not yet completed. More generally, we recommend the use of "grading" that emphasizes the degree of completion of, and progress toward, goals/standards based on quality criteria. When teachers are freed from applying norm-referenced criteria and instead use statements that reference students' progress or development like "not yet"; "met desired criteria"; "can teach others, or have met the criteria with distinction", they communicate that learning is an ongoing process and that it takes time and sometimes multiple tries for work to meet quality standards.
7. Request an "honor code" pledge from students and parents.
The lines between learning at home and learning in school have disappeared, and parents are now charged with monitoring as well as supporting their children's learning. Having an honor code reinforces the importance of trust and upholds the belief that students are responsible for their own learning and for the attitudes and dispositions with which they approach their schoolwork. Asking parents to take an honor code pledge reinforces the expectation that parents should be supportive of their children's learning, but that completed work should reflect the students' own thinking and performance.

While the shift to remote learning was unexpected and has required significant adaptations from parents, teachers, and students, it has also opened the door to revisiting what is most important for learners. When teachers give students meaningful and engaging tasks, students learn more and value that learning. Plus, they will be developing valuable life skills and productive habits of mind that will serve them well in school and in life.

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Seven Strategies for Supporting Student Learning in a Remote Environment - ASCD

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By Jay McTighe and Giselle O. Martin-Kniep The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically upended traditional schooling and made remote learning the "new normal." Teachers are scrambling to offer some form of continuing education using virtual technologies, with the recognition that traditional approaches t

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When planning for re-opening, schools should keep issues of race and equity in focus.

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If there's one thing Americans are doing right now, it's talking. Talking even more than usual when schools are out and many are still working from home. Every day, new stories of discrimination and violence emerge that prompt new conversations.

The moment our country faces weighs heavily on the mind of an adult. But one must wonder: What does it do to the mind of a child?

Black students around the country are faced with a reality where they are isolated due to COVID-19, of which Black Americans disproportionately account for 60 percent of deaths. Then forced to adapt to technology-based distance learning-only to watch the same technology used to spread images of people who look like them being assaulted, brutalized and killed by police.

As the harsh reality of racism in the United States is thrust to the forefront, many households, boardrooms and families are talking about it openly for the first time. Some are going further. In the last two weeks, over $250 million of corporate funding have been dedicated to diversity initiatives. Large, influential organizations that have actively avoided speaking about race such as the NFL are retracting their positions, and companies like Starbucks have completely shifted their previous stances on Black Lives Matter.

To the average observer, the current cultural focus on racism may feel like a new beginning. However, for Black people, these conversations aren't new. At a young age I vividly remember my parents sitting me down to have "The Talk." Unlike what most non-Black families associate the term with, this talk is a painful but vital set of directions to give you the best chance of returning home safely if you encounter the police. "The Talk" is different from family to family, but core tenets of it are the same.

Stay calm, don't make any sudden moves.

Even if provoked, don't get angry, be respectful.

Regardless of how they treat you, remember you have worth.

Do what it takes to get back home.

The content of these conversations feel eerily similar to some of education's favorite social-emotional learning (SEL) slogans: mindfulness, resilience and grit. Mindfulness implores students to remain calm, and take 10 deep breaths when they feel themselves getting angry. Resilience encourages students to hold their heads high despite mistreatment. Grit tells students to persevere in the face of obstacles.

Some educators believe that mastery of these traits can guarantee a student's success. But what they overlook is something that every Black parent is painfully aware of: A Black child can do every single one of these things perfectly, and still not make it home.

The tragedy of The "Talk" is that parents know no matter what they tell their kids to do, there's still a chance they won't see them again. It's an act of defense, a last resort hoping that their child will be seen as human enough to be treated with basic dignities. When Black parents use these tactics, they're doing their best to equip their kids for success in a system pitted against them.

However, when school systems use ambiguous slogans as the foundation of their social-emotional learning pedagogy, they're adopting ineffective solutions for a problem they are in part responsible for.

We can't tell Black kids to take 10 deep breaths when people who look like them are dying because they can't breathe.

There is no amount of grit that can prepare a Black girl to live in a world where she can be shot eight times while sleeping in her bed and months later no arrest will be made.

There is no amount of resilience that can prepare Black boys to live a life where they can't even bird watch without fear of the police being weaponized against them by someone who deems their existence as a threat.

To create the impact they desire, schools must face a clear reality. It is not possible for a person to be racist and socially emotionally well. If schools acknowledge the systemic bias in our country, they have a unique opportunity to use social emotional learning as a tool for social justice and racial equity.

According to CASEL, a popular provider of social-emotional learning curriculum, the five core SEL competencies are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making. But it is not possible for students to master these concepts without an understanding of systemic racism and the role it plays in their everyday social interactions.

Though they are well intentioned, catch-all phrases like grit and resilience place the responsibility on students to endure an unjust system. And though the reality for Black students is that they may very well have to fight that fight their whole lives, that's even more reason for schools to take a stronger role in making that fight easier. In the words of Angela Davis: "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be antiracist."

When my parents sat me down to have "The Talk," they knew that I still may not survive a police encounter. As people awaken to the reality Black people have lived their whole lives to condemn racism, their words are still, not enough.

Talking wasn't enough then, and it's not enough now. If the education system truly wants to serve its students, it's got a lot of work to do.

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Antiracism in Social-Emotional Learning: Why It's Not Enough to Talk the Talk - EdSurge News

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If there's one thing Americans are doing right now, it's talking. Talking even more than usual when schools are out and many are still working from home. Every day, new stories of discrimination and violence emerge that prompt new conversations. The moment our country faces weighs heavily on the mind of an adult.

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Our nation is experiencing a teacher-retention crisis: Many novice educators are leaving the profession after only a few years of classroom experience. That's why Prince William County Public Schools in Virginia created a mentor program to retain quality teachers while also building their skills, self-efficacy, and professional vision.

Mentors provide support through frequent interactions in which they listen, ask questions, and guide novices' professional growth. Mentors meet with mentees for scheduled discussions at least weekly and have additional contact through text, email, phone calls, and impromptu classroom visits.

In March, when we began distance schooling, our mentoring program had no choice but to follow suit. Though mentor-mentee interactions now look different, the focus remains the same.

6 Strategies for Mentoring at a Distance

1. Meet weekly in a virtual, real-time platform so you can see and hear each other: Using live video and audio capabilities like Zoom or Skype allows the pair to see and hear each other, maintaining continuity of typical face-to-face interactions. Additionally, teacher-mentors can better interpret nuances in voice and posture when both participants are engaged in visible, live discussions.

We encourage mentors and mentees to re-create their school-based planning and reflecting conversations by using active video to provide a deeper, more relatable conversation between both educators. We found that after an initial adjustment to appearing on camera, most participants fell into an easy routine.

2. Keep a consistent schedule: If you held a weekly meeting when school was in session, do the same now that you are meeting from home. The day or time might be different from your face-to-face sessions, but it's important to continue with planned meetings each week. Doing so provides normalcy and predictability for both mentor and mentee, and encourages both educators to jot down notes and think ahead about their meeting discussion topics.

These planned interactions provided opportunities for our mentors to offer timely support as well as meaningful, open-ended, reflective questions. By allowing mentees to move beyond crisis support, the meetings created opportunities to explore future possibilities and synthesize new understandings.

3. Reflect on the face-to-face year: Being physically distant from classrooms can be an opportunity for contemplation. Our district's mentors took advantage of this by guiding teacher-mentees through deep reflections about the school year. We provided sample open-ended questions that encouraged advancement of professional growth, such as "How might you modify next year's formative assessments to more accurately reflect students' understanding?"

4. Share documents and video for authentic feedback: When they were teaching in their school buildings, mentors often co-taught a lesson or visited their mentees' classrooms. Co-teaching opportunities still exist with remote teaching, and they can be powerful.

In our district, mentors and mentees jointly planned and implemented virtual lessons, which provided opportunities for the mentors to model various strategies while observing mentees' skills firsthand. When viewing mentors' recordings, mentees focused on areas they were working on. Mentees and mentors also simultaneously viewed portions of mentees' lessons, during which mentors asked questions about choices made and their outcomes.

5. Take advantage of the mentor-mentee reciprocal relationship: Mentors and mentees adjusted to distance learning and new ways to implement lessons. The opportunity encouraged teachers to tap into each other's strengths. For instance, if a new teacher incorporated Flipgrid or Nearpod into lessons, a mentor learned firsthand about the tools, and incorporated them into their own remote lessons. Throughout the year, we encouraged a professional, supportive collaboration, and the sudden shift in schooling advanced relationships organically. When both educators focus on professional growth, both teachers' students reap the benefits.

6. Be available: First-year teachers anticipated end-of-year celebrations with their students, staff, and mentors. Instead, the school year wrapped up in unanticipated ways, with unpacked classrooms, teachers in isolation, and summer plans on hold. Being available as a mentor provided professional and personal support for young professionals. Experienced teacher-mentors eased mentees' minds about year-end procedures and the unknown start to the upcoming school year. Perhaps more than any year in recent memory, mentors were called on to provide consistency and emotional support, even when they themselves do not know what lies ahead.

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6 Tips for Mentoring New Teachers During Distance Learning

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Our nation is experiencing a teacher-retention crisis: Many novice educators are leaving the profession after only a few years of classroom experience. That's why Prince William County Public Schools in Virginia created a mentor program to retain quality teachers while also building their skills, self-efficacy, and professional vision.

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If there's one thing Americans are doing right now, it's talking. Talking even more than usual when schools are out and many are still working from home. Every day, new stories of discrimination and violence emerge that prompt new conversations.

The moment our country faces weighs heavily on the mind of an adult. But one must wonder: What does it do to the mind of a child?

Black students around the country are faced with a reality where they are isolated due to COVID-19, of which Black Americans disproportionately account for 60 percent of deaths. Then forced to adapt to technology-based distance learning-only to watch the same technology used to spread images of people who look like them being assaulted, brutalized and killed by police.

As the harsh reality of racism in the United States is thrust to the forefront, many households, boardrooms and families are talking about it openly for the first time. Some are going further. In the last two weeks, over $250 million of corporate funding have been dedicated to diversity initiatives. Large, influential organizations that have actively avoided speaking about race such as the NFL are retracting their positions, and companies like Starbucks have completely shifted their previous stances on Black Lives Matter.

To the average observer, the current cultural focus on racism may feel like a new beginning. However, for Black people, these conversations aren't new. At a young age I vividly remember my parents sitting me down to have "The Talk." Unlike what most non-Black families associate the term with, this talk is a painful but vital set of directions to give you the best chance of returning home safely if you encounter the police. "The Talk" is different from family to family, but core tenets of it are the same.

Stay calm, don't make any sudden moves.

Even if provoked, don't get angry, be respectful.

Regardless of how they treat you, remember you have worth.

Do what it takes to get back home.

The content of these conversations feel eerily similar to some of education's favorite social-emotional learning (SEL) slogans: mindfulness, resilience and grit. Mindfulness implores students to remain calm, and take 10 deep breaths when they feel themselves getting angry. Resilience encourages students to hold their heads high despite mistreatment. Grit tells students to persevere in the face of obstacles.

Some educators believe that mastery of these traits can guarantee a student's success. But what they overlook is something that every Black parent is painfully aware of: A Black child can do every single one of these things perfectly, and still not make it home.

The tragedy of The "Talk" is that parents know no matter what they tell their kids to do, there's still a chance they won't see them again. It's an act of defense, a last resort hoping that their child will be seen as human enough to be treated with basic dignities. When Black parents use these tactics, they're doing their best to equip their kids for success in a system pitted against them.

However, when school systems use ambiguous slogans as the foundation of their social-emotional learning pedagogy, they're adopting ineffective solutions for a problem they are in part responsible for.

We can't tell Black kids to take 10 deep breaths when people who look like them are dying because they can't breathe.

There is no amount of grit that can prepare a Black girl to live in a world where she can be shot eight times while sleeping in her bed and months later no arrest will be made.

There is no amount of resilience that can prepare Black boys to live a life where they can't even bird watch without fear of the police being weaponized against them by someone who deems their existence as a threat.

To create the impact they desire, schools must face a clear reality. It is not possible for a person to be racist and socially emotionally well. If schools acknowledge the systemic bias in our country, they have a unique opportunity to use social emotional learning as a tool for social justice and racial equity.

According to CASEL, a popular provider of social-emotional learning curriculum, the five core SEL competencies are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making. But it is not possible for students to master these concepts without an understanding of systemic racism and the role it plays in their everyday social interactions.

Though they are well intentioned, catch-all phrases like grit and resilience place the responsibility on students to endure an unjust system. And though the reality for Black students is that they may very well have to fight that fight their whole lives, that's even more reason for schools to take a stronger role in making that fight easier. In the words of Angela Davis: "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be antiracist."

When my parents sat me down to have "The Talk," they knew that I still may not survive a police encounter. As people awaken to the reality Black people have lived their whole lives to condemn racism, their words are still, not enough.

Talking wasn't enough then, and it's not enough now. If the education system truly wants to serve its students, it's got a lot of work to do.

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Antiracism in Social-Emotional Learning: Why It's Not Enough to Talk the Talk - EdSurge News

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If there's one thing Americans are doing right now, it's talking. Talking even more than usual when schools are out and many are still working from home. Every day, new stories of discrimination and violence emerge that prompt new conversations. The moment our country faces weighs heavily on the mind of an adult.

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In this way, teachers are uniquely positioned to ameliorate some of the effects of early trauma. "The adults in the school environment may be the most stable and mentally well people [some children] have contact with," said Jennings. "Their teachers can become role models for them for what a healthy adult is like. School can become a sanctuary for kids like this."

Preschool and kindergarten teachers play an especially important role because children's early classroom experiences influence their perception of school for years to come. Jennings said that a caring kindergarten teacher can help these children "learn that adults, generally, are people who can provide support to them, even if their parent cannot." That's one reason the preschool suspension and expulsion rates are troubling. They disrupt yet another adult-child relationship and reinforce feelings of instability. As early childhood expert Suzanne Bouffard noted, "Young children who are suspended are often the ones who need the most social and academic support - and they end up missing opportunities to get it."
Building a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Environment
Let Go of Zero Tolerance: Zero tolerance policies and harsh classroom discipline models can "trigger reactions that amplify feelings of trauma," said Jennings. Punitive measures can retraumatize children and "reinforce in their mind that the world is a dangerous place, that people don't like them, and that they are no good."

Teachers need the flexibility to de-escalate a situation rather than administer a prescriptive consequence. Ultimately, these students need to learn how to de-escalate situations themselves and regulate their emotions, said Jennings, "and the only way they can learn that is in a place that feels safe."

Reframe Student Behavior: It's easy for teachers to take students' behavior personally or to misinterpret a child's actions as willful defiance. Jennings said that teachers should "remember that behaviors that are disruptive or unhelpful in the classroom might be self-protective responses to chronic stress." This perspective can help teachers make a small but powerful mental shift: instead of asking "what's wrong with him?" ask "what happened to him, and how did he learn to adapt to it?"

For example, "Hypervigilance can really help when you are in a dangerous situation. A child who is hypervigilant may be adept at noticing small changes and reacting quickly." But this same hypervigilance will "make it really hard to focus and dive deeply into the reading material."

Children who experience food scarcity may have a tendency "to quickly grab or hoard things." These kids might fail the famous marshmallow experiment simply because "they don't trust that the second marshmallow is really coming," said Jennings. "In the context of their lives, this is an adaptive response that makes sense."

Cultivating this kind of empathy takes practice, says Jennings. It means developing "the ability to stop yourself from reacting with your habitual tendencies, take a breath and reflect" on the child in front of you. When teachers take the perspective of a student, "things really shift."

Generate and Savor Positive Emotions: Because teachers don't always know which students are coming to school with traumatic backgrounds - and because they have an obligation to teach all learners - educators "have to consider universal approaches that help everybody and embrace those kids who need it most." Developing a strong classroom community is foundational to this work.

When children suffer from trauma exposure, they are on high alert for potential threats. Teachers can intentionally help students "recognize and savor" small, special moments in the classroom, said Jennings. "Help the class pay attention to what it feels like to feel good. Enjoy positive emotions together as a community. Not only do you get to help kids who don't get to feel those positive emotions as much, but you also create bonds between students in your classroom - and that is exactly what they need."

This can be as simple as celebrating acts of kindness, pausing after a good moment to soak up the feeling in the room, and using tools such as morning meetings to foster a respectful classroom culture. "When teachers cultivate community, students who have experienced trauma come to believe, 'I am part of this community. They accept me, they care about me, and they want to help me. I belong here.' That's something all kids can benefit from," said Jennings.

Draw on the Power of Story: Children with trauma backgrounds need plenty of opportunities to learn about, experience and practice compassion and resilience. Literature is a powerful vehicle to support this endeavor, said Jennings. Stories and books can broaden students' perspectives, giving them a window into how other people feel, bounce back from challenges and develop healthy relationships.

"As you read a story to a group of children, ask 'How do you think this person is feeling in this story? Can you imagine if you were a person in this story? How would that feel to you?'" said Jennings. Reading aloud isn't just for elementary school classrooms. According to one study, even teenagers benefit from hearing about how scientists approached failure and setbacks. (For two curated lists of books related to kindness and compassion, click here and here.)

Put On Your Oxygen Mask First: In Jennings' work, she focuses first on helping teachers develop resilience, self-awareness, and self-regulation -- and then on how they can teach these tools to children.

She said that teachers need to learn how to manage their own stress that comes with navigating students' trauma-related behavior. Jennings devotes a chunk of her book to teacher self-care and includes this resilience self-reflection survey that helps teachers think about their own ability to "navigate and recover from adversity."

How do we best teach children about compassion and resilience? First and foremost, adults must remember that "kids learn these skills through imitating us," said Jennings. "If we don't embody them, our instruction won't work. It will come off as phony. If we are not behaving the way we want them to behave, we are being hypocritical -- and they know it."

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How to Build a Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Where All Learners Feel Safe | KQED

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A caring teacher can create a new template about adults, says Patricia A. Jennings, one that says, "Teachers are caring, kind people who want to help me."

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When planning for re-opening, schools should keep issues of race and equity in focus.

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Many of us are familiar with this scenario: Our school's leadership decides that equity is a priority, and we move to action. We read books, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries, and bring in consultants to facilitate us through difficult conversations, create a definition for equity, and talk about race. We are becoming more aware than ever of the ways society and our own institution perpetuate racism and inequity. There is a strong and wide commitment to equity, but most folks are left asking the question- But what can I do in my classroom tomorrow?

At Equity Meets Design (ExD), we believe the way that we can do equity on a day-to-day basis is to think of ourselves as designers as well as educators, think of our work as design work as well as teaching, and to make sure we're using an equity design approach as we address challenges, make decisions, and plan instruction for our classrooms.

At the core of ExD's work is the belief that racism and inequity are products of design, meaning they are the result of (design) decisions that people (designers) made when they created things. These things can be as seemingly small as forms we have students and parents fill out to as big as decisions about tracking policies in a district. The good news is that, since those things were designed, they can be redesigned, and the next time we can do it better.

But designing in this way is hard work, so we've been working to create a set of tools, frameworks, and processes that can support folks in being equity designers. (You can read an overview of our process here.)

While we firmly believe equity work requires working from the inside out, we believe personal work must be done in the context of your daily work, school/district-wide objectives, and the realities of your classrooms. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to equitable schools. Locally, each of our teams must decide how we identify who will be a part of the decision-making team for a project, how we define and frame the problems we're working on, with whom and how we develop potential solutions, and how we roll those out. One part of the process we've seen be super helpful for folks as they transition to thinking about themselves as equity designers is the work they do (often not enough of) in identifying, articulating, and framing the problems they will tackle with their work.
Problems
Human errors manifest in the way we identify problems and create solutions. We often misidentify the problems we are trying to solve. We may even do a great job of solving the wrong problem. Sometimes we build things that don't solve problems at all or make the problem worse.

The way we go about defining (or not) the problems we are working on is an opportunity for an intentionally equity-centered approach. We have distilled what we believe are powerful insights about the common ways the process of defining problems and the definitions themselves can amplify oppression (problematic problem-definition 😉)-what we call the 6 Problems with Problems. They are as follows:

1. The problem that you articulated is simply the absence of the thing you want to do or build or of the outcome you want to be true.

2. The problem is articulated without referencing any people-those experiencing it or those creating or perpetuating it.

3. The problem explicitly or implicitly blames those experiencing the issue for its existence, usually by framing the problem as deficiencies or flaws in a group of people.

4. The problem that has been identified is just a symptom but is treated as a root cause.

5. The problem is described at the level of individuals, absent institutional, systemic, or ideological factors that are also at play.

6. The problem is described absent the history of how it came to be.

Let's try an example. Imagine (or maybe you don't have to) that one of your students consistently disrupts your whole-class math instruction by joking around, attempting to distract classmates, and even physically leaving her desk during the lesson. Our initial problem statement might be " I have a student with behavioral problems. I need to stop her from disrupting class and impeding the learning of her classmates." This is a totally natural way to frame this challenge, but let's see how the 6 Problems with Problems might help us think more productively about how to address this opportunity.

1. The problem that you articulated is simply the absence of the thing you want to do or build or of the outcome you want to be true. This is true of our original problem statement. We've jumped to identifying a solution and ideal outcome without investigating the articulation of the problem itself. Our solution may not be solving the root-cause problem.

2. The problem is articulated without referencing any people- those experiencing it or those creating or perpetuating it. We referenced one person, the student herself, and what we perceive to be the impact of her action on others, but who else is involved or affected? As the teacher, have we played a role in creating the situation? Would other students actually benefit from this student's voice if used differently?

3. The problem explicitly or implicity blames those experiencing the issue for its existence, usually by framing the problem as deficiencies or flaws in a group of people. Our problem statement implies the student is purely to blame, and we need to address the problems inherent in her behavior. How else could your frame your problem so blame isn't solely placed on the student?

4. The problem that has been identified is just a symptom but is treated as a root cause. We've identified the problem (and solution) as a behavioral issue, but what are the root causes of that "symptom?" If we want everyone to be focused on grade-level math content, what could we do to achieve that vision? Is it addressing unfinished learning so students have better access to content? Reducing "teacher talk time" to include more time for student discussion and engagement?

5. The problem is described at the level of individuals, absent institutional, systemic, or ideological factors that are also at play. Again, our problem statement focuses at the individual level of the student, but we haven't discussed or considered other factors that could be at play. For instance, has this student persistently been overlooked and ignored in class so that she feels this is her only way to engage? Have our own biases led us to assume that the student's actions are normally disruptive rather than productive?

6. The problem is described absent the history of how it came to be. The student's actions in the classroom aren't a random occurrence, and they don't occur in a vacuum. What is the history that has led us to the current challenge?

This rubric was created to help us evaluate our current problem articulation and push us to a deeper, more historically nuanced understanding, all in service of making sure we have the best shot of actually solving the super complex issues we're working on.

We encourage you to use the rubric to help refine a problem you're currently working to define and/or solve.

For a deeper dive into the ExD process check out our online courses at courses.equitymeetsdesign.com.

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Designing for Equity (Teachers as Designers) - Achieve the Core Aligned Materials

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Many of us are familiar with this scenario: Our school's leadership decides that equity is a priority, and we move to action. We read books, listen to podcasts, watch documentaries, and bring in consultants to facilitate us through difficult conversations, create a definition for equity, and talk about race.

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Hammond distinguishes the differences between culturally responsive education, multicultural education and social justice education. Each is important, but without a focus on building students' brain power, they will experience learning loss.

When it comes to distance learning, applying culturally responsive teaching requires "remixing" education by borrowing from the best practices in how kids learn (Montessori, project-based learning, etc.) in a way that repositions the student as the leader of his own learning. By giving students more agency, the idea is to disrupt old routines around teaching and learning that make the student dependent on the teacher for receiving knowledge.

"It's going to stretch us a little out of our own comfort zones, but it's worth it in the long run if we can get students to continue to do that thinking," said Hammond.

She advises three strategies to help students gain that independence:

1. Deepen background knowledge

Many educators are understandably wondering whether they should teach new content or review familiar material. Hammond encourages educators to do the latter because cognitively dependent learners often have gaps in their background knowledge . "A lot of our students are compliant learners," she said. "They're having a hard time shifting right now [because] they're used to the worksheet, but that doesn't mean they're always processing information."

She advises teachers to help students connect new things they're learning to their brain's existing schema - also known as background knowledge - that comes from home, their community, their interests. Teachers can then give them authentic tasks that help them make meaning and connections. This helps turn new inert information into usable knowledge. "You cannot give another person background knowledge," she explained. "They have to acquire it, but as teachers we can help guide the process." This can be done by building upon student interest.

"Survey your students if you don't know what they like," said Hammond. Ask them what books they enjoy reading or what topics get them super excited. She said It doesn't matter if their interests are broad or narrow; it's important to learn what interests them so that you can use that information to:

Assign non-fiction books that build on student interests.

Create a "Netflix" playlist of documentaries, nature shows, historical events, etc.

Encourage kids and parents to do a walk-about, if that's possible in their community, following social distancing guidelines. Encourage parents and students to seek out community curiosities (landmarks or interesting sights) relevant to students' interest.

With each of these activities, it's important to give the students direction so they know what to look out for. "You have to tell the brain what to pay attention to," Hammond explains. She suggested questions like, "What was your biggest surprise from this book/show?" or thinking routine sentences like "I Used to Think ___. But, now I think ____."

She said to always make sure that students do something with the knowledge as well. She suggested having them share interesting facts they learned either during video conferences or via an audio/video clip. For those students with limited internet access, encourage them to share what they learned with their parents.

2. Cultivate cognitive routines

Growing students' brain power during distance learning starts with building cognitive routines. These routines are essential to processing and hardwiring information in the brain.

"Be the personal trainer of their cognitive development," Hammond said. To do this, she suggested having a routine set of prompts in each packet that become a regular part of the way students think. That way, students begin to think that way even when you're not in the classroom to reinforce that way of thinking.

One example is to ask students to connect the "unknown to the known" or across concepts by asking questions like, " What's the relationship or connection between these things?" or "How does this part fit into the whole? What are the parts of this whole?" These may seem simple, but these questions are critical when it comes to processing information so that students internalize these prompts until they become almost instinctual.

She said students should also be encouraged to sketchnote or doodle to actively process what they're learning as an alternative to note-taking. Sketchnoting can encourage people to make deeper connections to what they're hearing.

3. Build word wealth

Building a student's vocabulary is a key tool in equity strategies for schools. "Kids have different interests in words so find out where their energy is. You can have a differentiated assignment around word collecting, but the idea is to get them actively involved in word consciousness," said Hammond. She said there are many small but high-leverage ways to do this, such as introducing robust word study. A teacher can help students engage in wordplay, word consciousness and word knowledge. This should not happen through a worksheet assignment, but rather begin with building word consciousness of words in their community, home and home language.

Word games like Scrabble, Heads Up, Taboo or even word searches are small familiar but high-leverage activities because they're fun but also require a high cognitive load. You can create your own versions of these games and have students do this in any language. Students can also do word collecting activities like scavenger hunts, or make poetry using magnetic poetry. Students can also do a contrastive analysis, by comparing words they might find in Urban Dictionary to those they might find in a standard dictionary.

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How to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance Learning | KQED

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Culturally responsive teaching is a powerful way to help students become independent learners, and it can be especially valuable during distance learning.

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The following is an interview with Keenan Lee, a first-grade teacher in an urban school district in Pennsylvania. In June of 2020, Keenan crowd-sourced an extensive, grade-band-specific list of culturally diverse texts (Culturally Diverse & LGBTQ+ Books for Prek-Higher Education)-reaching out to educators across the nation via social media. The list features titles for Pre-K students all the way through higher ed/adult reading. In this interview, Keenan shares recommendations for how to leverage these texts to provide powerful learning experiences for students. Q: How would you describe the value culturally diverse texts bring to a classroom discussion? How do they support students' growth?
A: When the teacher includes books that are culturally diverse, they are adding value through exposing their students to books that are written by someone who shares the same culture and traditions. Allowing students to explore books by someone who may look like them or share the same cultural background will develop more interest in reading, which will help academically in developing their literacy skills. Most importantly, for teachers of students who are predominantly white, it is important to expose the students to culturally diverse books because it will introduce the students to situations, traditions, and cultures that are not seen in their home lives or schools. When adding these books for the students, it will help students be more culturally aware and value how they see themselves, others, and their place in the world around them.
Q: Many teachers may be required to teach a certain curriculum with existing texts. Any suggestions for how to integrate new texts into the time they have with students each week?
A: I suggest that teachers should always find time to include a read-aloud of their choosing. It is important that, as teachers, we expose our students to authentic text that doesn't come from a basal reader series. One way I incorporate culturally diverse books in my classroom is during the read-aloud at various times of the day. For example, we would read a book that my students or I have chosen. This takes place before or after lunch and again before the day's special.
Q: There have been lots of great recommendations shared for culturally diverse texts-how do you, as the teacher, decide which ones to share and when?
A: To me, the hardest part is picking a book! There are so many great authors with so many great titles, and it is difficult to just pick one. In all seriousness, when I select books, I try to tie the book into the theme or unit that we are working on in English Language Arts. I found that many of my students have limited background knowledge when it comes to the stories in our reading curriculum, so I reinforce what we are learning by reading a culturally diverse book that the students can connect with. I love when I teach fairy tales and fables because there are so many different variations of popular stories from many different cultures, which makes the read-aloud and the discussion that follows it so much fun. I also try to base the stories that I choose around holidays and special events. One of my favorite stories I like to share around election time is Grace for President. This book shows students, especially female students, that they can be anything they want to be if they persevere and keep going.
Q: Walk us through some steps educators might take, once they have a text in hand, to design a lesson and discussion that leverages a culturally diverse text to its full potential.
A: The first thing I do when I pick out my story is to sit down and read the story myself. Sometimes I have to read the story twice to be sure I am understanding the messaging the author is trying to present. When reading the story myself I am able to put myself in my students' shoes and jot down some questions they might have, and it also allows me to find stopping points in the book that will lend themselves to meaningful discussion. After reading the story, I then think about how I can tie the story back into current events. I always have to do reflection when trying to make the connection to the real world because it allows me to really think about how this will affect my students and how I can be open and honest with them without going too much into it. At the end of it all, I want to tie the lesson back into the story and allow students to make their own personal connections. Overall, I try to leave my students with something that they can relate to and understand.
Q: Discussions about the text have the potential to get heated, emotional, and personal. How do you create a safe space for everyone to feel comfortable digging into the text?
A: I have created a safe space in my classroom from the first time students enter the classroom-these rules don't just apply to discussing culturally relevant texts. My main rule for discussions is that we do not make fun of, laugh at, or judge our friends. We are a family, and families lift and support each other through the good and the bad. I also show my students that sometimes I make mistakes, too, so I share my thoughts and feelings on topics. I think showing/modeling to the students how I react in certain situations really gives them an idea of how we successful have conversations within our classroom family.
Q: Do you have any specific advice for teachers of early elementary school students about facilitating activities?
A: I would tell other early elementary teachers to not hold back when facilitating these activities with their students. The discussions we have in our classroom, with our students, are the most meaningful and rich conversations that many of our students have with peers and adults. For example, to get the conversation started with my students in my classroom, I always ask the students how the characters feel in the story. After asking that question about the characters, I like to tie it back to the student. I proceed to ask the students, "If you were in the book, how would you feel if you were in the story and this is happening?" It is important to have this type of dialogue, especially at the early elementary level, because it allows students to work on understanding and practicing different social emotional skills. Oftentimes, we open the door for students to ask questions that sometimes their parents are not comfortable answering.

One activity that I like to do with my students to show cultural diversity is to read and discuss The Family Book by Todd Parr. After reading and discussing the story, I give each student a sheet of scrapbook paper and instructions for parents. With this activity the students and their family are tasked to create a family collage. On the collage, the students will include anything that makes up their family and how it makes them unique. For example, the students can draw or post pictures of their family members, favorite foods, activities, and other activities that they do together as a family. Once the students return the collage to school, all students have an opportunity to share their collage and what makes them special. As we share the collages with one another, the students are able to subconsciously compare and contrast the differences between their family and their peers. The goal of this activity is to allow students to see that we are all diverse and are unique in our own special way.
Q: Do you have any tips on advocating for inclusion of diverse texts with colleagues or administration who may be resistant to including them in their own instruction or facilitating schoolwide use?
A: As a teacher, we should use our voice to advocate for the inclusion of diverse text with colleagues and administration. One tip I suggest is bringing up why inclusion of these text is important during grade-level planning or PLC times. These are times when everyone can have a say and can express their point of view. I would also include solid research-based information to back your advocacy. Another tip I would suggest for teachers to do is to invite the administration and other colleagues into your classroom during one of your read-aloud times when you are using a diverse book. It is good for administration to see the meaningful conversations that you and your students have together. It is powerful when someone else can watch how the books lead and guide complex conversations.
Q: Where can readers go for more lesson-planning resources or additional ideas for texts?
A: I have included a few links. I go to these pretty frequently to check out new ideas.
Teachingtolerance.org Diversebooks.org Multiculturalchildrensbookday.com Readingrockets.org Firstbook.org

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You Have a List of Culturally Diverse Texts. Now What? - Achieve the Core Aligned Materials

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The following is an interview with Keenan Lee, a first-grade teacher in an urban school district in Pennsylvania. In June of 2020, Keenan crowd-sourced an extensive, grade-band-specific list of culturally diverse texts (Culturally Diverse & LGBTQ+ Books for Prek-Higher Education)-reaching out to educators across the nation via social media.

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During the pandemic, there have been many uses of the term well-being. When teachers ask students only "How are you feeling?" as a way to gauge well-being, opportunities are missed to teach students that well-being is a multidimensional concept that encompasses more than just happiness. Research shows that if youth explicitly learn about well-being, their concept of subjective well-being can increase because they become mindfully aware of its components.

Present Dimensions of Well-Being

Help students understand two definitions for well-being: In the hedonistic tradition, students evaluate how satisfied they are with their lives, how pleasurable their lives are, and how happy they feel. In the eudaimonic tradition, they assess their personal strengths, areas of growth, and how they contribute to the greater good. This more expansive understanding of well-being can guide students to learn from challenging events and circumstances.

Introduce students to the following dimensions of well-being:

Belonging and connection to others. Ask students, "Where do you feel like you most belong? Are you participating in a specific activity when you feel belonging? What do the people around you do to make you feel like you belong?" Also inquire about times they do not feel like they belong. What do they do to feel connected?

Growth and flourishing. Ask students to describe a personal skill that they have grown in over the last two years. Describing how they have thrived can reinforce the understanding that well-being can involve challenges.

Purpose. We often focus too much on what career path students may want to take, leaving youth feeling a lack of purpose when they don't know those answers. Encourage students to identify short-term purposes, such as, "Today I am going to help my father cook dinner," in addition to long-term goals.

Engagement. Identifying engagement can be as simple as asking students, "What do you enjoy doing?" Students can explore ways they are engaged within their family, school, or community.

Voice. Let youth know that there are many different ways to share their voice. Maybe they express themselves best through less traditional forms, such as writing equations, being in nature, participating in performing arts, or playing musical instruments.

Basic supports for health and life. Remind students of their basic needs. Ask about what they do if their needs are not being met, and encourage them to name trusted adults they can turn to for help.

Engage with the Dimensions

Establish a space where well-being education will be welcomed by inquiring about student needs. Ask, "How would you like your peers to show that they support you when you are feeling down? How would you like me to support you?" Record the answers and discuss ideas until the group is in agreement. Model the process by sharing something that was difficult for you and asking for community support.

Offer ways the dimensions might show up in daily life. For example, "One dimension I feel is going well is belonging because my family is supporting one another right now."

Sentence frames can help students make connections while using critical thinking to apply new terminology to lived experience, such as the following:

____________(insert dimension) means ____________ to me. It looks like and feels like ____________. In my daily life, an example of a positive ____________ (insert dimension) is ____________.

For example, a fifth grader used the dimension "basic supports for health and life" to write, "Basic support for health and life means that everybody can get to a doctor. It looks and feels like band-aids. In my daily life, an example of a positive basic support is that my grandma can get her medicine."

An eighth grader used the dimension "voice" to write, "Voice means expressing my unique identity to me. It looks and feels like talking with my friends. In my daily life, an example of a positive voice is when my parents actually listen to me."

Use the responses to gain new information about students and insight on ways they might need support.

Use Weekly Check-ins

Once a class has an understanding of the dimensions, they can be used to facilitate weekly check-ins. Check-ins can be incorporated into circle time, in advisory time, or via journals between the teacher and each child. Ask "What dimension of well-being has been challenging for you this week?" or "What dimension has been a strength for you this week?" Place paper with the dimensions on the floor, and have students walk to the dimension that has been a strength. Invite them to turn to their peers and discuss why they selected this dimension, using examples. Students report that this provides them with new examples of positive experiences that they can then consider in their own lives.

Avoid asking youth to elaborate upon challenges, as probing questions can lead to retraumatization. Instead, accept what students share and how they share. Validate their responses by listening intently, asking, "What support do you need from me?" When they identify needs, follow through in your support for them. Supporting student ideas, versus immediately working to project your ideas for solutions onto them, promotes youth agency.

Remind students that just because we are struggling in one dimension does not mean we are alone or that we have zero well-being. Counter the misconception that well-being is a "you've got it or you don't" feeling.

When a student expresses something that has got them feeling down, discuss it. Then, when the time is right, ask, "I know that dimension ______ has been tough this week. Is there a dimension that has gone well?" When youth begin to see that one dimension could be positive while another dimension is negative, it reinforces the idea that well-being is multidimensional and not a fixed state.

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During the pandemic, there have been many uses of the term well-being. When teachers ask students only "How are you feeling?" as a way to gauge well-being, opportunities are missed to teach students that well-being is a multidimensional concept that encompasses more than just happiness.

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Data shows that more than half of all U.S. children have experienced some kind of trauma in the form of abuse, neglect, violence, or challenging household circumstances-and 35 percent of children have experienced more than one type of traumatic event, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have impacts that extend far beyond childhood, including higher risks for alcoholism, liver disease, suicide, and other health problems later in life.

Trauma in children often manifests outwardly, affecting kids' relationships and interactions. In schools, the signs of trauma may be seen in a student acting out in class, or they could be more subtle-like failure to make eye contact or repeatedly tapping a foot. (To learn more about how trauma impacts students, read " Brains in Pain Cannot Learn! ")

For teachers, who are directly exposed to a large number of young people with trauma in their work, a secondary type of trauma, known as vicarious trauma, is a big risk. Sometimes called the "cost of caring," vicarious trauma can result from "hearing [people's] trauma stories and becom[ing] witnesses to the pain, fear, and terror that trauma survivors have endured," according to the American Counseling Association.

"Being a teacher is a stressful enough job, but teachers are now responsible for a lot more things than just providing education," says LeAnn Keck, a manager at Trauma Smart, an organization that partners with schools and early childhood programs to help children and the adults in their lives navigate trauma. "It seems like teachers have in some ways become case workers. They get to know about their students' lives and the needs of their families, and with that can come secondary trauma."

When you're learning to be a teacher, you think it's just about lesson plans, curriculum, and seating charts. I was blindsided by the emotional aspect of teaching-I didn't know how to handle it.

Vicarious trauma affects teachers' brains in much the same way that it affects their students': The brain emits a fear response, releasing excessive cortisol and adrenaline that can increase heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, and release a flood of emotions. This biological response can manifest in mental and physical symptoms such as anger and headaches, or workplace behaviors like missing meetings, lateness, or avoiding certain students, say experts.

Yet many teachers are never explicitly taught how to help students who have experienced trauma, let alone address the toll it takes on their own health and personal lives. We reached out to trauma-informed experts and educators around the country to get their recommendations for in-the-moment coping strategies and preventative measures to help teachers process vicarious trauma. We share their tips below.

Talking it Out

Garcia, now a teacher of eight years, says she's found that confiding in others-either a therapist, her boyfriend, or colleagues-helps her process students' trauma and her own emotions.

Connecting with colleagues to talk through and process experiences can be invaluable for teachers coping with secondary trauma, according to Micere Keels, an associate professor at the University of Chicago and founder of the TREP Project, a trauma-informed curriculum for urban teachers.

"Reducing professional isolation is critical," said Keels. "It allows educators to see that others are struggling with the same issues, prevents the feeling that one's struggles are due to incompetence, and makes one aware of alternative strategies for working with students exhibiting challenging behavior."

It doesn't serve anybody to pretend that we're teacher-bots with no emotions, which I think sometimes teachers feel like they have to be.

Finding a wellness-accountability buddy-a peer who agrees to support and keep you accountable to your wellness goals-or using a professional learning community as a space to check in with other teachers are also ways to get that support, offers Alex Shevrin, a former school leader and teacher at Centerpoint School, a trauma-informed high school in Vermont that institutes school-wide practices aimed at addressing students' underlying emotional needs.

At Centerpoint, time for a monthly wellness group-where teachers, administrators, and social workers support each other on their personal wellness goals like exercising and creating work-life balance-is built into the professional development schedule. Staff also use in-service time to focus on taking care of their health together, by hiking, biking, going to the gym, or even learning to knit.

"If I had one wish for every school in the country, it would be that they made time for teachers to really sit down and talk about how they're feeling in the work," said Shevrin. "It doesn't serve anybody to pretend that we're teacher-bots with no emotions, which I think sometimes teachers feel like they have to be."

Building Coping Strategies

Students affected by trauma can have combative personalities and learn which buttons to press to upset you in class, says Garcia. When a student acts out in class, Garcia takes a few deep breaths, drinks coffee, or goes to a different part of the classroom to help another student.

"If I get upset, it never goes anywhere," Garcia said. "When you try to have a battle in class, you automatically lose as the teacher."

That's a good approach, says Keck, who suggests developing proactive coping strategies to address stressful situations in advance. A strategy may be counting to five, visualizing a calming place, or responding with an opposite action-like talking to a student quietly when you want to yell. Waiting until you're actually in a stressful situation means you're likely to overreact or to say or do something unhelpful.

Keck also recommends mapping out your school day and taking note of the times of day you feel most stressed, and then integrating scheduled coping strategies into your daily routine. If you feel stressed when students start to lose focus midday, for example, guide your students in a quick group stretch and some deep breathing to shift energy before getting back to work.

"Look at your schedule. If you see a stressful pattern, don't wait for it to happen. Don't wait to feel overwhelmed and stressed," urges Keck.

The important part is customizing the strategy to meet your needs.

Garcia applies this strategy when she's at home. She knows that after she puts her daughter to sleep, the worry for her students creeps in-so she makes sure to take time for things she enjoys, like watching movies and playing video games.

While many teachers say they don't have time for self-care, experts insist that it's necessary to develop long-term self-care practices-and stick to them-to build up your overall well-being and resilience. These self-care activities could be going for a walk, reading, watching a movie, practicing mindfulness, or talking with a friend-whatever invigorates you.

Establishing Coming Home Rituals

It can be hard to leave work at work, but to address vicarious trauma, teachers need to create clear boundaries between work and home life. Part of that can be developing a ritual or routine that signifies the end of a work day, either before you head home, on the way home, or at home.

"For me, sometimes it's just as simple as turning off my work phone before I go into my house," Shevrin says. "I hear the sound of my phone turning off and then I know that I'm home."

After an emotionally difficult day, many teachers will write about their experiences before they leave, or sit down with a colleague to help process it, Keck told us.

Others organize their desk or create a to-do list for the next workday so they can let go of worry before heading home. While driving home, teachers listen to audiobooks, call a friend, or sit in silence to decompress. A ritual could even be as simple as changing clothes or taking a bath once you get home.

For Garcia, it's about putting her daughter's needs first and making the most of the time she has with her.

"It's very easy to get overwhelmed and let the job consume you. But teaching is about balance," she said. "When I come home, I try to just focus on my kid so she gets as much of me as she can. It's not always easy, but I've learned to put my life and my daughter's life first."

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When Students Are Traumatized, Teachers Are Too

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Data shows that more than half of all U.S. children have experienced some kind of trauma in the form of abuse, neglect, violence, or challenging household circumstances-and 35 percent of children have experienced more than one type of traumatic event, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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During the hasty and haphazard transition to remote instruction, helping students and families has been the first and foremost priority for many schools and districts. But what about supporting educators who are tasked with delivering instruction and a modicum of normalcy in an entirely new medium, using online tools they may be trying for the first time?

"All of our jobs have shifted so much," says Michele Eaton, director of virtual and blended learning at the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township in Indianapolis. "A message that we can't overlook, and which is really important in all of my communications with teachers, is that you're doing enough. Whatever you're doing right now, you're doing enough."

Eaton shared those comments at the latest installment in our EdSurge-ISTE webinar series, focused on how school leaders and teachers can tend to their own personal and professional needs.

While there's a tendency to rush to make remote instruction work, it's important to tell teachers that it's okay to take things one step at a time, says Sophia Mendoza, the director of instructional technology at Los Angeles Unified School District.

"Educators, for the most part, want to come in and start learning the points and where to click right away," Mendoza adds. "But we've taken the approach of 'let's slow down first and ask, where are you right now in your learning curve?' before we even think about implementing this with your students.'"

With students learning from home, educators should recognize that most parents now play an even closer role in their children's learning. And providing guidance to families in how they can support educational activities can take some of the load off of teachers, says Dominic Caguioa, the instructional leadership support coordinator at Los Angeles Unified School District.

"What LA Unified is currently doing, side by side with our professional development plan for educators, is engaging parents and families and helping them be part of the overall plan in the education of our students, especially as the school closures continue," says Caguioa. "It might not be formalized education, but it's still important to have parents know what is going on with the kids and their teachers."

Doing so, he adds, "can also help address issues like language barriers and socioeconomic barriers at home" that teachers may previously not have known about.

Conversations that used to occur serendipitously in the teachers' lounge or in the hallways are now taking place over FaceTime and Zoom, says Kyair Butts, a sixth-grade literacy teacher and the 2019-2020 Baltimore City Schools Teacher of the Year. Instead of talking shop and sharing tips in person, Butts says he and his colleagues have organized and shared links to resources in Google Drive folders that they can all access.

That sort of tactic was endorsed by Eaton. "We have worked across departments to centralize as much information as possible. Because there is so much information that is constantly changing, we go back to our remote learning plan-a working document that houses everything," she says. Eaton says this approach has helped her curriculum, instruction and assessment departments collaborate with their colleagues on the social-emotional learning team, and distribute the workload of designing and preparing materials.

"This is absolutely not an ideal situation, but I think we are building so much capacity within our staff and our students in a way that would not have been possible without this situation," Eaton notes. She later adds: "I've always firmly believed that we can teach just as well online as we can in a traditional setting. And I think that goes for adults, too."

Beyond instructional resources, Butts underscores that "the big topic when I talk to colleagues is making sure that they are mentally well." He asks the same questions of his fellow teachers as he does with his students: "How are you doing mentally? How are you doing emotionally? It's about making sure that we're all reassuring each other that we're all here to provide support."

While students and teachers miss in-person interactions and the routines of a physical school environment, Butts hopes that the disruption "also gives folks an opportunity to step back and say, 'What do we really want our education to look like when we go back? When we go back to a brick-and-mortar edifice that is a school building, what should education look like?"

As teachers connect virtually with students, educators may get a closer look at what their kids' lives are like in their homes. For Butts, "there's an opportunity for all of us as educators to throw our hat in. There are all these equity issues that we've always known about, but the building hides that. But remote instruction has surfaced them to light. Now's a good time to understand, who is benefiting from the current system, and who has been left behind historically."
This is a brief recap of the conversation. To hear the rest, listen to the episode in the player on this page. You can also find the EdSurge Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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What Does Remote Professional Development Look Like for Online Teachers? - EdSurge News

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During the hasty and haphazard transition to remote instruction, helping students and families has been the first and foremost priority for many schools and districts. But what about supporting educators who are tasked with delivering instruction and a modicum of normalcy in an entirely new medium, using online tools they may be trying for the first time?

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Protests, police brutality, and the ongoing threat of Covid-19 have upended safety and unleashed deep-seated fury and grief across the United States, particularly in communities of color. Adults are understandably having difficulty managing their own stress and are worried about the effects of all this on their children. This was also true after the 9/11 attacks, but that terrifying event was different; it happened on one horrific day. Today, we don't know how and when the social unrest will end. The coronavirus has been with us for weeks and will likely be with us for many months to come, with all the attendant uncertainties around health, the economy, food insecurity, and our education system. The ongoing pressures of this crisis may affect the developing brains of the young people living through it.

For years, I have worked to teach educators about the developing brain, how children's development is malleable into adulthood, and how children and adolescents grow and learn and thrive. Nurture drives nature, and context-the environments, experiences, and relationships in our lives-drives the development of who we become.

Those lessons from the science of learning and development hold special relevance for educators deciding what they can do now and once schools reopen. I want everyone to know something that I learned in medical school: adversity doesn't just happen to children. It happens inside their brains and bodies through the biologic mechanisms of stress.

When we experience stress, the hormone cortisol is released, producing that familiar feeling of fight, flight, or freeze. This feeling is intense when it happens, but if the stress is mild or tolerable, it's adaptive. It makes us alert and helps us prepare for an event like a test or a performance. This is the limbic system in the brain at work-attention, concentration, focus, memory, preparation.

When children have persistently high levels of stress, and that stress is not buffered by the presence of a trusted and calm adult, something else can happen: children can get locked in that fight or flight feeling. This is toxic stress. And it helps explain why some students have difficulty paying attention and remembering things and are easily triggered by emotions. It is our emotions that drive our cognitive and learning skills, that engage us or shut us down.

But that's not the end of the story. There's a big upside when we turn to another hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin hits the same structures of the brain as cortisol, yet oxytocin is more powerful because it can protect children at the cellular level. Relationships that are strong and positive cause oxytocin's release, which helps produce feelings of trust, love, attachment, and safety. This not only helps children manage stress, but also offsets the damaging effects of cortisol and produces resilience to future stress. All this is possible because the human brain is malleable well into adulthood. That means there are opportunities, even right now, to put children on a path to learn and thrive.

Which brings me back to the crisis today. One of the challenges we face is what I call "the Covid-19 paradox." In order to be safe and keep others safe from the virus, we must be physically distant. But that means disrupting the communities and relationships in our lives-classrooms, teachers, teams, coaches, churches, friends, extended families-that are the very connections we need to feel safe, to cope with stress, and to surmount this crisis. On top of this, there is a crisis of trust, particularly for young people of color, because of what they are witnessing: Officers who should protect them, but don't, won't, or can't.

Knowing this, what can educators do today? What can parents who are helping to educate their children away from school do? We can make the world in our homes and eventually our schools places that inoculate us against the intolerable stress of the scary, uncertain world we now live in. How? By focusing on the Three Rs: relationships, routines, and resilience.

Let's start with ideas for strengthening and maintaining relationships -oxytocin boosters -while students are at home. Virtual advisory groups and one-on-one conversations help teachers and students connect. A two-minute conversation about topics of interest to the student for ten straight days provides quick emotional support and a chance for an adult to co-regulate emotions with a youngster, so try this two-by-ten practice to strengthen relationships, especially with children who may be struggling.

To maintain a professional learning and serving community, schedule 15-minute daily huddles, as Principal John Peterson does with his staff at KIPP Bridge Academy in Oakland. And to strengthen ties to families, take a page from Turner Elementary School's strategy in Washington, D.C. They do family-teacher check-ins, using guided questions to learn how their school community is coping and handling homework.

Schools can also encourage parents to play, clean, and cook family recipes with their children. Karina Herrera at the Chapin School in New York City does "Tasty Tuesdays," during which her 2nd graders share breakfast concoctions over Zoom. Parents can give each child a chance to choose one new family activity every day. Students can also give to others during this crisis by making a drawing for a frontline worker or facetiming a grandparent or elderly neighbor. Even simple gestures of gratitude are a great way to stay connected.

When school reopens, school leaders can make relationship building central to their learning communities. Beyond High Schools, supported by the Tulsa Design Lab, is prioritizing advisories and mentoring to ensure students have a sense of belonging. Schools can do two-by-tens with struggling students, never withholding them for bad behavior. They can alsoloop students to faculty with whom they are especially close for more than one year to sustain important relationships.

Routines can make our home environments feel safer and calmer. Our brains are prediction machines that like order, and when our environments are orderly the brain is calmer. Use a planner, calendar, or homemade chart to showcase the daily and weekly schedule with regular times for reading, storytelling, math, and hands-on projects. Erika Leadholm, a 2nd-grade teacher at Malcolm X Elementary School in Washington, D.C., dresses up in superhero costumes to read students bedtime stories that include vocabulary and comprehension lessons. Her colleague, Erica Samuels, teaches place value while encouraging her students to reinforce their learning by "teaching" their family members and stuffed animals.

Family meetings, during which children can ask questions and talk about their fears and loss, should be on the schedule, but adults should prepare how they plan to answer in advance, using facts. Schools can encourage families to eat healthy meals together every day, exercise for at least 30 minutes, and prioritize sleep ( 9 hours or more for children every night). Teachers or parents can also establish mindful practices with students, such as deep breathing, journaling, quiet pacing, or meditation for 20 minutes a day.

When school reopens, the primary focus should be physical, emotional, and identity safety. Implement a tiered support system at all levels and create mental health partnerships with local providers. In the classroom, teachers can co-create norms and routines with students. And to address the stress students are experiencing, deploy cognitive unloaders; make lists and use sticky notes and note-taking templates.

Resilience is a skill, not a trait like eye color; it can be built up and honed over time. Resilience begins with learning how to regulate emotions and behaviors from role models through a process called "co-regulation." Schools can start by curating resources for teachers and parents about stress and the brain, and how to build resilience. To do so now at home, parents can limit exposure to media and instead stay in touch with family and friends. Schools can encourage families to solve problems together, celebrate successes, and empower children to find creative solutions. And both parents and teachers should offer hope, expressing confidence that this crisis will end, but that we must also work at managing ourselves and our fears every single day.

When school reopens, apply a whole-child, integrated approach to school design with the following elements: a safe, supportive environment; strong, developmental relationships; and integrated and rigorous academic, skill, and mindset development. Settings designed with these elements at the forefront are like an ecological vaccine, rich in protective factors that ignite the developing brain, promote wellness, and protect children from the damaging effects of stress. These are the same environments that produce complex skill development and the deeper learning skills to tackle a thorny word problem, write a critical essay, or imagine a practical solution to a community challenge.

A final thought: In every story about an individual who has surmounted adversity and gone on to do amazing things, there is always a person or group of people who made that success possible. This is the power each of us carries: to be that person for a young person and for each other, in our lives at home and when we meet again at school.

Pamela Cantor, M.D., is founder and senior science advisor at Turnaround for Children. A suite of resources for Education Next readers to complement this article are available at https://www.turnaroundusa.org/resources-education-next/ using password "thrive."

Read more from Education Next on coronavirus and Covid-19.

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The Stress of Coronavirus Might Be Hurting Kids' Development: But relationships, routines, and resilience can help - Education Next

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Protests, police brutality, and the ongoing threat of Covid-19 have upended safety and unleashed deep-seated fury and grief across the United States, particularly in communities of color. Adults are understandably having difficulty managing their own stress and are worried about the effects of all this on their children.

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By Arlène E. Casimir
Ancient wisdom traditions in various indigenous cultures teach us that every healing journey begins with a crisis. I learned this fundamental truth firsthand when I arrived in New Orleans, La., in 2011. Even six years post-Hurricane Katrina, remnants from the tropical cyclone and infrastructural neglect remained. Every X marked on the doors of dilapidated businesses and homes told a story of crisis, grief, and trauma. The shadow of injustice haunted this beautiful city despite collective rebuilding efforts.

As someone who taught the children who were in their mothers' wombs during Hurricane Katrina, I learned a lot about how to heal, lead, learn, and teach in times of crisis. I was humbled to hear narratives of my students' parents and caregivers trotting through the murky water to the Superdome stadium where they would find food and shelter, moved to learn the memories of their lost loved ones and homes, relieved to listen to their hopes for a better tomorrow, and grateful to realize that they trusted us-their educators-to co-create a trauma-informed school where their children could feel accepted, affirmed, and challenged to become their best selves.

Hurricane Katrina revealed a convergence of oppressing forces that are similar to what we see happening today in America as a result of widespread effects of COVID-19 and persisting racial and structural injustice. When students return to brick and mortar buildings, the gaps may be similar to what we saw in New Orleans when students returned to school. While it's imperative to consider the academic, social, and emotional shifts we need to make, it's even more important to consider the inner work we need to do as educators for the outer change we wish to co-create.

To heal is not to return to normal. As Sonya Renee Taylor says, "We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-coronavirus existence was not normal, other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, hoarding, rage, hate and lack ... We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature." This applies to the way we lead schools and educate our students. I offer three tools to help us navigate this healing process: shadow work, bearing witness, and uplifting students.
The Shadow Work: Tending to the Wound
The psychologist Carl Jung coined the term "shadow" as the uncomfortable and unknown parts of the human psyche that affect individual and collective consciousness. When unexamined, the shadow causes sickness, pain, and psychic disequilibrium. When integrated, it allows us to transmute our pain and live authentic lives that reflect our highest ideals.

Jung supported patients by helping them see the way hidden aspects of themselves sabotaged their lives. By casting light on the shadow, we reveal deeply rooted wounds, buried inside; some of which reach down into the soils of intergenerational trauma.

The current pandemic has unveiled the profound inequities, or shadows, of our society, including in public education. Black and indigenous people of color are not only dying from the virus at disproportionate rates, they also experience generational poverty disproportionately. Many BIPOC parents are the essential workers who are putting their families, health, and safety at greater risk by being on the frontlines. Consequently, many students do not have the necessary support for navigating the digital terrain of remote learning, the appropriate tools for coping in a crisis, nor the devices, technological skills, or Wi-Fi to engage. On the other hand, I have been intrigued by the number of children who feel more joyful, liberated, and peaceful during this time because, unlike some of their classrooms and schools, their homes are a safe space where they can grow and find unconditional support.
Bearing Witness: Seeing, Feeling and Grieving
Clinical psychologist Aurelie Athan often asks, "What is research, but 'me' search?" How are we conducting action research by witnessing our own lives? To witness we must listen. When we bear witness, we pay attention to what's happening inside of us, around us, and within our students. Nothing matters but the current moment. When we don't bear witness, we disassociate, neglecting our humanity and, our students' humanity in the process. When we don't bear witness, trauma is solidified and the shadow of crisis falls upon us. It's easy to get swept up in catch-all phrases and movements in education: "trauma-informed," "social-emotional," and "culturally responsive" initiatives.

The important question is: What do we see right in front of us, on our screens, in our lives? Until we feel the wound of trauma, we cannot heal it. Now is not the time to dissociate by taking on busy work or attempting to return to business as usual. We must sit in our discomfort to hear what our souls need.

Trauma is not new to me. I was born into a Haitian family that experienced a great deal of trauma for generations-from unstable governmental conditions to immense poverty and lack of access to essential resources to natural disasters that brought famine and despair. I have learned that trauma can manifest in personal, vicarious, intergenerational, and institutional forms. Trauma is often inherited and shapes who we are, yet we can always tap into an inner well and re-write the story.

My father was my first teacher of what it meant to bear witness. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., he told me stories of his own childhood trauma as a result of Hurricane Flora. He told me of crops drying up on his parents' farm, cattle falling like flies, and nothing but mangoes with salt to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because they were strong enough to grow in the dry soil. He told me stories of intergenerational trauma reaching back to the Haitian Revolution and how his country is still paying for pursuing their freedom. He also told enchanting Haitian folkloric tales of courage and hope. He told these stories between working two to three jobs and still making time to read, laugh, dance, and sing.

He taught me that being whole means embracing joy, resilience, and truth simultaneously. By seeing him dance, hearing him sing, witnessing him grieve intergenerational loss and by feeling our stories, I was inspired to write my own and create a new way with my students.
Uplifting Students to Co-Create a Better Way
We can hold space for our students' full humanity and inquiry by inviting them to co-create the community agreements that will govern the way our classrooms run, co-author a classroom narrative that invites them to shape who they want to be, and co-design a curriculum that reflects everything they need to learn to self actualize. One of the biggest lessons I learned is that we don't empower children; we simply provide the tools for them to embody their inherent power. We can embrace our students' power in our community meetings, lesson plans, and our overall approach to teaching.

In Four Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Healer, Teacher, Warrior and Visionary, author Angeles Arrien shares how ancient wisdom traditions tend to the traumas of their communities using the four universal healing salves. Whenever there is sadness, despair, or disease, they ask: When did you stop singing? When did you stop dancing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being soothed by the sweet sound of silence (Arrien, 1993)?

As educators, we can examine our curriculum and ask ourselves how we can integrate these universal healing salves to promote feelings of lightness in times of uncertainty. We can leverage these modalities to process the difficulties we are experiencing alongside our students. We can co-create a healing-centered learning environment where our wounds become the wisdom we need for an education that invites people to be whole.
References
Arrien, Angeles. (1993). The Four-fold Way. Harper One.

Taylor, Sonya Renee. (@sonyareneetaylor). We will not go back to normal. April 2, 2020.
About the author
Arlène Casimir (@ArleneCasimir) is a Brooklyn-based activist, educator, herbalist, healer and writer. Her experience teaching middle school and elementary school in New York City and New Orleans awakened her purpose of drawing on culturally relevant pedagogy, social-emotional learning, and trauma-responsive teaching practices to nurture others' inner child, inner genius, and inner teacher. She founded, designed, and implemented a healing-centered curriculum for her students post-Hurricane Katrina. As a first generation Haitian American, Arlène recognizes the power of community, literacy, and spiritual resilience to help others live with personal integrity, transcend their circumstances, and author their own lives.

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Lessons from crisis: trauma-responsive teaching tools for the work ahead - ASCD Inservice

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By Arlène E. Casimir Ancient wisdom traditions in various indigenous cultures teach us that every healing journey begins with a crisis. I learned this fundamental truth firsthand when I arrived in New Orleans, La., in 2011. Even six years post-Hurricane Katrina, remnants from the tropical cyclone and infrastructural neglect remained.

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When students are learning independently, or only with support from non-experts like their parents, they might be inadvertently spending time and mental effort on activities that are irrelevant to learning. For teachers, it is important when designing learning materials for remote learning to avoid inadvertently including extraneous cognitive load. While many teachers probably already do much of the following perhaps instinctively, this information is meant to help reinforce their work by specifically making the connection between what they do on a daily basis and research findings.

Here are some ways teachers can continue to approach design:

Provide the right amount of information: Avoid providing too much or too little information. Also cut out redundant information or information irrelevant to learning goals.

Break down a complex task into smaller pieces: Instead of asking them to complete X and Y at the same time, give them task X first and then give them task Y. Segmenting a task into smaller, more manageable tasks was found to promote learning and reduce cognitive load in a simulation-based science learning task.

Integrate information: Many learning materials present multiple pieces of information such as an image and accompanying text. Learners are likely to experience increased cognitive load if they have to mentally integrate information from these sources. Spatially integrating text and images by placing them next to each other, or connecting them with cues that highlight related parts of the information to signal their correspondence, can reduce cognitive load.

Pre-train students: Give students enough opportunities to learn how to use new tools and features in a learning platform. Pre-training can help students focus their mental resources on learning the target content rather than less important activities such as trying to figure out how to use learning tools and features.

In addition to being mindful of the design of their materials in remote environments, Keehner explained that teachers should look for signs of cognitive fatigue in their students. "Cognitive fatigue results from sustained cognitive engagement that taxes mental resources," she explained. "Persistent fatigue leads to lower motivation, increased distractibility, and poor information processing. Studies have shown that many learners experience worsening performance over the duration of a task, as seen by increased errors, slower response times, increased self-reported ratings of fatigue and lower ratings of motivation. If students are showing signs of these effects, it may be time to take a break -research shows that breaks are very effective for recharging learners' cognitive resources, particularly for younger learners, and a movement break (where students get up and move around) can be especially helpful."
Cognitive Load and English Language Learners (ELLs)
"Managing cognitive load may look a bit different for ELLs, especially if we are helping them accomplish real-world tasks in English," said Shoko Sasayama, associate research scientist in R&D at ETS. In general, a combination of increased germane load and minimized extraneous load is argued to facilitate performance and learning of ELLs as well. However, increased extraneous load may also play an important role for this learner population.

For example, talking over the phone or online often comes with challenges, such as a bad audio connection or loud background noise. "These factors are extraneous to ELLs' learning of English per se," Sasayama explained. "However, if learners need to be able to deal with these factors in the real world, introducing such factors and increasing extraneous load deliberately is actually a good idea. It helps learners develop strategies to accommodate the messiness of the real world and thus leads to better learning."

One thing to keep in mind is to introduce extraneous load strategically. In the above scenario, the introduction of extraneous load makes the most sense when ELLs are already able to make a basic phone conversation in a quiet space. In other words, the key is to know learners' current ability levels and increase cognitive load incrementally.

Although we're winding down the school year, it shouldn't be lost on teachers to take note of the advantages and drawbacks remote learning has afforded. Teachers should continue to consider the impact it has had to the cognition of their students and ways to improve for fall should be at the forefront as we navigate remote learning as a new part of our educational lives.

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Why Teachers Should Be Mindful of Cognitive Load in Their Students - ETS Open Notes

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When students are learning independently, or only with support from non-experts like their parents, they might be inadvertently spending time and mental effort on activities that are irrelevant to learning. For teachers, it is important when designing learning materials for remote learning to avoid inadvertently including extraneous cognitive load.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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(It is best to) provide a summary of information in the family's native language. Assume that families may have to be given information multiple times in multiple formats (orally, written, follow up) before they know what to do, as the system is unfamiliar. - Educator response to a Colorín Colorado survey on how schools are supporting immigrant families
Overview

Partnerships with the families of immigrant students and English language learners are critical to student success. In addition, schools are required to communicate with families in a language they understand. Here are some ideas for meeting those requirements, encouraging parent leadership, and building a greater network of support with community organizations.

COVID-19 updates

Learn more about partnering with ELL and immigrant families during the COVID-19 pandemic below.

Create different channels for communication in families' languages

Help families keep emergency contact information updated

Learn why it is critical to help ELL and immigrant families keep their emergency contact information updated and how to do so.

Why this matters

School districts are legally obligated to share information in a language that families understand. Families may also need information in different formats to understand it, especially if they have lower levels of literacy. By learning more about how families prefer to communicate, administrators can allocate resources and staff time more effectively.

In addition, it is critical to provide forms and documents in families' home languages to the extent possible, such as registration forms, home language surveys, and emergency contact forms. Keep in mind that the U.S. educational system will be new to families and they may have lots of questions on top of their questions about complex issues related to immigration.

Note: This is especially critical when it comes to questions of special education evaluation, services, or Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).

Tips for getting started

Work with parent liaisons to determine how best to provide translated information and if your families prefer to communicate through:

in-person conversation

written handouts

email

websites

telephone hotlines or automated phone calls

text messages

social media

video-streaming events

partnerships with local community groups such as a house of worship

Posting information online

Posting translated information online increases families' access to resources from their own home. When you find out families' preferred methods of contact, you can find out how easily families can access information online and let them know where internet access is available.

Note: Providing a link to an online translator is not sufficient, as machine translators often mistranslate educational or context-specific words and phrases.

Recommended resources

Recommended videos

Video: Building parent relationships built on trust

Revisit school data about immigrant students

Why this matters

Looking at student data can help identify patterns or experiences that may be affecting your families. While it is important not to make assumptions or ask for any information related to immigration status, the better you know your families, the better you'll be able to address their concerns. You may also find some patterns that surprise you, as in the case of this Illinois high school who realized that many immigrant students needed significant support in applying for college.

Tips for getting started

Revisit student data and talk with the staff who work with immigrant students to make sure you know who your immigrant students are, always protecting student privacy.

Remember that immigrant students may have diverse backgrounds/education levels.

You may wish to ask the following questions when you look at your data:

◦ What trends and commonalities are there within the different families?

◦ Do families represent different world regions, religions, and languages?

◦ How about educational backgrounds?

◦ Are there particular issues impacting families that need to be addressed?

It is also worthwhile to take a look at your state immigrant/ELL population. You can get started with the following data sources, as well as the immigration data resources in our introduction:

Finally, avoid making assumptions about what kinds of issues and challenges families are facing based on their background, country of origin, or languages spoken. For example, the DREAMer population is a diverse group; while the majority of DACA recipients are from Mexico and other Latin American countries, The Washington Post reports that tens of thousands of DACA recipients also come from countries such as South Korea, the Philippines, India, Jamaica, Tobago, Poland, and Pakistan. A significant number of DACA recipients are also high school students. (Read more in our section on the diversity among undocumented immigrants.)

Encourage family leadership

Why this matters

Families can be tremendous allies and ambassadors for their community when given the chance. They also can provide helpful input on how to effectively meet other families' needs or address concerns. Principal Nathaniel Provencio says that one result of the uncertainty facing his families is that they are taking on more leadership roles in the school community.

Tips for getting started

Ask families what their questions and concerns are.

Form an advisory group of families to discuss these issues. Ask them to identify priorities and then draft recommendations for teachers, administrators or other leaders.

Invite families to school board meetings and encourage them to speak. Be sure to remind school districts to have interpreters available and encourage families to use them.

Take their input seriously, and don't ask for it until you are prepared to listen. It may be challenging at first, but well worth the learning curve.

Recommended resources

Recommended Videos

Create partnerships with community organizations

Why this matters

Beyond addressing questions of basic needs, other community partners that represent your families can be valuable allies, such as organizations with ties to local immigrants, houses of worship, and businesses. These organizations can help provide:

The role of libraries

Libraries can also play an important role in supporting immigrant families, as seen in these examples:

In addition, you can read about an innovative early literacy program designed to welcome immigrant families in the report Building Safe Community Spaces for Immigrant Families, One Library at a Time.

Community schools

Around the country, many schools are adopting the community school strategy, which develops partnerships in order to provide additional supports that can help students succeed. Learn more from our community school resource page, as well as our video project about how community schools can support ELL/immigrant families at Wolfe Street Academy in Baltimore, Maryland.

Tips for getting started

Create an asset map of valuable partners, opportunities, and resources in your community.

Talks with colleagues about which existing partnerships are working and new partnerships that make sense to pursue on behalf of your families.

Look for partners that can provide students with enrichment experiences.

Connect with other community leaders, such as faith leaders, non-profit leaders, political leaders, or business owners who wish to express their support for local immigrant communities. There may be ways to have a broader impact through partnerships and find solutions to local challenges (see the video below about Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon and his community work in his hometown of Hazleton, PA).

As you bring people together, have some examples available of what other communities are doing.

Don't hesitate to turn down partnerships that aren't beneficial or appropriate for your community. For example, Principal Mark Gaither at Wolfe Street Community School shared with us that he has turned down partnerships that were not going to yield worthwhile results for his students and looked for more suitable options.

Recommended resources

Case studies

Recommended videos

Video: How a Community School Helps ELLs Succeed

Video: Identify your resources and allies

Video playlist: How community schools support ELL/immigrant families

Parent engagement toolkits

A number of organizations have published toolkits focused on culturally responsive parent engagement with diverse families. Here are some of the highlights!

References

See our complete reference list for works cited in this article.

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How to Build Partnerships with Immigrant Families

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(It is best to) provide a summary of information in the family's native language. Assume that families may have to be given information multiple times in multiple formats (orally, written, follow up) before they know what to do, as the system is unfamiliar.

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Here's are Two Simple Tools to Help You Get to Know Your Teachers or Parents!

Maybe your children have started back-to-school and if they have not yet, it's likely you are in the process of getting ready. Either way, over the coming weeks, families and schools will be focused on relationships. Introductions will be made. Students will meet teachers. Students will meet and greet one another. And hopefully, parents will also get the chance to meet their children's teachers. These relationships are not just a "nice-to-have." They serve as the firm foundation on which students build their learning over the coming year. They add to our sense of safety and care.

Research shows clearly that students whose parents are involved in supporting learning at home and are engaged in their school community have more consistent attendance, better social skills, and higher grade point averages and test scores than those children without involved parents. 1 Indeed the best predictor of students' academic achievement is parental involvement.

Trusting relationships - which are essential to learning - are not built with one greeting although that can be a great beginning. They require multiple interactions and connections. They also require an individual or personal connection. Yet teachers and families are busy. So how can we make those essential connections at the beginning of the school year and build upon them throughout the coming months?

With that question in mind, I put together a few easy-to-use handouts. The first is for families to share with their teacher.

Why not be the one who reaches out first to learn about your teacher? Certainly, we, as parents, are curious, excited, or even nervous about who our child's teacher is and how he or she will conduct classes. Here's a great start. Place this in your child's return-to-school folder or hand it to your child's new teacher at drop-off time. Parents - here it is in a printable format!

Parents, why not include one about your family with all of your strengths and information completed when you ask them to fill out one for you? Educators, you likely already have a plan to introduce yourself to parents. But why not help them get to know you a little better in this easy way? In particular, this handout gives you the chance to highlight your top strength so that parents have the chance to appreciate you and the gifts you bring to your classroom from the very start! Teachers - here is a printable version especially for you to use!

These can become the building blocks of a caring school community. Even if these tools aren't right for you, how will get to know your child's teacher this year? Here's to learning about and understanding the individual strengths of teachers, students, and parents to establish caring relationships for a productive and joyful year of learning!

Henderson, A.T., Mapp, K.L., Johnson, V.R., & Davies, D. (2007). Beyond the bake sale: The essential guide to family-school partnerships. NY: The New York Press.
Originally published August, 2018.

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Getting to Know your Teacher, Getting to Know your Student's Family

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Here's are Two Simple Tools to Help You Get to Know Your Teachers or Parents! Maybe your children have started back-to-school and if they have not yet, it's likely you are in the process of getting ready. Either way, over the coming weeks, families and schools will be focused on relationships.

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Dr Jean Clinton, NPDL Special Advisor, shares her wisdom and thoughts about well-being, learning and life.

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OPINION | COVID-19 Exposed America's Endless Educational Inequities But Now It's Time To Fix Them

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With 20 years of experience, Dr. Tanji Reed Marshall says it's vitally important to step up and step in for our kids.