Leading Schools

The teacher shortage is "worse than we thought," researchers conclude in a new analysis of federal data. 

The study, published by the union-backed think tank Economic Policy Institute, argues that when indicators of teacher quality are considered—like experience, certification, and training—the teacher shortage is even more acute than previously estimated. This hits high-poverty schools the hardest, the study's authors say. 

Scientists have figured out is that learning to read is not natural—it’s not like learning to talk or walk, in which all you need is immersion or interaction with your environment. Without structured, evidence-based reading instruction with phonics at its core, many students will struggle with reading and spelling. If teachers are not taught the science of reading (and if schools and districts do not employ evidence-based curricula), many students are deprived of explicit and systematic instruction in how written language works.

It’s time to bag the sandwich method of delivering bad news. You know, the technique where you say something nice, then drop in the criticism, and the end with something nice. It’s not like the person won’t notice that the center of the sandwich is terrible; the method is really designed to make it easier on the giver.

“When you communicate something to somebody, it’s irreversible and irretrievable,”says Joy Baldridge, author of The Joy in Business: Innovative Ideas to Find Positivity (and Profit) In Your Daily Work Life. “You can’t take it back, and it can be difficult to know what words to say in order to approach somebody and give them feedback. Whether you need to say they did or didn’t do or something, it feels uncomfortable.”

The old methods of feedback can have a ripple effect with your team, resulting in people calling in sick, getting upset, or even quitting. But conflict avoidance isn’t the answer. Instead, Baldridge suggests using her “velvet hammer” method, which is soft like velvet but packs a punch.

After two years of hard work and training, we were thrilled to see our most recent state score results: our 75 third-graders in special education ranked number one in the state of South Carolina, while our fourth- and fifth-graders in special education were all in the top 5% in the state. Here’s the work we did to achieve those results.

An ambitious, important new piece of analysis by scholars Eric Hanushek (an economist) and Paul Peterson (a political scientist), plus Laura Talpey and Ludger Woessmann, concludes that “gaps in achievement between the haves and have-nots are mostly unchanged over the past half century” and that “steady gains in student achievement at the eighth grade level have not translated into gains at the end of high school.”

Rates of mental-health incidents among teens and young adults have arced upward over the last decade while they’ve remained relatively unchanged for older adults, a new analysis finds.
The findings confirm what many educators say has long been evident in their classrooms. Teachers and principals must be more versed in the warning signs of serious issues like mood disorders, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts so that they can better serve students in crisis, they say.

Learnability (the desire and capability to develop in-demand skills) makes you indispensable
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. — Alvin Toffler
When was the last time you read something from an unusual perspective in your industry?
When have you taken the time to wrap your head around a new industry?
Change is constant in today’s workplace.
To keep up, you need to keep learning. Learning drives adaptability.

Researchers hope some new findings may eventually generate guidelines to help teachers optimally design classrooms.

 

”Maps, number lines, shapes, artwork and other materials tend to cover elementary classroom walls. However, too much of a good thing may end up disrupting attention and learning in young children, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Psychology researchers Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin and Howard Seltman of Carnegie Mellon University looked at whether classroom displays affected children’s ability to maintain focus during instruction and to learn the lesson content. They found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed.

“Young children spend a lot of time — usually the whole day — in the same classroom, and we have shown that a classroom’s visual environment can affect how much children learn,” said Fisher, lead author and associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.”

  Evidence In Brief just shared a new study that found student self-assessment to be an effective strategy to support student learning. The study itself is titled Effects of self-assessment on…

New research out of Los Angeles finds that teachers in their first few years end up in classrooms with more struggling students and in schools with fewer experienced colleagues, making their introduction to teaching all the more challenging.

The differences between the environments of new teachers and their more experienced teachers are generally small, but they appear to matter for both students and teachers. The tougher assignments hurt new teachers’ performance and their career trajectories — and mean that students who are the furthest behind are being taught by the least experienced educators.

The more I thought about how to be intentional with reflection and the more I reflected on the reflecting students were sharing, I was able to codify a practice that we implemented across classrooms in my old school starting with our 6th graders and ending with our seniors.

By scaffolding the process with a series of questions that really helped students consider their own learning, they could start thinking about more than what they liked or didn't like and more about what they knew and could do. They began to articulate learning in a clear and methodical way. And the more we did it, the better I could give them feedback and address the system of how we reflect.

Since the late 2000s, the mental health of teens and young adults in the U.S. has declined dramatically. That’s the broad conclusion of a new study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

Between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression among kids ages 14 to 17 increased by more than 60%, the study found. The increases were nearly as steep among those ages 12 to 13 (47%) and 18 to 21 (46%), and rates roughly doubled among those ages 20 to 21. In 2017—the latest year for which federal data are available—more than one in eight Americans ages 12 to 25 experienced a major depressive episode, the study found.

Putting students in the driver’s seat includes having them assess their writing, which also eases the teacher’s grading load.

Students at Bethel Middle were recently put through the paces of an hour-long social media etiquette and internet safety training.

The heavy subject matter was uncomfortable at times, including cautionary tales of nude photos or stories of teen suicide over social media harassment. Students shifted awkwardly in their seats and tried to avoid eye contact.

But in the end, it was a relief to hear frank and honest talk about the omnipresent force that rules teen’s social lives.

Co-teaching, in which a special educator and a general educator share the responsibility of instructing and assessing students, has long been a standby in inclusion classrooms, which encompass both general education students and those with disabilities.
When done well, co-teaching should enable students with disabilities to receive the general education curriculum and special services that they need in the same setting, said Sara Cook, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who researches special education.