Being a school principal often feels like walking a tightrope, balancing various stakeholders’ diverse and sometimes conflicting expectations. District leaders envision well-run schools hitting academic targets, fostering positive learning environments, and keeping parents satisfied. Their focus is on systematic operations that free principals to lead instructional improvement and engage the wider community – a vision […]
Over the years, the call for school reform, closing achievement gaps, and raising overall achievement has grown increasingly urgent. Despite our best efforts, too many students still fail to meet academic standards. For persistently low-performing schools, the focus is on school turnaround – a fundamental change to the organization, context, and academic factors necessary to […]
Teach students what quality academic dialogue looks like and sounds like, then engage them in debriefing the discussion process as well as the other learning taking place. Students must know that how they interact is an integral part of the content of the conversation.
As we come to the end of another school year, I find myself reflecting on how education has changed in the past few years, which then takes me down the rabbit hole of reflecting on how education has changed over the course of my 30-year (I can’t believe it!) career as...
If we want students to become critical thinkers, independent learners, and engaged readers, we must provide them with specific strategies for navigating complex texts. By shifting our focus from assessment-driven reading to strategy-driven reading, we empower students to interact with texts in meaningful ways.
As educators, we are always looking for ways to engage our students and make learning mathematics both fun and effective. Games in the math classroom have long been a staple in elementary and middle school classrooms. The body of research continues to grow, suggesting that collaborative learning experiences can be even more powerful than traditional and competitive games.
