To develop student-centered classrooms, Laura and Evan Robb believe schools and districts must build teams to both lead and empower teachers as they adapt to new demands. The Robbs outline strategies to support the shift, from redefining roles to fostering teacher agency.
Family Engagement / The Unstoppable ML Teacher
by Valentina Gonzalez · Published 09/02/2019 · Last modified 11/24/2019
Middle graders, especially ELs and newcomers eager to blend in, may not want to involve families at school. Yet partnering with families leads to greater achievement, lower absenteeism, and better behavior. EL expert Valentina Gonzalez shares her favorite strategies.
Just how do you build a STEM lesson around a real-world challenge? While there’s no single answer to that question, STEM expert Anne Jolly shares a STEM lesson she and a math colleague designed around a local environmental challenge. Helpful tips and resources included!
From the classroom to the whole school, Dr. Myles Cooley’s revised Practical Guide for Mental Health and Learning Disorders will help new and veteran educators understand specific student challenges and support kids affected by them, writes educator Elizabeth OBrien.
Literacy Strong All Year Long: Powerful Lessons for Grades 3-5 is crammed with so many literacy ideas and resources that you will want to try each one, writes teacher educator Linda Biondi. She predicts that it will be a “go to” book for the rest of your teaching life.
Future of History / Word Choice
by Lauren S. Brown · Published 08/14/2019 · Last modified 06/24/2020
American Indian or Native American? Latina or Latino or Latinx? African American or Black? History teacher Lauren Brown shares activities and resources she uses to help students understand the background and history of such naming choices and why it’s important to teach.
If we want our students to be readers, we have to let them read, writes principal and reading teacher Rita Platt. We have to give them time for the kind of reading that is guided by curiosity, joy, and love of story. Platt shows exactly how her school made this work.
Close Reading the Media / News Literacy
by Frank Baker · Published 08/07/2019 · Last modified 11/20/2019
With the 2020 election underway fake news and deceptive social media posts and imagery are expected to become commonplace. Media literacy expert Frank Baker offers a lesson to help our always-connected students acquire some of the “healthy skepticism” skills they’ll need.
New educators – particularly those in the middle grades – find themselves at the edge of the high dive, filled with enthusiasm and uncertainty. As they leap into the profession, Curtis Chandler shows how we can seek opportunities to provide support and collaboration.
The newly revised and resource-rich PBIS Team Handbook does an excellent job of breaking down what PBIS is, what it means to schools, and how effective it can be when implemented properly. The authors make a convincing case for Tier 1 implementation, says Christina Williams.
