Schools Worth Visiting

The Getting Smart team visits hundreds of schools each year and is grateful for the opportunity to see high-quality teaching and learning in action. This series features stories of schools that share best practices, lessons learned and next-gen teaching practices that support high-quality, personalized, project-based learning for all students.

Personalized Learning

Success at New Tech Academy

Elizabeth Bryan, Principal of New Tech Academy @ Ft. Wayne, shares a passion for great education with the leaders of the Ft. Wayne business community. “It was the local business community that became very aggressive when looking for ways to better educate our students,” said Elizabeth.

Personalized Learning

A School for All Reasons

The data is in. And the results are excellent! Once again, New Tech Network’s annual data report demonstrates that schools can enable all students to achieve college and career readiness regardless of socio-economic status, geographic location or ethnic background.

Leadership

Developing Life-long Leaders in the Elementary Grades

The NGLC Launch Grant has positioned Ingenuity Prep in the right position to grow and scale success. It seems rare to see new schools starting with preschoolers with the intention to bring them through their entire PreK-12 career. It may be rare, but it feels very logical.

Personalized Learning

Joy & Rigor: The And-Both Solution

Is it possible to create a high-engagement school where students do interesting and relevant work and meet high expectations? Erin Mote and Eric Tucker are a smart duo developing Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School (LAB) and they think the answer is decidedly YES.

Personalized Learning

A Maker Makeover for Public Education

MakerSpace team members are "die hard advocates of public education" and are completely immersed in a revolution from within. The MakerSpace ideas started flowing about four years ago when six 10th grade teachers were awarded an ARRA grant to create an integrated project-based block for 100 students.

EdTech

Next-Gen Schools Thriving in Detroit

Getting Smart isn’t new to sharing good news from Detroit, but recently, as part of a joint trip with Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) and CEE-Trust, a couple members of our team were lucky enough to return to the city.

Personalized Learning

Leading for Powerful Learning: Observations & Pictures from Danville

The pictures attached tell a great story! The first three are from Bate where students created furniture from cardboard. Talk about something that required thinking ...WOW! What's also really cool about this is that the kids have included their original design sketches and plans with the furniture, so you can really see their thinking processes.

Leadership

Summit Denali: 12 Components of an NGLC Winning Design

The innovative Bay Area school network is a pioneer in blended and competency based learning. CEO Diane Tavenner launched Summit Prep, the organization's flagship school, a decade ago. With each new school, Diane and her talented team continue to innovate on the secondary school model. Here's the ingredients of the current blend: