Difference Making

SEL & Mindset

4 Ways to Boost Service Learning in Schools

By: Wayne D’Orio. Two veteran New York state educators offer advice on how to organize community service programs that best benefit students, are relatively easy to manage, and simplify reporting needed for graduation and college applications.

SEL & Mindset

Helping Students Develop Discernment, Agency, and Empathy

By: Sherre Vernon, Shelli Kurth and Joe Acker. The Thrive Guarantee is our way of promising to the students we serve that we will help them develop discernment, agency, and empathy. Here, we explore what that promise means, and how we go about fulfilling it.

Leadership

Focusing on Literacy for 21st-Century Skill Building

By: Dr. Joseph C. Barrow, Jr. In 2015, Georgia’s Department of Education replaced end-of-year assessments with a new test to incorporate more rigorous writing and literacy standards. Here's how our district strategically addressed this challenge.

Leadership

Smart Review | The Flexible ELA Classroom

Amber Chandler's new book can inform a range of disciplines, serve the needs of public or private schools, and help anyone who deals in discipline-specific vocabulary, reading, presentations or projects.

EdTech

Review: JFF’s Curricular Opportunities in the Digital Age

“Historically, most classrooms have been “curriculum centered” rather than “student centered.” David Rose, a Harvard developmental neuropsychologist, and Jenna Gravel, a doctoral student, open their recent paper Curricular Opportunities in the Digital Age. If you’ve been working with adpative technologies, you won’t find any new information here. If you teach in a traditional environment, this would be a good paper to discuss in a professional development session, but pair it with The Rise of Blended Learning.

Personalized Learning

Differentiated Instruction

Lisa Nielsen offers an alternative to differentiated instruction: great idea, hard to practice–at least the way most schools and classrooms are organized.