Fresh teaching ideas engulf math teachers each fall. Which strategies take priority as we seek to help students have the best year ever? Teacher and coach Mona Iehl recommends three: build classroom community, review and augment resources, and select engaging lesson formats.
Stephanie Filio’s Responding to Student Trauma: A Toolkit for Schools in Times of Crisis provides a well-developed framework for school personnel to handle four sources of trauma. AP Virginia Hornberger notes it is a good starting point to develop a crisis plan of action.
Language specialist Tan Huynh offers a framework called the 3 C’s of Equity – Community, Curriculum and Culture – to guide schools on the journey to provide an equitable learning experience for their multilingual learners. To start, avoid deficit-based models that segregate.
Math teacher Michelle Russell is busy implementing her summer plans for the first days of school, matching activities to 5 goals she wants to accomplish – build community, puts kids at ease, introduce procedures, do a little math, and have fun. Discover what’s worked so far!
Providing consistent opportunities for students to learn about and practice social emotional skills in middle school advisory can aid in their behavioral and academic growth. Teacher Kasey Short suggests 14 read-aloud picture books with questions that can support that growth.
Engaging with What’s Your Leadership Story? by Gretchen Oltman and Vicki Bautista will help leaders – especially newer ones – articulate their purpose and bring their whole selves to school each day. School leader Sarah Cooper appreciates the book’s practical honesty.
When DeAnna Miller became assistant principal in 2019, she could never have anticipated the challenges pandemic schooling would bring. Looking back now, she identifies her most important lesson learned: “Real leadership is recognizing that we must serve the people we lead.”
Rather than label just some kids talented, we need a new approach that serves all children, writes performance coach Lee Hancock. Among his strategies: embracing failure as progress, spending time in deep practice, and fostering in kids a love for their own special interests.
In Successful Online Learning with Gifted Students, author Vicki Phelps offers guidelines for getting started with online tools and engaging advanced learners in grades 5-8 using virtual and blended lessons. A winner that will reward his future students, writes Kevin Cordi.
Whether it’s our students or our colleagues, the mentor relationship is a win-win for mentor and mentee. As mentors, we can realize a unique personal fulfillment and grow as a listener, a coach, a friend, a leader. And one day, our mentees may decide to “pay it forward.”
