If getting feedback from students is an effective practice, why not ask for feedback from our teaching partners? Language specialist and co-teacher Tan Huynh describes formal and informal co-reflecting, outlines useful topics, and provides several co-reflection protocols.
How do we give students the key to success in school? In every aspect of assessment, teachers engage and empower them by offering opportunities for student voice, choice, self-assessment and self-reporting, writes ASCD bestselling author and school leader Myron Dueck.
Michelle Russell typically has her classes do an end of the year survey. 2020-21 was unique and she knew her survey needed to be different, too. After sharing some of her students’ feelings and insights, Russell highlights lessons she’s learned and actions she’ll take.
Watching her teenager struggle through a day of virtual learning, teacher Dina Strasser is trying to not lose what we’ve learned about supporting kids and parents through the pandemic challenges, retaining the patience and concern so needed to buoy our school communities.
Class Apps / Measuring Engagement
by Curtis Chandler · Published 05/11/2021 · Last modified 06/12/2024
Education stakeholders agree that student engagement is essential. The challenge arises when we’re asked to define and measure it. Curtis Chandler shares a number of free methods and tools educators can use to measure three types: behavioral, emotional, and cognitive.
Amid all the other challenges of pandemic education, principal Rita Platt has noticed an uptick in communication breakdowns between teachers and parents this year. Platt relates several stories that prompted her to share some parent/teacher do’s and don’ts with staff.
Cultural Literacy / Kids on the Cusp
by Mary Tarashuk · Published 05/09/2021 · Last modified 05/10/2021
Back in her beloved Room 4T after eight months of virtual teaching, Mary Tarashuk considers how The Jetsons cartoon show influenced her nine-year old self decades ago – and what she needs to teach her mostly white, suburban 4th graders about life in the real future.
In “Activate: Deeper Learning Through Movement, Talk, and Flexible Classrooms” Katherine Mills Hernandez shows how we can be strategic and novel in our use of movement to support student learning. Elisa Waingort says the book is an important contribution to teacher PD.
After a year of teaching to blank Zoom squares, Lauren Brown reflects on pre-pandemic days and the rich, face-to-face experiences she always had with kids. Will her profound sense of loss change in May, with all her students back in physical class? Will school feel like spring? September?
Reflective and restorative practices are not new, writes middle school administrator Sara Johnson, but the pandemic has created an even greater need to view discipline as a tool to guide and support the social-emotional learning of tweens and teens. Here’s how Sara does it.
