Key points:

• For tutoring to work, students have to show up
• Finding a curriculum designed for tutoring is important to program success

As educators continue to work to accelerate learning for students following the pandemic, many are turning to tutoring to provide support. Tutoring is one of the most effective math interventions available for students, but the quality of tutoring varies widely.

Here are six keys to ensuring your students are receiving the best tutoring available.

1. Get students to show up.

The primary challenge with tutoring is attendance. Just getting students to show up to sessions is difficult. The most reliable way to ensure students who need extra support show up for tutoring is to offer it during the school day.

Think of it like inpatient versus outpatient medical therapy. Outpatient therapy is hit or miss based on the motivation of the patient. Even with the most engaging material and a charismatic tutor, how many students really want to be in a tutoring session?

There are different ways to get students into tutoring while they are at school. Perhaps they go to an intervention classroom and a teacher or another educator (or even a parent) is there simply to facilitate as students meet with tutors online, either in small groups or individually. Schools could also have students visit with tutors immediately before or after school.

Ensuring that children are developmentally ready for school on day one of kindergarten is critical. The better prepared children are for kindergarten, the more successful they are likely to be in their school experience.

Kindergarten readiness involves more than just a child’s age and academic abilities. It also encompasses social-emotional competencies, including whether children can follow directions, regulate their own emotions, and get along well with others.

As a former principal for a large urban school district who has opened an early childhood center with more than 400 children, I have extensive experience in preparing children for kindergarten and working with parents to do the same. Here are three key steps that school systems can take to ensure that all children have the solid foundation they need to start kindergarten ready to learn with their peers.

1. Implement a prekindergarten curriculum that addresses all of the developmental domains required for success

Adopting a Pre-K curriculum that encompasses all the domains of early learning is crucial for getting children ready for kindergarten.

My second-grade teacher made me love Ramona Quimby.
I’ve never forgotten my multiplication tables, thanks to my fourth-grade teacher.
My fifth-grade teacher taught me to confidently project my voice (much to my husband’s chagrin when I’m on video calls!).
My sixth-grade teacher inspired me to be a fast typist and gave me independent reading time so I could accomplish my goal of finishing Gone with the Wind.
My high school Algebra II teacher made me believe I was, in fact, really good at math.
My English literature teacher inspired me to write a book.
My Humanities teachers inspired me to travel the world.

Just seven days a year to celebrate teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week is hardly sufficient.  After all, they celebrate our students’ wins and teach them lessons through their mistakes every day of the school year. Let’s reflect on 10 reasons we love teachers…

1. A Lifetime of Influence

Growing up in a small town and attending a school with approximately 25 classmates from pre-school through eighth grade, I had a couple of teachers twice and interacted with all the teachers in the building regularly. Whatever the length of interaction, it can go a long way for students, like artist Dean Thompson. Dean shared his teacher’s valuable guidance: “Robert Dominiak was an art teacher who was a mentor to me. He taught me how to look at things with a different perspective, and he helped me put together a portfolio when I applied to the Art Institute of Chicago. With his help I received my degree from there, and I’m still in contact with him to this day.”

Educators frequently turn to their colleagues and peers for best practices, inspiration, and new approaches to stubborn problems. After all, who better to offer insight than others who have experienced the same challenges?

Be it making tricky IT decisions, trying to engage underrepresented students in STEM learning, or how to perfect grading policies and practices, all educators can use some help from their colleagues.

Here are some tips, lessons learned, and inspiring wisdom from educators across the nation.

1. Three guiding principles can serve as the driving force and framework behind every IT decision: equity, efficiency, and excellence. In my role as Chief Technology Officer at one of the nation’s largest school districts, Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS), being accountable and ensuring we are making prudent financial decisions is a top priority for my team. Striking a balance between innovation and sustainability is a challenge most school districts are facing. At HCPS, we have adopted three guiding principles that serve as the driving force and framework behind every IT decision—equity, efficiency, and excellence.

The world is changing in remarkable ways, and the pace of this change is only accelerating. Thanks to unprecedented advances in technology, society continues to evolve at an exponential rate. The rapidity of change has led to dramatic shifts in all aspects of life, from how people communicate and collaborate to how they solve problems, create projects, and consume content (Sheninger, 2019).

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us, and it is drastically different from the previous three, with the hallmark of this period being the momentous evolution of digital technology. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is defined as “a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.” Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things, and biotechnology characterize this revolution.

This high-speed evolution of technology has drastically changed the way we communicate. Social media platforms have revolutionized how people interact, allowing them to connect with each other no matter where they are in the world. People can now instantly share their thoughts and experiences with people worldwide, creating a truly global community. This phenomenon has enabled people to collaborate on a global scale, working together to solve complex problems and create far-reaching projects that would have been impossible in the past.

This evolution of technology has also shifted the way people consume content. Gone are the days when people had to wait for the news to be broadcast or printed in the newspaper; now, the news is delivered instantly to our fingertips. Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime have enabled people to access vast content libraries anytime and anywhere. People can now customize their viewing experiences, watching content at their own pace and on their own schedule.

What do you do when you don’t know what to do? Think about it for a minute. You are facing a new challenge – whether it be learning to fix a burst pipe, tackling a new hobby, or just struggling to figure something out. What do you do?

I’ve asked hundreds of people this question and the first thing they often say is, “I Google it.” (Then I joke about the times before the internet when we needed to spend time looking through the Encyclopedia Britannica to find our answers.)

In education, a big challenge is how to teach students what do to do when they don’t know what to do. What systems are needed for productive struggle to take place in classrooms and schools? How do students learn to struggle so they can eventually problem solve for themselves?

Research in neuroscience tells us our brains grow new neuro-pathways when we are at the edge of challenge. It’s often called “The Goldilocks Principle” of learning – it can’t be too easy or too hard, it needs to be just right. 

The term “productive struggle” is used a lot in education, but what does that really mean for teaching and learning?

Understanding productive struggle

James Nottingham has a wonderful visual on his website called the “learning pit.” It depicts what happens to our brains when we are learning something new and are struggling, and then how we work our way through the struggle to come out on the other side of the learning. 

Unfortunately, many students (and teachers) find themselves stuck in the pit of struggle. To get out of the pit, it’s important to intentionally build resiliency skills.

The vast majority of educators said they are concerned about their students’ engagement in classroom-based learning, according to the latest installment of the national Gradient Learning Poll, which examines the growing student engagement crisis in classrooms across the country.

The findings are bolstered by Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up research, in which 50 percent of student respondents claimed they are not engaged in what they are learning in school for the majority of their classes.

Teachers highlighted a number of reasons students are struggling to stay engaged in the classroom this year—from a lack of intrinsic motivation on core subjects to the long-term impacts of pandemic-driven disruptions.

The results also showed that educators are determined to find solutions to this widespread concern. Teachers believe that addressing student disengagement is a top priority: the survey found that nearly every teacher (95%) reported it should be a priority for every school to support teachers with the tools and strategies needed to increase and sustain student engagement.

Teachers are constantly challenged with improving student engagement, something they know directly impacts student learning outcomes. A USC Rossier School of Education Center EDGE survey this year queried 1,400 teachers about the engagement strategies they use most often in their classrooms and those they think will hold most value next year. For 2022, the most common response was building relationships with students. In 2023, educators anticipate establishing high expectations for students. 

The prioritization of these two practices alongside each other begs the question of how teachers can balance these two strategies — one of which relies on kindness and compassion, and the other which lends itself to more serious goal-setting and intense conversations. The key is approaching high expectations as an integral part of building strong relationships.

Raising the bar for learners 

When we approach setting high expectations as a positive and nurturing experience, we can integrate these two strategies to support students more effectively in meeting their goals. Showing your students that you see them — that you understand their areas of growth, you care about their goals, and you know they can achieve them — builds trust and demonstrates your commitment to helping them progress.

Setting high expectations is often (and should be) an individualized process. The conversation when setting student goals is a powerful opportunity to convey how much you care. You can demonstrate your investment in them by asking them about their personal goals. 

Compelling prompts can help students think about their goals and demonstrate that you care about them as students in your class and as human beings. For younger students, this could look like even introducing the concept of goal setting, and asking them what kind of book they’d hope to be able to read by the end of the year. For older students, that may look more expansive, with prompts including: 

• What change do you want to see in your community? How would you like to be a part of creating that change? 
• How do you envision your life at 25? What about when you’re 40? 
• What impact do you want to have on your family, friends, and community?

These types of prompts allow you to connect with your students meaningfully. Once they have a clear vision for their future selves (whether that be long-term life goals, or reading levels they hope to reach by the next assessment), you can help them identify what it will take to achieve these goals, like collaboratively backward-mapping the steps required to reach them. You can start at a high-level: What type of experiences and education will they need? What courses will they need to take? From there, you can start asking: what skills and knowledge will they need to master in your class in order to be set up for success at the next stage. Finally, you can ask them to set in-class goals for their performance to put them on a path to realizing their long-term aspirations. 

In early childhood education, most parents are aware of the importance of teaching key academic skills such as early literacy and mathematics skills. Recent research also suggests that problem-solving is an equally important skillset to teach young children. While the design thinking model is implemented in K-12 education, it is relatively new in early childhood education but highly effective.

What is design thinking? Design thinking is an iterative process used to solve real-world problems. At its core, design thinking has several steps: Identify a problem, design potential solutions, test the solutions, redesign as needed and share the solutions with a wider audience. Design thinking is used regularly in many fields (engineering, business, IT, health care, etc.) and has recently gained wide popularity due to the effectiveness of this problem-solving approach.

Why is design thinking important? As pediatrician Laura Jana notes in her book, The Toddler Brain, 65 percent of today’s children will face unknown careers and problems when they are adults. Children will always need to solve problems throughout their lives and the difficulties they face will grow in complexity as they mature. Design thinking is a lifelong skill that children may use to tackle complex problems throughout their lives, so it is a valuable skill to learn early in life, particularly within the first five years. According to Dr. Jana, there is a direct connection between early skills and workforce development. The 21st century competencies valued by today’s business world are one and the same with the core social, emotional, language and executive function skills that can be fostered in early childhood. Forbes explains that design thinking is a way for businesses to increase productivity, foster innovation and eliminate wasted time and money on guesswork-based development by empowering front-line workers to collaborate on diverse teams and explore new ideas. Design thinking helps children build a resilience-focused mindset and teaches many of the 21^st century skills, such as the four C’s: creativity, collaboration, compassion and confidence. These are skills children can use to address increasingly complex problems throughout their lives.

In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• 5 of the biggest education trends in 2023
• 5 ways our district streamlines edtech ecosystems
• Using Federal Grants to Hire Personnel: Advice for Districts

With the start of a new year and education conference season just beginning, educators and industry leaders are discovering the biggest education trends for 2023. The past few years have seen a significant transformation for education and edtech, and 2023 will continue to bring new ideas and emerging technologies.

This year, schools are placing a focus on supporting students’ individual needs and recovering pandemic learning loss. Because of this, we will see an increase in edtech to support learning, better accommodations for students, a focus on wellbeing, and new approaches to teaching that engage with students’ interests and future careers.

Here are five of the biggest education trends for 2023:

1. Social and Emotional Wellbeing

The pandemic prompted the need for a stronger focus on supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of students and teachers alike. As we rebound from the academic, emotional, and community challenges that arose during the pandemic, schools will need to ensure they’re offering the support and resources that students and teachers need.

Children and teens are currently experiencing higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts than before the pandemic, and the academic and emotional pressures that come with recovering pandemic learning loss continue to affect student wellbeing. In 2023, we will see schools working to improve mental health programs, provide new academic support systems and resources for students, and implement technologies and programs focused on social-emotional learning and student wellbeing.

Teachers are struggling too: The demands of teaching have led to high rates of teacher stress and anxiety, and K-12 educators have the highest burnout rate of any profession in the U.S. To support teacher wellbeing and retain valuable, talented educators, schools will embrace new ways improve teachers’ work-life balance and wellbeing, including implementing new edtech tools, offering mental health resources, or even redesigning school spaces to better support educators in the classroom.

2. Personalized and Self-Led Learning

Personalized learning is by no means a new education trend, but learning models focused on an individualized or personalized approach will continue to evolve in 2023. Learning gaps widened during the pandemic, and as students continue to work to recover this learning, they will benefit from individualized learning opportunities. Schools will continue to provide struggling students with tutoring services, while advanced students will find new learning opportunities through online courses or internships outside the classroom.

Self-led, active learning will also see a rise as teachers enable students to work at their own pace and make more decisions about their learning––from what types of assignments they complete to how they want to work in the classroom. We expect this to motivate schools to create more flexible, active learning spaces that can be modified to fit a wide variety of learning needs. This will include the addition of modular pieces, tech-enabled learning areas, and a variety of different seating options to ensure student comfort and encourage movement.

3. Game-Based Learning and Esports

Ninety-seven percent of adolescents play at least one hour of video games per day, so bringing games into the classroom is intuitive for students. Gamified learning motivates students to engage with educational content in a different way, keeping students excited about their progress and helping to synthesize learning. Bringing games into the classroom also gives students an opportunity to explore social-emotional principles, increasing their adaptability and communication and improving their ability to work with others.

In the past several years, schools have also seen an increase in esports team participation. In 2023, we expect this trend to continue, with schools investing more resources into building esports teams and creating comprehensive esports spaces where teams can gather, practice, and compete. Evidence shows that academic esports benefits students’ overall academic performance and social emotional learning. Plus, students who are successful in esports competitions earn significant opportunities for college and scholarships.

4. Microlearning and Nano-Learning

“Microlearning,” or “nano-learning,” is a learning approach that has been successfully used in corporate training for a while, but it’s expected to really emerge in K-12 education in 2023. This bite-sized learning technique targets small chunks of learning content, which are presented to students in short, easily digestible tutorials or mini-lessons. Lessons focus on repetition of the same concepts spaced out over time, with the goal of increased retention.

The rapid growth of short-form video content like TikTok and Instagram Reels has illuminated the possibilities of using microlearning to engage students. Students are already turning to TikTok for homework help, which can expose them to new ideas and topics, but also opens students up to potential misinformation. Microlearning emerging as a K-12 education trend will enable teachers to better curate the bite-sized content students seek out for their learning, providing them with engaging content that breaks down complex topics into less intimidating chunks.

5. AR, VR, and AI

Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) are all projected to become more prevalent as educational tools and resources in 2023. These technologies will be working behind the scenes in some of the ways they will benefit education, such as AI being used to target students’ learning through edtech tools and platforms.

In other applications, AR, VR, and AI will be used directly by students. Students will participate in VR and AR experiences, gaining access to more immersive learning experiences through these tools. With easy-to-use AI art generators becoming more popular, they may use AI in creative endeavors. There are also AI programs available to help students find quality resources for research assignments, help them refine their writing, explain complex math problems, and more. When students graduate, they will encounter and use these technologies in college and their careers, so early exposure will prove beneficial.

We anticipate that this year will be exciting as new education trends transform learning in classrooms far and wide.

Related:
37 predictions about edtech’s impact in 2023

In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• 8 predictions about literacy learning in 2023
• 6 tips for tech-enabled instruction in the early literacy classroom
• How Active Learning Environments Help Students Engage in Content

In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• 5 ways virtual tutoring reinforces our after-school program
• 5 ways video improves school-home communication
• Virtual Reality Gets Real

Each year, we share our 10 most-read stories. Not surprisingly, many of this year’s Top 10 focused on innovative ways to engage students, digital resources, and online and hybrid learning strategies related to post-pandemic teaching. This year’s number 1 most-read story focuses on what’s missing from learning.

This special edition of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan, comes live from one of the nation’s largest edtech conferences. At least 15,000 educators and edtech enthusiasts are gathered in New Orleans for ISTELive 22.

ISTE CEO Richard Culatta notes that we’ve “beaten the joy out of learning” in recent years. Now is the time to inspire educators and learners. Along with inspiration comes the idea of injecting civility, kindness, and understanding into education.

“It’s OK to disagree…you need to disagree; it’s how you learn, but we have to do it in a way that’s kind and civil, and you have to model that for kids,” Culatta said.

In this special edition:

• Rethinking teaching and learning
• Modeling technology adoption
• Game-changing creative technologies
• Real-world SEL implementation
• How to honor the hero educators in your world

Each year, we share our 10 most-read stories. Not surprisingly, many of this year’s Top 10 focused on innovative ways to engage students, digital resources, and online and hybrid learning strategies related to post-pandemic teaching. This year’s 9th most-read story focuses on instructional strategies for better student engagement.

Student engagement has long been an indicator of growth and progress, and in the wake of the pandemic, it will prove essential for academic and social-emotional recovery.

Recent insights pulled from a survey of more than 2,000 identifies instructional practices that enable student engagement, no matter the learning environment.

Using qualitative and quantitative survey data, the following five instructional practices were ranked highest for driving engagement.

1: Teacher-student relationships

With an average score of 4.6 out of 5.0, forming teacher-student relationships was highlighted as the top instructional practice for driving engagement across all grade levels and subjects. In fact, one-third of all teachers identified it as the single most effective practice for driving engagement overall—this is four times more than any other practice.

Strong relationships are foundational to creating supportive learning environments where students feel safe enough to contribute. Several survey respondents emphasized that trust built on stable relationships is the cornerstone for both teacher and student success.

Previous research indicates that students who report positive teacher-student relationships were more likely to report high engagement with their learning, and strong teacher-student relationships have been associated with higher academic performance, feelings of competence, greater attendance rates, and pursuit of secondary education.

Related:
4 blended learning strategies for better student engagement
Creating student engagement through the power of play

Tips for implementing this practice:

• Make an active effort to get to know your students, making time to inquire about their emotional and social wellbeing.
• Provide personal questionnaires, pay attention to the extracurriculars students participate in and their behavior with other students.
• Take a genuine interest in students’ lives and passions.

2: Relevant course content

Making course content relevant was marked as the second most important instructional practice for driving engagement across all teachers, with an average score of 4.37.

Knowing students’ backgrounds and interests is an essential piece of this. Bringing parts of their personal lives into the learning process is not only motivating, but also improves knowledge retention over time.

Tips for implementing this practice:

• Identify interests of a student, and then connect that to course content.
• Incorporate pop culture, social media, sports and extracurriculars into lessons.
• Provide opportunities for students to connect their learning to everyday life—when the coursework feels meaningful, they are more willing to invest in it.

3: Clear expectations

Communicating clear expectations came in as the third most important instructional practice for driving engagement, with an average score of 4.34 out of 5. This result was consistent across grade levels and subjects.

There is a strong body of evidence supporting the use of clear expectations in the classroom for driving student engagement. One study states that when teachers first take a proactive approach in forming authentic relationships and earning student trust, they can gain a better understanding of what motivates their students, create a learning environment where students are more receptive to these clear expectations, and increase levels of engagement and participation. 

Tips for implementing this practice:

• Let students know what is expected throughout the day or on certain assignments—setting this up at the beginning of the school year is crucial.
• Revisit expectations frequently, so that they aren’t forgotten.
• Communicate routines, relationships, and expectations prior to beginning instruction, so students have understanding and ownership of what will take place during the school year.

4: Hands-on learning

Practicing hands-on learning follows as the fourth most important instructional practice for driving student engagement, with an average score of 4.27 out of 5.

This was particularly true for educators in specialized subject areas, such as visual & performing arts and computer science & technology.

Additionally, while practicing hands-on learning was commonly identified as an effective practice across all grade levels for its impact on student engagement, this held especially true for elementary school teachers coming in as the second most highly rated practice for its effect on engagement.

Tips for implementing this practice:

• Provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge in a tangible manner.
• Use music, activities, and movement to engage students in the classroom.
• Bring physical items into the classroom that relate to the subject matter.

5: Linking information and student participation (tie)

Tied for fifth place are two instructional practices: linking new information to prior knowledge and facilitating student participation. Both practices received an average score of 4.18 out of 5.

Linking new information to prior knowledge is important for fostering engagement because it allows students to form deeper connections with the material they are learning. Previous literature showcases the importance of this practice—a cross-cultural qualitative study found that the more time teachers spent introducing new content, the more academically engaged students were in the classroom.

Tips for implementing this practice:

• Open discussions and lessons with imagery or topics that activate students’ prior knowledge of a concept.
• Use prior knowledge as a base for new information.
• Find out what students already know about a subject (and related subjects), and then create or modify materials as needed.

Last, but not least, survey respondents indicated the practice of facilitating student participation as having a large or very large effect on engagement. This was consistent across grade levels and most subjects, aside from technology and computer science, visual and performing arts, theology and electives, which ranked this practice lower.

Additional research has shown that encouraging students to contribute during class and participate in decision-making has been cited as a core characteristic in classrooms that foster foundational critical thinking skills.

Tips for implementing this practice:

• Verbally encourage and allow students to share thoughts, questions, answers and comments.
• Make sure students know that their contributions are meaningful, and the lesson isn’t complete without their participation.
• Participation doesn’t always mean speaking in front of the class—give students multiple options for participation.

Key takeaways

Each of the top practices involves actively engaging students in the learning process. For this to happen, teachers must build strong, trusting, and collaborative relationships with their students.

By applying these strategies in the classroom, educators can meet students where they are—driving outputs that address the whole child creatively, cognitively, and emotionally.

Some years ago, when I was still working as a teacher, I had a student come to me in a state of distress. Like many young people her age, she was having trouble fitting in. Everything from her hair to her clothes to her overall demeanor made her stand out, and as a result, some of her fellow students had taken to calling her a “weirdo.” I am not proud of everything that I’ve done in education, but I am proud of what I told her next. I told this student the truth.

I told her that she WAS weird – and that all of the best people are. I told her she was one of my favorite students because of what made her unique. I told her I would do everything I could to make the school safer for weirdos like her, and that in the outside world, all the great advancements came from people who didn’t fit in.

Every educator knows that weirdness is what makes our students grow. After all, curiosity, creativity, and critical thought don’t bloom in a stagnant mind. So instead of wringing our hands over the social ecosystem, let’s encourage our students to think weirder.

Here are just three benefits to letting students embrace their inner weirdness:

• Innovation: Innovation requires weirdness. All creativity is, by definition, different from everything else that’s out there. One method for promoting innovation in our own classrooms is by encouraging students to find alternative pathways to answering a question. For instance, once they know that 35+17=52, see how many other ways they can come up with the exact same sum (35+20-3, 35+10+7, etc.). Or, if you really want to shake things up, ask students to think of the best wrong answer to a question — the answer that is the most incorrect or which highlights a common misconception. This approach teaches students to seek out new perspectives and approach ideas with an outside-the-box mindset. 

Related:
The 3 pillars of meaningful learning
How to make project-based learning a reality

English language arts (ELA) standards identify a set of foundational skills students must master in their progression to becoming skilled readers. These skills include alphabet recognition, concepts of print, phonological awareness, phonics, high-frequency words, and fluency.

To effectively teach foundational skills within the classroom, educators need access to engaging materials that offer the right level of challenge for students and provide ease of usability. Unfortunately, only 7 percent of K-5 teachers use one or more high-quality ELA material for their classroom instruction due to common roadblocks like long adoption cycles and costs associated with the materials. But that statistic may soon change.

The pandemic left a lasting, negative impact on the American education system. K-5 student test scores plummeted in math and reading nationwide this year, erasing two decades of progress. Now, many teachers, schools, and districts want to reassess their foundational skills instruction.

To start, teachers should follow these five tips:

1. Consider a new curriculum

Certain red flags signal that it’s time for a new foundational skills curriculum to support students.

• One-letter-a-week alphabet instruction: Children with low alphabet knowledge benefit from faster alphabet introductions because it allows more time for repeated exposure and more opportunities to practice and reteach letters as needed. Letter knowledge should also include letter-sound correspondence.
• Phonetic awareness neglect: Reading success depends on phonemic awareness, including isolating, segmenting, and blending phonemes. Children as young as preschool age can (and should) engage in phonemic awareness activities. Students do not need to master phonological awareness tasks to begin work in phonemic awareness.
• Little to no spelling of decodable words: Spelling helps students with orthographic word mapping. Students who succeed with spelling early are also more likely to develop into stronger readers. Spelling should be linked to phonics skills being taught, and there should be increased opportunities for students to write words with their new phonics skills.
• No connected decodable texts: Decodable texts provide an excellent opportunity to apply new phonetic patterns. Reading books with most of the phonetic elements taught supports fluency skills as well.
• Lacking a scope or sequence or a spiraled review cycle: Teachers need an opportunity to place students at their instructional points of need and educate them in a systematic way. An effective scope and sequence will also include a review cycle, as students need many exposures to new concepts and skills to affirm mastery.

These red flags indicate a need to reconsider a reading program because beginning readers require a solid foundation on which to build vocabulary and comprehension.

Related:
K-12 staffing shortages threaten reading instruction–AI can help
How our reading platform changed our instruction

When we built a new 3-story high school building on our former baseball field, we knew that we wanted to incorporate spaces where students could learn and teachers could teach in a very collaborative manner.

So, along with our new classrooms, in most areas of our school there are now two hallways with resource classrooms running down the center. Those are our collaborative spaces, and they’re where we got to be creative in terms of planning and design.

We didn’t want to just order 200 of the same chairs and hope for the best, so we worked with MiEN to select furniture designs and other elements that would best define and complement our new collaborative spaces. Here are four other steps we took to achieve our vision:

1. Match the space with the learning content. I wanted each area to include furniture that would best fit the students’ needs as they came in to use those spaces. In our English literacy content space, for example, the collaborative learning spaces need more of a “library feel,” complete with sofa-type furniture and soft seating. The vision was for students to come in and have Socratic seminars and maybe discuss a passage. The collaborative spaces focused on math, on the other hand, are tech-friendly with high tables, soft seating stools and large interactive whiteboard monitors for students working in groups. Science spaces combined the two concepts and included soft seating plus semi-circle high-top tables where students could congregate to solve complex science problems.

Related:
How outdoor learning spaces lead to STEM engagement
How to create engaging active learning environments

AI has untapped potential in classrooms, from preschool through higher education. Digital assistants can transform how educators teach, giving them the freedom to teach from anywhere in the room.

When digital assistants are used in classrooms, the outcomes can be overwhelmingly beneficial.

Join eSchool News as a panel of experts shares the benefits of using AI digital assistants.

You’ll learn:

• What an AI digital assistant is
• How “technostress” is defined and how it can be reduced for teachers
• How teachers can efficiently control the apps and tools they are already using in classrooms
• How to bring simplicity into the classroom with artificial intelligence
• How edtech tools are working together to increase classroom productivity and support innovative teaching

Related:
AI in the Classroom – Supporting Innovative Teaching and Increased Productivity

More than half of the teachers in the US are seriously considering leaving the profession earlier than planned. A number of factors have led to this, including Covid-19 learning interruptions, lack of resources and support for teachers, and more.

Right now, teachers are also experiencing burnout at an all-time high. This has shown to impact our students’ learning and future success. In fact, both teacher burnout and constant turnover have serious negative consequences for students. Teachers who are highly dissatisfied with their job and have intentions of leaving can impact their effectiveness and disrupt students’ academic progress.

While the burden to improve teacher conditions lies with school districts, communities, and legislators, both teachers and students benefit when teachers intentionally reflect on and connect with the current that moves them to be a teacher. Every teacher has a reason that drives them to teach–whether it is connecting with learners, sharing content you feel passionate about, believing that every learner deserves a high-quality education, or something else. Every teacher has a “why,” and school districts, departments, and teachers can intentionally build in opportunities for teachers to reflect on their why and connect with colleagues who may share that “why.”

Creating Reflective Routines

The original reason you chose this profession is typically the guiding principle that forms your “why.” It might have been the influence of a great teacher you once had, a passion for a particular subject, your love of children, or something else entirely.

It’s easy for everyone’s “why” to become obscured amid the daily grind; however, building in purposeful routines that allow teachers to reflect on and connect with their “why” can positively impact school culture, job satisfaction, and clarity of purpose. As this school year gets underway, administrators, department heads, and teachers can keep the “why” in front of them by intentionally including collaborative conversations and reflective activities into staff meetings, common online landing spots, and staff learning environments.