As my tutoring sessions with Jaylen happily show, how educators view the subject they teach can have a wonderful effect on how their students feel and think about that subject, even one as superficially unwelcoming as math! I’ve volunteered at an elementary/middle school as a tutor for the last eight years, although last school-year was […]
Instruction & Curriculum
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
The Algorithm Can Wait: Why preschool might be our most radical institution
Walk into any preschool classroom today and you won’t find what dominates most conversations about the future of education: algorithms, dashboards, learning platforms, AI tutors, or adaptive assessments. Instead, you’ll find something far more radical. A child cracking open a walnut they found on the playground. Two friends negotiating whose turn it is with the […]
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Drowning in the Glow: How the Right A.I. Could Save the Teachers Keeping Schools Alive
We’re living through a technological revolution, but classrooms don’t feel futuristic. They feel tired. Over-lit. Understaffed. Stretched thin across expectations that multiply every year while support shrinks in the rearview. Teachers don’t need more think pieces about innovation.We need oxygen. Every fall, we greet students with hope and a stack of new logins. iReady. Zearn. […]
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The Hidden Toll of ICT: When Co-Teaching Isn’t Really Co-Teaching — And Students Pay the Price
By the third period on a Tuesday morning, I had already received six emails about IEP service logs, two messages from classroom teachers asking how to “modify something quickly” for an upcoming lesson, and a report about a student who had gone more than a week without receiving his mandated small-group support. Integrated Co-Teaching (ICT) […]
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Grace with Structure: A Smarter Way to Handle Late Work
“Hey, Mrs. K… I was looking at my grade, and I noticed I have some zeroes. Can I get some bonus points for work?”Who hasn’t had this conversation? I used to get so annoyed keeping track of late work and constantly being put in the “bad guy” role—even though they were the ones who didn’t […]
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Relational Data: What We Should Be Tracking Besides Grades and Referrals
Leigh Reagan Alley, Ed.D. is Coordinator of Teacher Education at the University of Maine at Augusta, where she designed the first dedicated Master of Arts in Teaching Whole Child Education. She is the former executive director of Maine ASCD, an architect of the xSELeratED Schools Framework, an Advisor for the Institute for Humane Education, and […]
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Stifled By Standards? Get Creative!
In a standards-based learning environment, it may seem that exploratory, open-ended learning doesn’t fit. Standards are pre-determined pathways. They can feel rigid and narrow. In contrast, curiosity-driven learning naturally ventures into unpredictable territory. That’s the beauty of it. That unpredictable territory is where new ideas emerge, and creativity thrives. Back in 2006, Sir Ken Robinson […]
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AFT, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council sue U.S. Department of Education over termination of community school grants
The AFT and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC) filed a lawsuit ( Brighton Park Neighborhood Council et al. v. McMahon et al.) on December 29 challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to terminate millions of dollars in funding for Full-Service Community Schools that offer wrap-around services for some of the country’s most impoverished and rural communities. […]