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Education DIVE
While a school's primary goal is to educate students, another priority is providing a safe environment. It's a responsibility enforced in federal, state and local laws, but ultimately, students can — and do — get hurt. And when they do, many blame the school or district. Getting scraped up during recess, for instance, isn't new. Neither is getting made fun of by a classmate. Some medical experts call falls and broken bones "inevitable," and some scholars cite teasing as an "important preparation for life."
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Education Week
The teacher activism movement has come full circle, with West Virginia teachers launching their second statewide strike in two years. Last year, the nine-day teacher strike in the Mountain State launched a wave of teacher protests across the country, which is still going on today. Teachers in Oakland, California, will be the latest group to head to the picket lines. But the flavor of the teacher strikes has changed. Unlike last year, when teachers across the country shared a similar narrative of crumbling classrooms and stagnant paychecks, the strike demands now are far-reaching.
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MiddleWeb (commentary)
Curtis Chandler, a contributor for MiddleWeb, writes: "I am notorious in my family for singing the wrong words to songs. I have four boys who love to have music playing in the house, featuring catchy tunes and lyrics I don't quite understand. I never let that stop me from singing along, though. When I can't tell what people are saying, I simply 'fill-in-the-blank,' or invent words and phrases that seem to make sense."
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Education DIVE
A system meant to reward teachers for improving student performance and taking on tough teaching assignments in struggling schools was at the center of the dispute that led to last week's teachers' strike against Denver Public Schools. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association, which was part of the initial design of ProComp, argued that it had become too complicated, that it was difficult to make the connection between actions and rewards, and that teachers have a hard time predicting their annual income.
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New PD Essentials Books from Adria Klein
- Colorful professional books featuring accessible formats and proven techniques accelerate the use of best practices.
- Small-Group Reading Instruction and other titles help you accommodate diverse learners and increase achievement.
- Train-the-trainer and other types of PD are available with the books and can be customized to meet district needs.
- FREE Sampler and more information
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Entrepreneur
Ethical leadership is crucial for the success of a business. Unethical leaders ultimately end up hurting the long term success of the business for their own personal gain or for shorter term results. But a recent study out of Baylor University demonstrates, counterintuitively, that when ethical leadership isn't handled properly, it can backfire and have surprisingly negative consequences too. The results of the study have important implications for the future of ethical leadership and good management, demonstrating that having good ethics policies isn't enough if consideration for worker psychology isn't properly implemented.
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By: Anne Rose (commentary)
 As a manager, how do you respond to behavior you don't approve of, whether it's because it violates company policy or company culture? Perhaps that behavior isn't terribly offensive but just a little annoying that you can almost ignore it. For example, one employee clocks in three minutes late without a compelling reason. That's not so bad, is it? Yes, it is that bad, because of human nature. The old adage, "give an inch, take a foot," applies. That three-minute tardiness, unaddressed, insidiously and chronically morphs into 10-minute tardiness, or 30-minute tardiness, or one hour.
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Leadership Freak
You're better at every aspect of leadership when you have a clear sense of personal identity. The path toward self-knowledge requires self-awareness, but 85 percent lack self-awareness.
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Dimensions Math® PK-5 provides a rigorous and engaging education based on Singapore math techniques.
Contact us for samples, professional development, and implementation.
Browse Dimensions Math® titles
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Inc.
The challenge of figuring out how to succeed isn't new. What's different today, even disquieting, is the rising view that success comes in "ones" — as in one person accruing the spoils of success all to themselves, one and only one path or means to achieve it, or seeing success as somehow limited by its form or by the moment in which it occurs. Sometimes success does happen in ones. But inevitably when it does it's fleeting, false, and unchanged, a recipe for long-term failure.
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Forbes
Do you have a strategy for retaining your poise under pressure? If not, here's what likely happens when you're in a high-stress situation: That event becomes the trigger for a reaction commonly known as the "flight or fight" response. As your body gets flooded with the "stress hormone," cortisol, your heart rate increases, your breathing gets rapid and shallow, and your muscles tense. In addition, your amygdala (the emotional region of your brain) begins to override your pre-fontal cortex (the rational decision-making part of your brain). In other words, you literally lose your ability to think straight.
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Entrepreneur
We’ve all heard about (and many of us have had) negative experiences when trying relate with the millennial generation. There is much talk about how scary it's going to be working with these millennials. Many worry what will happen to our economny and corporate cultture. Millennials have a bad reputation as entitled, lazy, self-obsessed, fame-obsessed whiners who are allergic to hard work but expect to be disproportionately rewarded for very little effort.
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Time Redesigned
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Inc.
There is an overflow of digital information pummeling us on a daily basis. Social media feeds, texts, Slack, and the notifications on our phones. It's relentless. No one can possibly keep up, even the super-human Gen-Z workers, and it's a constant distraction that's making the workplace more hectic by the day.
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Harvard Business Review
Everybody loves feedback ... as long as it's positive. But most of us dislike negative feedback so much that we've even changed the name — it's not negative, it's constructive. Still, it's an irreplaceably valuable gift. We need to know when we are doing things that don't land the way we planned. When our impact veers from our intention. And the best — often times the only — way to discover that gap is through feedback.
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Fast Company (commentary)
Mimi Bishop, a contributor for Fast Company, writes: "When it comes to getting things done, the to-do list is the holy grail. We've uncovered Leonardo DaVinci's, and we know Benjamin Franklin had one, too. Really, who's to argue with the original Renaissance man and a Founding Father? Me."
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The New York Times
The last face-to-face meeting between Representative Robert C. Scott and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ended in an awkward cliffhanger. At a hearing last May of the House Education Committee, Scott, Democrat of Virginia, challenged the secretary's assertion that she was holding states accountable for achievement gaps between white and minority students as required by a new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act. Scott, unconvinced, asked more pointedly: How can you assure us that you are following the law if you do not even make states calculate the performance of the different student groups we want to measure?
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eSchool News
Technology and internet access for rural students in some parts of the U.S. is unreliable at best, and this limited access could adversely affect their learning. Rural students are less likely than non-rural students to claim that their home internet access is "great" (36 percent versus 46 percent). Home internet access for rural students is vital for learning, as report after report consistently identify the growing homework gap as detrimental to student achievement.
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EdTech Magazine
It's no secret that school districts are a gold mine for hackers, who can exploit all of the confidential student, parent and employee data available for financial gain or to assuage a personal grudge. While schools — rightfully — fear hacking of their computer systems by professional criminals, students increasingly breach their school's cybersecurity safeguards, giving educators and administrators plenty more to worry about.
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NASSP / Angela K. Doll
 As school administrators, we get to deal with many strange, silly, and sometimes dumbfounding things. Add to this the pressures to increase achievement, solve staffing situations, fix facility issues, and prevent escalating social problems—all while on a limited budget—and our daily lives as school leaders can wear us down, cause us to lose focus, and put us into a fixed mindset of doom. We start to question if our efforts really matter at all.
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Promoted by 7 Mindsets 
eSchool News
Building social and emotional learning skills such as self-control requires face-to-face interaction, meaningful discussion and reflection. Edtech is no complete substitute for that, but there are tools that can supplement the development of character in the classroom and at home. According to the Character Lab, self-control is controlling one's own responses so they align with short- and long-term goals.
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EdScoop
While this generation of students is growing up using technology, they often lack the complete host of digital literacy skills needed for success by the time they enter high school, said Jeff Meyer, director of education at Learning.com during a recent webinar hosted by edWeb.net. The technology and core standards of organizations such as ISTE, CSTA and Common Core State Initiative stipulate that students need foundational digital literacy skills to demonstrate writing, reading and mathematical achievement.
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EdTech Magazine (commentary)
Joe Marquez, a contributor for EdTech Magazine, writes: "One question I hear a lot in my travels is, 'Can primary students use tech effectively?' My answer, always, is, 'Of course!' Like any classroom tool, the youngest learners need good guidance and examples when it comes to engaging with technology in the classroom. It's simply naive to think that our littlest learners can't or shouldn't have access to classroom technology. And it simply isn't wise to incorporate technology with bad instructional habits: A screen should never take the place of a teacher or be used to babysit students."
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District Administration Magazine
Five years ago, the lack of diversification in the gifted and talented program in Minnesota's Mankato Area Public Schools illustrated a nationwide problem. African-American, Native American, Latino and low-income students remained severely underrepresented relative to their numbers in the district's population. In response, administrators overhauled the way they identified high-potential learners, drawing on research into the shortcomings of traditional methodologies.
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EdSurge
If you're an educator, the weeks leading up to state testing are likely some of the most stressful and demanding days in your year. You're focused not only on test preparation, but also on each student's specific needs. That might mean juggling students who have test anxiety while supporting others who have varying levels of understanding and comprehension — all while fielding questions from parents and administrators. Phew!
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MiddleWeb
Co-teaching conversations at this point in the year are marked by a reserved urgency. Teachers continue to plan and assess as they progress through the curriculum, while they are also beginning to prepare students for next year's school experience. Every minute of time we have with our students is so valuable. We must make the most of our instructional decisions so they provide maximum benefit for our classes as a whole and also support the individual strengths and areas of need for our students with disabilities.
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Edutopia
Many pedagogical activities focus on completion as an end goal. Although students can gain new knowledge and skills by completing an activity, they may remain at the same level of understanding. But introducing new information, feedback or an opportunity for reflection at a pivotal point during a lesson can ramp up student performance. A mid-activity intervention can prompt students to ask more critical questions, elevate their thinking, refine their skills and subsequently advance their learning.
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EdSurge
Imagine yourself back in a classroom. You're not taking English or history or pre-calculus; the sign on the door says “Obstacles.” You enter and on the board is your first assignment: create something — a drawing, a model of a house, a sketch of a new product, a sculpture. You do, and then as you step back, the teacher steps forward and smashes your creation. And tells you your next assignment is to pick up the pieces (including yourself) and make something new.
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Education Next
Student achievement varies widely across developed countries, but the source of these differences is not well understood. One obvious candidate, and a major focus of research and policy discussions both in the United States and abroad, is teacher quality. Research and common sense tell us good teachers can have a tremendous impact on their students' learning. But what, exactly, makes some teachers more effective than others? Some analysts have pointed to teachers' own scholastic performance as a key predictor, citing as examples teacher-recruitment practices in countries where students do unusually well on international tests.
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Distict Administration Magazine
Students can use sand to simulate lava; online, they can board the International Space Station. An increasing number of educators use similar augmented and virtual reality experiences to teach scientific concepts, as online and digital curricula continue to guide classroom instruction. Still, many teachers rely on hands-on activities and lab kits.
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The Atlantic
Teaching in the United States was once considered a career for men. Then the profession's gender composition shifted dramatically around the mid-19th century, when the country's public-school system was born. As schoolhouse doors opened to children of all social classes and genders, so too did the education profession.
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Education DIVE
With students of color now comprising 50 percent of America's public school student population, and 80 percent of the student population in urban public schools, ensuring textbooks and other curriculum resources are culturally relevant is more important than ever.
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Education Week
When teachers have higher cognitive skills, their students perform better academically, according to a new study that compared data from 31 countries. And teachers' cognitive skills differ widely across the world, with teachers in the United States performing worse than the average teacher in numeracy and slightly better than the average in literacy. Similarly, U.S. students perform below the average score in math and about average in reading.
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The Atlantic
Gun violence has killed nearly 1,200 children in the United States since the school massacre in Parkland, Florida, one year ago. Few of these deaths became the focus of the nation's attention. Maybe that's because these killings were so mundane, so normal, in the 21st-century United States.
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The New York Times
The relentless string of teachers' walkouts continued on Tuesday in West Virginia, where educators held the second statewide walkout in less than a year, denouncing a bill that they said was retaliatory toward educators. Hours later, their action, which shut down schools in all but one of the state's 55 counties, led to a victory. The State House of Delegates voted to indefinitely table the bill, which would have allowed tax dollars to pay for private school tuition and established charter schools in the state for the first time.
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Develop a plan to expand statewide access to school breakfast and receive a $50,000 implementation grant from No Kid Hungry. Proposals due March 6th.
To learn more, refer to the RFP.
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Chalkbeat
Michigan's new governor called for "bold" changes to the way schools are funded — though she's not saying what those changes could be. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who took office last month, devoted a large part of her first State of the State Address on Tuesday night decrying a "crisis" in education defined by alarming declines in childhood literacy. Those declines can't be blamed on students or schools, she said.
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NAESP
Every school stakeholder hopes students arrive each day with a hunger to learn. However, far too many students miss out on a morning meal, resulting in hunger for food, not knowledge. When schools make breakfast part of the school day, just like lunch, students succeed. Absenteeism and behavior disruptions decline and students' academic outcomes increase. Principals across the country are working with school nutrition professionals to ensure students in their buildings can easily access breakfast. Here's how you can make this change, too.
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NAESP
Aligning learning experiences, whether it's for #SEL, student leadership, assignments, or recess, is key to student success. Join NAESP for a Twitter chat on Feb. 28 at 8 p.m. ET with Brad Johnson. We'll share best practices, challenges and successes. Use #NAESPchat to take part.
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