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School Leaders Now
In a school environment, millennials have the potential to be brilliant problem solvers who bring creativity and boundless energy to the classroom. This generation, born roughly between 1981 and 2000, are eager learners who thrive on feedback and strong relationships. According to Pew Research, millennials are currently the largest generation in the labor force. If you're not already working with millennials, chances are you're about to hire them.
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Inc.
Interviewing may not be the most effective way to evaluate candidates, but it is still the most common. There are other better predictors of job success, but some of those methods require more resources to manage than your company many have. If the interview is all you've got, it doesn't mean that you are relegated to a life of bad hires or lots of first year turnover. It just means that you have to get really good at interviewing.
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Education Week (commentary)
Peter DeWitt, a contributor for Education Week, writes: "Schools seem to be in a no-win situation. Despite all the good that they do when it comes to student learning and mental health issues that students suffer from, the negative rhetoric around school continues. It wasn't too many weeks ago when the Secretary of Education sent out a Tweet that attacked the public school system (which really needs to stop). Here we are 17 years after NCLB (what has NCLB and mandates really helped?), and we still seem to have the same issues that we have always had."
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Training Industry Magazine
In January, the New York Times published an article suggesting that "this year's flu season is now more intense than any since the 2009 swine flu," a time when I recall waking up every day to worsening news regarding the epidemic for nearly three weeks. The article also described the alarming number of deaths associated with the flu over the last decade. While natural death is never a pleasurable experience, metaphorical death happens every day in organizations at the hands of leaders who fail to cultivate a work culture rich in providing feedback, creating opportunities for learning and development, and having a genuine understanding of the unique talents of the people they lead.
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Education Week
The zero tolerance policies that began in the 1980s and really took off in the 1990s were meant to level the playing field for all students. Students who were considered dangerous or disruptive were removed from the learning environment. They were suspended or expelled, allowing the rest of the class to continue being dutiful, well-behaved learners. The policies were expected to make discipline a consistent process across schools, districts and states. The punishments were the same, no matter what the crime, no matter what the circumstances. No matter who the perpetrator.
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By: Ryan Clark (commentary)
 With people today working further into their lives and retiring later, the workforce has begun to age noticeably. This leads to real situations in which younger managers are tasked with supervising direct reports who are much older than they are. In an era when corporate culture and office sensitivity are in the headlines, it's important that managers of older employees be made aware of the pitfalls, challenges and worrisome dangers the job may entail.
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District Administration Magazine
When hiring teachers, districts are more likely to select better candidates if they use screening tools designed to align closely with actual classroom experiences and expectations, according to a recent study of Los Angeles USD undertaken by CALDER, an education policy arm of the American Institutes for Research. A hiring process that reflects specific classroom expectations — for instance by requiring candidates to present a sample lesson to a hiring committee — is a reliable predictor of which new teachers will have a bigger impact on student achievement, score higher on evaluations and even have fewer absences, the survey found.
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The NIGHTLOCK® Lockdown uses the strength of the floor to withstand tremendous force, and works on any outward- and inward-swinging doors. The NIGHTLOCK unit is installed at floor level, and remains out of reach to anyone attempting to enter by breaking window glass on conventional classroom and office doors.
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Harvard Business Review
Today, monitoring technologies are increasingly inexpensive — and staggeringly expansive. This has made it easier than ever for managers to intensively monitor employees at work. These technologies run the gamut, from body-worn cameras and closed-circuit televisions, to traceable identification cards and keystroke trackers. Managers in banks, hospitals, police departments, call-centers and retail outlets who want to know what employees are up to can now quite easily do so.
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Leadership Freak
Generally speaking, it's better to praise someone for not smoking than warning them about lung cancer. But we typically default to warnings. When you see a friend smoking, what's the first thing you say? "You're going to die of lung cancer if you don't quit."
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District Administration Magazine
In light of a looming ESSA mandate to increase transparency around education spending, district leaders have been struggling to calculate per-pupil spending by school in accordance with state and federal requirements. Facing a December 2019 deadline, there is confusion about whether states will expect school districts to include the costs of transportation, technology, special education and pre-K. Calculating cost per school will also reveal whether more experienced, higher-paid teachers are clustered in certain buildings.
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THE Journal
American teachers tend to see student use of digital devices as being slightly more positive than negative. However, they also believe smartphones, tablets and computers are having a bad influence on the physical and mental health of students too. That's the latest finding from Gallup in a web study completed by nearly 500 adults aged 18 and older who teach K-12 students.
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EdTech Magazine
St. Thomas School near Seattle has concentrated on beefing up the school's science, technology, engineering and math education for the past several years and plans to strengthen it even more in the future. The independent private school in Medina, Wash., which has 330 students, is not alone. Makerspaces — a key element of STEM education — are popping up in classrooms and libraries across the U.S. Research from School Library Journal indicates that maker activities at elementary and middle schools increased by 4 percent from 2014 to 2017.
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District Administration Magazine
Coaching has surfaced as a key quality improvement strategy for early childhood instruction, according to a recent report by Bellwether Education Partners. District administrators have hired full-time, in-house coaches, some of whom had previously been in a PD or education leadership role. Coaching can be delivered in person, using email or a platform such as Skype, or via the evidence-based model, where teachers upload a video of themselves teaching for coaches to assess. "Being able to see the teacher in action can be particularly important in early childhood coaching because the interaction between children and teachers is so important," says Bonnie O'Keefe, author of the report.
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Edutopia (commentary)
Nicole Coleman, a contributor for Edutopia, writes: "Peer pressure is a powerful force among teenagers, and we often hear of it as a negative factor. Rather than allowing it to have a negative connotation, we should embrace the power it has for our students. To that end, I've helped foster a peer support program at my school called Peer to Peer."
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The Atlantic
Every kid has that moment when she realizes that the adults she admires aren't perfect. Few children ever learn, however, that the same is true for the inventors and intellectual giants whose distinguished portraits permeate their history textbooks. As it turns out, recognizing that visionaries such as Albert Einstein experienced failure can actually help students perform better in school.
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Education DIVE
In many classrooms and computer labs, students are expected to "sit still" and "pay attention" for an entire class period or for several hours in a row. For some students with disabilities or learning differences, this can be an impossible task. While students may not appear different, the reality is that each and every child's brain works differently. This means that some may need a little extra support or a different learning approach to fully benefit from our curriculum and instruction.
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Edutopia (commentary)
Kamalisha Green, a contributor for Edutopia, wrties:"STEAM education (science, technology, engineering, the arts and math) encourages investigation, hands-on learning, and creativity and incorporates interdisciplinary learning. I often say that STEAM education happens the most in early childhood, and has been for decades: Young students often gather for circle time and begin their day with songs that focus on academic content. Walls are covered with art that students have produced to learn about shapes, colors or sight words."
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Disability Scoop
Hunched over an iPad, Joe Ballard watched as pixelated storm troopers surrounded a tiny R2-D2. With deft fingers, the 10-year-old boy dragged together what look like small puzzle pieces on the screen. They changed the scenery, the type of obstacles and the number of enemies in the game he built. Joe, a fourth-grader at Felida Elementary School, is among 60 students enrolled in Vancouver Public Schools' special education classes who is learning how to write computer code.
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EdSurge (commentary)
Veronica Burnett, a contributor for EdSurge, writes: "As a first generation Mexican-American, I know how difficult it is to be in a classroom where everyone speaks a language that's different from yours. My family moved from Mexico to the United States the day after my Quinceañera (15th birthday party). I was shocked at the difference it made moving just 25 miles away."
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Edutopia
Imagine that you have a full-time job that requires you to be at the office for seven to 10 hours a day, and your boss tells that you that you will also need to work offsite on nights and weekends. After a few weeks, the after-hours projects are taking anywhere from five to 20 hours a week, and you find that you don't have a free minute. Your job performance and your home life suffer — you're only sleeping five hours a night, and you missed a family celebration. Unfortunately, this is the only job you're qualified for, so you can't quit.
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GameTime
Studies show students who are physically active throughout the school day perform better in class. A curriculum and playgrounds based on national standards for physical education are helping schools keep students active. A new funding opportunity is also helping with up to $25,000 for active school projects.
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By: Aileen Miracle (commentary)
 Assessment in the music classroom can be tricky. Many music teachers only see their students once a week — sometimes even less — so fitting in quality curriculum, engaging songs and dances, games, books and more needs to be balanced with assessing students' musical growth. Here are several things to consider when assessing in the music classroom.
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By: Brian Stack (commentary)
 It is starting to become the norm for teachers to seek out other forms of income to make up lost ground from low teacher salaries that plague many schools from coast to coast. This struggle is real, and there seems to be no end in sight in the downward trend of teacher salaries across the country and their lasting impact on our profession. According to a recent report, teacher salaries have declined nationally over the last decade by 1.3 percent when adjusted for inflation.
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U.S. News & World Report
For Alexandria Warfield, a 27-year-old music teacher at Thomas Gregg Neighborhood School in Indianapolis, living with her parents is a trade-off she's willing to make for the sake of saving money and having a 15-minute commute to work. "It's been really hard to find somewhere to rent that's affordable and is in a pretty decent area that's close to the school," she says. "A downtown studio is $1,000 to $1,100 a month, and that's just not feasible for us as teachers." It's a trade-off Warfield may not have to make for much longer, however, as she is currently assessing loan options and filing paperwork in hopes of becoming one of the first teachers to nab a home that's part of a city effort to create affordable housing options for educators.
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The Hechinger Report
Executive function — a sort of air traffic controller of the brain — has been one of the hottest topics in education circles over the past 15 years. Yet experts disagree over what it is exactly, to what extent it really causes academic problems and whether anything can be done to improve one's executive functioning. Even today, a professional diagnosis of executive function disorder alone generally won't qualify a child for special education services.
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CNN
It's a question with an answer that researchers are still trying to better understand: How much exercise do kids need on a daily basis? In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children and adolescents should get at least an hour of physical activity each day. The United Kingdom's National Health Service recommends the same. There are questions too about the types of physical activity kids and teens should do, how to get young people excited about exercise and what research efforts are underway to better understand fitness on a molecular level.
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The Brookings Institution
There are well-documented achievement and opportunity gaps by income and race/ethnicity. K-12 accountability policies often have a stated goal of reducing or eliminating those gaps, though with questionable effectiveness. Those same accountability policies require reporting academic proficiency by gender, but there are no explicit goals of reducing gender gaps and no "hard accountability" sanctions tied to gender-subgroup performance. We could ask, "Should gender be included more strongly in accountability policies?"
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The Conversation
Teacher strikes are generating a healthy focus on how far public education funding has fallen over the past decade. The full explanation, however, goes beyond basic funding cuts. It involves systematic advantages in terms of funding, students and teachers for charter schools and voucher programs as compared to traditional public schools.
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The Associated Press
The latest stop in the national movement seeking higher teacher pay and better education funding is Arizona, where tens of thousands of teachers have voted to walk off the job next week. They want the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Doug Ducey to improve on the governor's offer of 20 percent raises by 2020. That plan, the teachers say, fails to address several of their other goals, including a restoration of state funding to 2008 levels and a pledge not to adopt any new tax cuts until per-pupil state funding reaches the national average.
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Chalkbeat Colorado
Two Republican lawmakers who have long helped shape education policy in Colorado have introduced a bill that would bar teachers from striking and strip unions that endorse strikes of their bargaining power. This bill stands practically no chance of becoming law. House Democrats already killed a bill this legislative session that would have prohibited any union activity by public employees during work hours, and this measure goes much further in limiting the rights of workers.
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NAESP
You've probably heard, "Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others." This is true both in aircraft and in educational settings — you have to take care of yourself before you can help someone else. If principals are stressed out and exhausted, how can they have the patience, positive energy and enthusiasm to provide the best leadership for staff and students? Take a few moments for this much needed webinar and obtain renewed energy and vitality as you learn to take care of your personal needs along with your professional duties. Join presenter Dr. Joe Mazza on Wednesday, May 9, 3-4 p.m. EDT for his webinar, "Turn Down the Pressure: Finding Balance in Work and Life."
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NAESP
Together with Crayola, NAESP offers a special opportunity to apply for a Champion Creatively Alive Children Grant. Your school could receive a $3,500 grant (a $2,500 check and $1,000 worth of Crayola products) to establish a creative leadership team and build the creative capacity of your professional learning community. The deadline to apply is Friday, June 22. (The Early Bird deadline is Monday, June 5. Early Bird applications will receive a Crayola product Classpack). Click here for more information.
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