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| | LATEST NEWS FOR PRINCIPALS |
USA Today
Extreme weather is prompting school systems to think outside the box to figure out alternatives for students losing too many days in the classroom due to calamities from blizzards to heat waves to floods and more. But the solution to make up for lost days is sparking anger among some parents. Upset parents in Jefferson County, Ala., say they see no reason for a new requirement that students learn remotely for two "e-Days" this school year. The e-Days have been scheduled in advance for Oct. 9 and March 18 to allow "learning to continue without utilizing makeup days, and provides an option for learning when we have extreme weather, flu epidemics, or other unforeseen events," according to a school newsletter.
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By: Ryan Clark
 Following the recent college shootings in Oregon, Texas and Arizona, schools nationwide are rightfully investigating ways to strengthen their building security. While many are placing the eye of scrutiny on guns, others are choosing to place it on physical accessibility. After all, if the bad guys can't get in, all talk of gun carrying is moot. Now, there are good ways and bad ways to go about this — there are also some dangerous ways. This article will attempt to discuss them all.
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Distirct Administration Magazine
Injecting "social responsibility" lessons into social studies classrooms better prepares students to become informed citizens eager to participate in a democracy. Educators will learn about the many ways to reach this goal at this year's National Council for the Social Studies conference, which carries the theme "celebrate social responsibility."
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Edutopia
Game-based learning is an area of education that has been getting a lot of attention in recent times. It's easy to find articles and entire websites devoted to the power of games for engaging learners and providing a vehicle for their learning. However, many of these articles seem to focus on math, science and language arts. But what about language learning? How can GBL help English language learners develop their comprehension and communicative skills? Well, the short answer is very similar to the above: it can engage ELLs and give them an inspiration and a context for communicating.
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MiddleWeb (commentary)
Assistant principal and ASCD Emerging Leader Mike Janatovich shares some planning ideas for successful fall field trips with middle schoolers. "Autumn has quickly become one of my favorite times of the year. Yes, football is in full swing, but more importantly, fall is when we take our 220+ 8th grade students to Washington, D.C. As a former science and history teacher, I get excited when I have the opportunity to chaperone this trip. Here in Ohio, our trip is correlated perfectly with our content standards, so our entire expedition becomes the ultimate learning experience."
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Science Weekly Magazine
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EdTech Magazine
The teacher's place is no longer at the head of the classroom. As new technologies find their way into the hands of students, traditional lecture-style instruction loses its impact. Active learning, in which students take control of their own education, moves to the forefront. The NMC Horizon Report: 2015 K-12 Edition took a hard look at this growing trend, examining its effect on student engagement, as well as the technologies that come into play. According to the report, the idea behind active learning is pretty simple: Students absorb core concepts, and then apply that knowledge to challenges or projects to develop a deeper understanding of the content.
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Disability Scoop
Repetitive drills are often used to help individuals with autism learn new skills, but new research suggests that this approach may do more harm than good. Rather than enhance their abilities, training those on the spectrum to follow predictable patterns may actually inhibit their ability to apply new skills in the real world, according to findings published online this month in the journal Nature Neuroscience. For the study, researchers measured speed and accuracy as a group of adults — some typically-developing and some with high-functioning autism — looked for three diagonal bars surrounded by horizontal lines on a computer screen.
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American Reading Company solutions increase teacher quality by enhancing teachers’ ability to successfully diagnose students’ reading difficulties and providing expert coaching to act on those issues. Our district partners across the country have seen increased test scores and changes in the literacy culture of their communities.
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By: Debra Josephson Abrams
 "It was so boring! I hated learning new words that way!" exclaimed a student about traditional vocabulary learning strategies. The student was one of a number interviewed in research about how to stimulate students' interest in vocabulary. However, most students who were "bored" with vocabulary learning were engaged when teachers introduced vocabulary games. In ELL reading courses, in which vocabulary learning is key, I've used a variety of vocabulary games.
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EdTech Magazine
Early childhood educators frequently look to use today's interactive media to help young children learn content and develop and practice skills across the cognitive, social-emotional and physical domains of development. In 2012, the National Association for the Education of Young Children released a position statement, developed with The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media, to serve as guidance for educators who want to use technology in a developmentally appropriate way.
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MindShift
Educators who have bought into the power of inquiry-based teaching will admit that math is one of the most challenging areas to apply the pedagogy. Math has been taught based on computation for so long and built up such a bad reputation with many students that it can be hard to break through students' anxiety, intimidation and hatred of math. As Dan Meyer said in his 2010 Tedx Talk, "I sell a product to a market that doesn't want it, but is forced by law to buy it."
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Center for American Progress
Curriculum plays an important role in how students are taught, and there is a strong body of evidence that shows that putting a high-quality curriculum in the hands of teachers can have significant positive impacts on student achievement. Furthermore, curriculum reform is typically inexpensive, and some of the highest-quality elementary school math curricula cost only around $36 per student. In short, curriculum reform is a low-cost, high-return educational investment. To promote curriculum reform — and make better use of education dollars — this report provides new insight on how curricula are selected in every state across the country and examines the costs of those curricula. Throughout this report, the authors use "curriculum" to refer to the instructional materials such as textbooks, workbooks and software used by teachers.
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Graceland University is ranked #5 in the country for Online Masters of Education programs by US News and World Report. We have a 98% graduation rate and 97% would recommend our program to a friend. We have 4 programs to meet the needs of practically any teacher.
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The Washington Post
Nancie Atwell is the renowned founder of the Center for Teaching and Learning, an award-winning nonprofit independent K-8 demonstration school in Edgecomb, Maine, where she teaches seventh- and eighth-grade writing, reading and history. She is the author of numerous books, including the classic "In the Middle: A Lifetime of Learning About Writing, Reading and Adolescents," which has inspired teachers for years, and she has won numerous awards, including the first-ever $1 million Global Teacher Prize given by the Varkey Foundation.
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University of Michigan via Science Daily
There's another burst of seat-bouncing, giggling and shouting in a simulated classroom. Through a new study, researchers hope to find ways to redesign classrooms and develop a curriculum to add in two-minute exercise breaks throughout the day — "a prescription for physical activity" — and incorporate the additional fitness as seamlessly as possible for teachers.
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Education World
Former superintendent and current president of the Stuart Foundation, Jonathan Raymond, believes that at-home parent-teacher visits are the future of the outdated parent-teacher conferences. He explains how it works, why its effective, and how schools can get started. "As a former superintendent of a large urban school district, I've seen how family engagement can transform the learning environment in schools, add to the professional growth of teachers and dramatically improve students’ academic and social development," Raymond says in a post for EdSource.
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| | FEDERAL ADVOCACY AND POLICY |
Education Week
The fear of special education lawsuits has, over the years, prompted many organizations to suggest changes for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. But a recent study of special education-related court decisions suggests that reducing lawsuits may be a matter of focusing on a handful of states where most of them are filed — not the 40-year-old law itself. Ten states are responsible for two-thirds of the IDEA court decisions made between 1979 and 2013, according to "Frequency Trends of Court Decisions Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act," a paper recently published in the Journal of Special Education Leadership. They are, in order of frequency of court decisions, New York, Pennsylvania, D.C., California, Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Texas, Connecticut and Virginia.
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"The Fundamental 5 improves instruction. The power of these practices will transform classrooms and schools," E. Don Brown, NASSP past president. Order now at Amazon.com
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The Hill
A group of school superintendents is urging the Federal Communications Commission to include broadband service in a program that provides phone subsidies for low-income people. "As school and district leaders, we urge the Federal Communications Commission ... to continue its support of the Lifeline program and to modernize and expand the program to support broadband Internet access," said almost 200 school district leaders in a letter to the commission.
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The Hechinger Report
Central to the American dream is the notion that any kid, even one from the poorest of backgrounds, can study hard, do well in school and make it in our society. But many of us fear that the schoolhouse is no longer a path to the middle class. That fear grows with the rising number of U.S. schoolchildren in poverty, and the growing achievement gap in school between them and their wealthier peers. A recent study examined how much of the achievement gap in math between rich and poor 15-year-old students can be attributed to what material the kids are learning in school, and it found, across 33 countries, that schools are teaching rich kids vastly different math content than poor kids.
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NAESP
Save the date for the NAESP Twitter chat, Innovation: Share Your Dos and Don'ts. The chat is part of a number of activities Connected Educator Month, an initiative to stimulate and support technology innovation for educators. Peruse the calendar for a complete list of podcasts, Twitter chats, and webinars designed to transform professional learning through collaboration and innovation. Save the date for the NAESP Twitter chat, Innovation: Share Your Dos and Don'ts. Save the date: Wed., Oct. 21 at 8 p.m. ET. Use the hashtags #CE15 and #NAESP.
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NAESP
NAESP's new principal panel is the first and only national program dedicated to gathering and sharing the experiences of new principals in rural, urban and suburban schools across the country. Panelists participate in six online surveys each year on a relevant topic, which take less than 10 minutes to complete. Panelists receive the survey results and resource recommendations from their peers. Participants completing multiple surveys will receive a special Thank You gift from NAESP or one of our sponsors.
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ZipKrooz™ brings zip line-like adventure to the playground in an exciting, inclusive and safe way!
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Math Problem solving contests for teams of up to 35 students in grades 4 through 8.
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