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EdSurge
In her 2018 bestseller "The Library Book," author Susan Orlean uses the history of a fire that destroyed parts of the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986 to explore transformations that libraries and librarians have undergone over the last hundred years. One need only walk into any reasonably sized public library where rows of books and quiet reading spaces sit alongside banks of public computers, teen rooms and meeting facilities hosting daily community events to see the physical manifestation of this transformation.
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Edutopia
Many elementary schools are moving away from traditional holiday class parties and exploring ways to celebrate the seasons while embracing multiculturalism. Music- and dance-based activities offer an easy way to bring a celebratory feel to the classroom while developing cultural awareness.
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The Lead Change Group
In the context of our increasingly disrupted, globalizing and multicultural world, leaders greatly appreciate the security and comfort of clear-cut strategic plans for the future. Tragically, popular strategic business analyses are deeply flawed and give a false sense of comfort and security to business leaders. Take the most popular of them, the SWOT analysis, where you try to figure out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing your business.
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HR DIVE
Whether employees pressure themselves to come to work ill or their managers force them to do so, workplaces that show they care about workers' well-being have a better chance of keeping workers onboard, the results of a recent study by the Limeade Institute showed. In fact, the report revealed that 60% of employees who said they felt cared for by their companies planned to stay for three or more years, compared to only 7% of those who didn't feel cared for by their employer.
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By: Catherine Iste (commentary)
 As seems common in many conferences lately, the audience was asked to participate in a brief group mindfulness exercise. After we all adjusted our postures and closed our eyes, the facilitator asked us to take a deep breath and, while exhaling, acknowledge that we were done for the day, free to let our minds go and… something. I do not know what the last thing she said was, because I could not get past the phrase: done for the day. It was 4:30, how could anyone possibly be done for the day?
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Inc.
The grind of leadership can wear on you over time. The meetings, emails, phone calls, presentations, one-on-ones, more emails and status updates can leave you feeling trapped and uninspired. Even in fast-growing organizations, the relentless change and need to keep your head above water can, in itself, grow monotonous. Rather than resigning yourself to feeling demotivated, disheartened and lacking creativity, what you need is to shake things up. To take a different approach and see if you can boost some of that right-brain thinking.
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Leadership Freak
Your mind is a ship without a sail about half the time. Ask, "What are you thinking about?" and people often say, "Nothing." But that's not true. A mind adrift seldom thinks good thoughts. Unfocused thoughts descend into dark water. You obsess about yourself. You think about what's wrong. You worry. When your thoughts wander, they go to dark places. But that's not all.
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HR DIVE
This study sends employers a clear message; stress makes presenteeism and absenteeism worse. It appears employers have their work cut out for them if they are to avoid the damage stress can inflict on the workplace. According to previous research, workers are more stressed out than just two years ago; a CareerCast survey found that 80% of respondents rated their stress levels above seven on an ascending scale of 1 to 10.
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Forbes (commentary)
Laurel Donnellan, a contributor for Forbes, writes: "I have been a student, practitioner and teacher of leadership development skills for more than four decades and over the years, I have moved from sympathy to empathy to compassion as my response to suffering in the workplace. It continues to be an education fueled by my personal experience and research that offers a business case for compassion like this academic article by Jane E. Dutton, Kristina Workman and Ashley E. Hardin."
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Entrepreneur
The average business's workforce spends 15% of its time in meetings. This figure has increased year on year since 2008, and senior executives lose two days to meetings every week. Worst of all: Unproductive meetings cost U.S. companies an estimated $37 billion annually. Meetings that fail to deliver any valuable insights, goals or actions are a waste of time. But what can businesses do to make their meetings more meaningful and productive?
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Education Week
One of the prominent elements of the Every Student Succeeds Act is the ability for states to set their own long-term goals for academic achievement, graduation rates, and English language proficiency. It marks a significant departure from the adequate yearly progress demands of ESSA's predecessor, the No Child Left Behind Act. But what if states aren't on track to meet those goals? According to the law, the goals based on graduation rates and student achievement on state exams must be "ambitious" although the law does not spell out exactly what that word means.
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The New York Times
America's fourth and eighth graders are losing ground in their ability to read literature and academic texts, according to a rigorous national assessment released Wednesday that is likely to fuel concerns over student achievement after decades of tumult on the educational landscape.
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District Adminiatration Magazine
With the start of school just a week away, Ed Grassia was huddled around a table with a few senior members of his 60-plus staff, going over the CIO's roles and responsibilities. Meanwhile, Tacoma Public Schools' 105-year-old Central Administration Building was humming with activity. New students were still registering and parents were stopping by for forms.
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Education DIVE
In 2017, nearly 63% of K-12 teachers regularly used technology in the classroom, up from 55% the year prior. But while more devices means a need for more device management, rarely does that mean more IT staff will be hired. That's where mobile device management systems come in, as high-functioning automated management systems expand the reach of existing IT teams.
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EdTech Magazine
It used to be a struggle for the 16-member IT team of the School District of Janesville in Wisconsin to keep existing systems up and running, let alone add new capabilities. But when the time came to refresh the district's data center in fall 2017, an ideal solution presented itself: hyperconverged infrastructure. The district replaced its aging fleet of servers and storage area network with four HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged nodes. Instead of maintaining separate banks of servers for storage, computing and networking, hyperconverged solutions combine all three elements in a single powerful machine.
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THE Journal
Through virtual labs, animations and simulations, educators can provide students with opportunities to explore and understand abstract concepts that are difficult to understand without experimentation. However, only one in five middle school students have access to these resources as part of their regular school activities, according to a new report from Project Tomorrow.
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MiddleWeb
One of the toughest — and most worthwhile — classroom teaching tasks is working with students to develop their capacity and confidence to ask good questions. As soon as they are old enough to talk, kids want to know everything about the world around them. Where does wind come from? How do birds not get tired? Why do we have armpits? Each inquiry is a reflection of their inexperience and natural inclination to seek out information, explanation, and clarification about their environment (Isaacs, 2018).
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Education World
At times, it can be challenging to find common ground with your students, no matter if they're 6 or 18 years old. There's no better way to get to know each other than spending some quality time together. Dull lessons do not count. So, if you are a K-12 educator — here are five crazy ideas for you!
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By: Sheilamary Koch (commentary)
 Daniel was feeling anxious before an exam at school, but he paused and used the three breaths technique to get centered and settle his nerves before starting. When he got his test results, he seemed surprised — he'd expected a D or C but got a B — simply from being more grounded and calmer, shared Daniel's instructor, mindfulness and emotional intelligence coach Janet Fouts. New evidence from two recent studies strengthens the argument in favor of mindfulness practice for young people. While earlier research has shown that mindfulness training has a positive effect on the adult brain, its impact on young developing brains was unknown — until now.
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By: Julie Anne Wells (commentary)
 According to the National Bullying Prevention Center, at least one out of every five students reports being bullied. StopBullying.gov, a website run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reports a frequency as high as one out of every three students. Studies also show that 30% of students admitted to bullying others, and 70% of students said they had witnessed bullying. While searching for a solution to bullying is not simple, there are some tactics educators can use to combat it. Here are eight tips for preventing bullying in the classroom.
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USA Today
American students are struggling with reading. And the country's education system hasn't found a way to make it better. In fact, fourth and eighth grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress essentially haven't budged in 10 years. That's causing some alarm, considering the number of reforms aimed at American schools over the past decade: stronger academic standards, more tests, stricter teacher evaluations and laws that discourage schools from promoting third-graders if they can't read proficiently, to name a few.
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Chalkbeat
On average, girls do as well as boys on elementary- and middle-school math tests. But by the time students enter the workforce, a big gender gap has emerged, with men earning nearly 80% of bachelor's degrees in engineering and computer science. A new study offers evidence that the disparity might be getting its start in elementary school classrooms. The paper offers data from a single district, but the pattern it uncovers is striking.
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EdSurge
Common Sense is weighing in on kids' use of media in a detailed new report this week. But the takeaways for educators and the edtech industry are most obvious in the sections on homework. The report, "The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens," updates a 2015 study by the same name from the nonprofit organization. Its primary focus is media used for entertainment. So there's a rich data set on everything from playing games to reading for pleasure, based on a nationally representative survey of nearly 1,700 U.S. kids ages 8-18 that was conducted in March and early April of this year. Kids were placed into two groups: tweens 8-12 years old, and teens 13-18 years old.
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The Brookings Institution
Experts predict that by the year 2050 almost
70% of the world's population will live in urban areas. This global demographic requires ensuring that cities are vibrant places with a high quality of life for all residents. Yet, when looking across the U.S., overall growth of the population in cities suggests a mysterious decline in the number of children. Why? Perhaps because urban living is expensive, stressful and difficult for families. Cities aren't built for children and their families.
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Education Week
EdReports, the nonprofit curriculum reviewer, is shining a spotlight on early reading — the group announced on Wednesday that it will start releasing evaluations of foundational phonics skills programs. The first set of reviews will be released in November. This is a departure for the organization, which historically has only reviewed reading and English-language arts materials that are meant to be used as year-long, comprehensive curricula. Along with ELA programs, EdReports also evaluates K-12 math materials and science materials for grades 6-8.
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District Administration Magazine
Screen time for kids is just like red meat for everyone. It's bad for them, unless it's not so bad. Sometimes. Got it? A new study by the U.K.-based Oxford Internet Institute found that young people who use digital devices — such as a television, video game console, tablet, laptop or smartphone — have better social and emotional skills than kids who don't use these devices, according to a story in the MIT Technology Review.
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The Associated Press
The number of young Americans watching online videos every day has more than doubled, according to survey findings. They're glued to them for nearly an hour a day, twice as long as they were four years ago. And often, the survey found, they're seeing the videos on services such as YouTube that are supposedly off limits to children younger than age 13. "It really is the air they breathe," said Michael Robb, senior director of research for Common Sense Media, the nonprofit organization that issued the report. The group tracks young people's tech habits and offers guidance for parents.
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The New York Times
In a typical week, Adrienne Vaccarezza-Isla, a school counselor in Chicago, might help a dozen eighth graders apply to high schools across the city. Or try to convince a mother that her daughter, who had seen her get shot years earlier, should join a group for students dealing with trauma. Or work with sixth and seventh graders on time management.
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Education DIVE
During her six years as principal, Sophia Mendoza was always asked to put out fires. When Lankershim Elementary was in its fourth year as a Program Improvement school, Mendoza, who has been an educator for 22 years, stepped in to improve outcomes for a student subgroup that was repeatedly falling behind the learning benchmark. When she became principal at Haddon Avenue Elementary, it was to ease escalating tension and increase communication between teachers, parents and the community.
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NAESP
I was wiped out. It was a late Friday afternoon—the end of a long day. School had only been in session for two weeks, but like most principals, I was solving problems nonstop as we settled into the new school year. Two teacher representatives had made an appointment to see me at the end of the school day, and I was worried. They showed up with a lengthy list of concerns, ranging from scheduling and teacher duties to arrival and dismissal logistics. Several of their problems were easy to solve, and we moved through them quickly. But then, from what felt like out of nowhere, came a list of other, more serious issues ... about me.
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NAESP
Although the impact of the school principal upon student success might be more indirect than that of the classroom teacher, that impact is nearly as profound. Part of the reason for this influence is that almost everything the school principal does — or does not do — has a direct impact on teachers who, in turn, have a direct impact on students. When identifying the traits, behaviors, beliefs, and actions of the most successful school leaders, the list tends to go on and on. However, we have found that most — if not all — fall into at least one of 10 categories we call "Principal Principles."
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