Culturally responsive teaching, learning standards are step in right direction
When we teach about racial and cultural identities, we need to amplify the voices from within these communities, rather than solely their white perspectives. Teaching Othello’s tragic portrayal of Black identity invalidates students’ needs to see themselves as people worthy of being depicted as valuable, capable, and fully human. But how do teachers, especially new teachers in the field, know how to choose texts that best serve their students of color? The new Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Standards are a step in the right direction. The standards will help to prepare new teachers to become culturally responsive by intentionally embracing individual student identities and making representation a priority within the curriculum.
Teaching innovation: New school staffing strategies inspired by the pandemic
Amid the profound disruption of the coronavirus pandemic, some schools and districts have responded with highly innovative staffing and scheduling strategies. They are extending the reach of great teachers, leveraging co-teaching models and teacher teams in new ways, and creating more flexible student groupings and more student-centric classrooms—all with the goal of playing to teachers’ strengths, better serving students, and providing more support for educators.
How principals affect students and schools: A systematic synthesis of two decades of research
This groundbreaking synthesis of research on school principals finds that effective principals have positive impacts on student achievement and attendance, as well as teacher satisfaction and retention. The report serves as a wide-ranging update to a landmark 2004 literature review, How Leadership Influences Student Learning, which helped establish the importance of principals after concluding that school leadership was second only to classroom instruction in school-related impacts on student learning. Both reports were commissioned by The Wallace Foundation.
Looking at the Pipeline, institutions producing Black and Brown teachers
Findings show that in the public school system nationwide, only 7% of teachers, 11% of principals, and 3% of superintendents are Black. In the following Yahoo Finance Live video interview, AACTE Dean in Residence Leslie Fenwick explores this topic. She discusses the impact desegregation of public schools has had on the decline of the Black teacher pipeline and what steps should be taken to reverse the trend.
The Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning podcast
The Partnerships for Social Emotional Learning Initiative (PSELI) is a comprehensive, multiyear initiative exploring whether and how children can benefit from intentional partnerships between schools and out-of-school time programs focused on building social and emotional skills – and what it takes to do the work. Research has found these competencies promote success in school, career and life. A new podcast series from The Wallace Foundation shares findings and early lessons from a RAND Corporation study of the PSELI initiative.
Top-tier principals spark big gains in student learning. A new study shows how much
Years of research show that principals can significantly impact student achievement. Now, a major new study quantifies just how much difference an effective principal can make. Replacing a below-average principal with someone in the above-average category—for example, a principal in the bottom 25th percentile on effectiveness with one in the 75th percentile or above—can add the equivalent of 2.9 more months of learning in math and 2.7 more months of learning in reading during a single school year, according to the report released by the Wallace Foundation Tuesday.
As yet untold
When it comes down to it, do you know the people in your life as well as you think you do? Or are you surprised at how often you learn something new about them? Everyone has a story to tell, a collection of unique experiences, triumphs and struggles, highs and lows. Dr. Javaid Siddiqi, President & CEO of The Hunt Institute, is the host, and will be talking to some of the best known names in politics and education to get to the “real” story.
Elevating classroom innovation: Illinois educators re-imagine school
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a reinvention of education. Since March, educators across Illinois have shifted instruction online, found new ways to connect with students and families, and worked thousands of hours to learn and adapt new strategies, approaches, and technological tools to meet student needs. Their efforts offer new possibilities for the future of learning. Yet while educators innovated, our educational system has not kept up, because it was not built to efficiently identify or bring to scale those innovations that have had the greatest impact for students. That’s why Teach Plus Illinois, together with the Illinois Teachers of the Year, proposes
a coordinated campaign to solicit great ideas from educators and recognize and elevate classroom innovation. The aim of this campaign is to develop ways for schools to disrupt the status quo by replacing century-old patterns with sustainable, high-impact shifts in the structure of school and delivery of instruction that result in significant benefits for students.
