Topic: Teaching & Learning
Finding the Genius in Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities
About Lake Hills School Lake Hills School is the Exceptional Student Education Center School for Lake County, Florida, which serves students with significant cognitive disabilities (SwSCD) ages 3–22. All of the classrooms at Lake Hills School are self-contained meaning the classes are multi-grade level and multi-ability level. For example, a... Read the full article >
School Turnaround
Every graduate we see proudly sporting their cap and gown has a story. Whether their journey across that stage was likely or remarkable, they are to be lauded. Their graduation is the fulfillment of a promise that their hard work, commitment, and determination to overcome challenges large and small will... Read the full article >
Invest in Youth and Adult Leaders
Years after leaving that school, I still feel pangs of distress in my stomach as I think about walking into the building. The toxic energy was palpable. No smiles were exchanged in the hallways. The teachers’ lounge became a dumping ground of complaints, tears, and stress over the latest round... Read the full article >
Open-Sourcing Education to Bolster Engagement and Educator Collaboration
The study of open education practice has shown how open educational resources (OER)— freely available materials that can be downloaded, distributed, adapted, and openly shared to better serve all students (see box)—accelerates systemic change in curriculum and instruction, as well as enhanced learning for students by embedding participatory processes of... Read the full article >
CEO Message: Student Engagement
Our research shows that student engagement is a vital component of quality education. AdvancED recently conducted a pilot in three states, where we looked at measuring student engagement with our eProve™ surveys tool. You can read about our findings in Measuring Student Engagement with eProve surveys. Focusing excessively on adult behaviors... Read the full article >
Supporting Student Engagement in State Accountability and Improvement Systems under the Every Student Succeeds Act
The primary goal of K–12 education should be to empower young people to reach their full potential. Meeting this goal requires an inclusive and supportive learning environment designed to meet the promise for each and every child. The passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2001 was... Read the full article >
Seven Teacher Moves to More Engaged, Higher Performing Classrooms
Not long ago, three former teachers turned researchers set off to discover what K–12 schools can learn from the best-run organizations in America. The researchers, Mallory Dwinal, David Richard and Jennifer Wu, began by identifying the best workplaces and looking systematically at the structures and processes that high-performing managers put... Read the full article >
Reading for Engagement: How an emphasis on literacy can motivate students and transform school culture—and results
When we look at most middle and high school classrooms, it turns out that the problems students face in reading for understanding are not driven by any innate inability to learn on their part but by teaching in ways that do not foster critical thinking, reading and writing as central... Read the full article >
Don't Panic: Fostering Student Engagement with Engineering Design
I told them Asterick’s Theme Park* wanted students to help design a new attraction that would be built in the footprint of the formerly popular and now defunct “Vertigo” ride. I gave them a letter from Asterick’s CEO, dimensions and budgets. In groups, they had adopted various hats–engineer, historian, physicist... Read the full article >
Weaving Key Elements of Student Engagement into the Fabric of Schools
In the context of our work on dropout prevention, we have seen the essential role student engagement plays.[1] It seems common sense that the more students are engaged, the more they will see the relevance of their experiences, feel connected to their school experiences and develop more positive attitudes and attributes,... Read the full article >