Topic: Teaching & Learning
How Do We Improve Elementary Math Education? It Starts in High School.
Like me, most middle and high school mathematics teachers are keenly aware of our role in preparing the next generation of STEM professionals—engineers, health care workers, biologists, chemists and statisticians. However, few of us spend much time thinking about how we prepare the most influential STEM professionals of all: elementary... Read the full article >
If You Want Better Collaboration Around STEM, Build Infrastructure
The structure for collaboration between STEM teachers already exists at most schools. The most recent Teachers Know Best survey suggests that upwards of 68 percent of teachers have dedicated collaboration time with peers. However, the same data suggests that this time is not well used, with only 7 percent of teachers... Read the full article >
Learning in 3D: Making STEM Real
My six year-old nephew wakes up on a Saturday morning and plays Lego Star Wars on the Wii. He enters the sprawling 3D world of the game. He flies, drives, walks and jumps through it. He interacts with hundreds of objects. He understands scale, importance and each object’s relationship to... Read the full article >
Systematic Change in Education Begins with a New Vision for Professional Development
In his now-classic book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge describes systems thinking as a “discipline for seeing wholes.” It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots. “Systems thinking,” Senge writes, “offers a language that begins by restructuring how we... Read the full article >
Redesigning Teacher Preparation Today for the Classrooms of Tomorrow
Seemingly everything about our schools is changing as America shifts from a national, analog, industrial economy to a global, digital, information economy–demographics, technology, curriculum, standards and testing. The skills and knowledge students need, as they compete for jobs with peers from around the world, have risen to the highest levels... Read the full article >
The Road to Meeting Individual Learners' Needs
The charge to “transform the educational delivery system to better and more efficiently meet the needs of all students” has been the quest of the Kettle Moraine School District since I began serving as superintendent in this high achieving, blue-ribbon school system over five years ago. What is transformation? How... Read the full article >
STEM Curricular Designs for an Information Age
When you visit a middle or high school science classroom, what do you see? You may see students working on tablets or laptops, a teacher projecting the latest NASA images on the interactive white board, or a laboratory filled with probes and other gadgets. Does this mean you’ve entered a... Read the full article >
Transforming Schools through Expanded Learning Time
Orchard Gardens K-8 Pilot School (OGPS) opened in 2003 amidst much fanfare. Its $30 million building represented a large-scale effort to revitalize one of Boston’s poorest communities. But for its first seven years, OGPS was plagued by low academic performance and high staff turnover. From 2003 to 2010, Orchard Gardens... Read the full article >
A Student's Perspective
If you walked into a traditional high school today and asked 100 students if they liked school, I would guess that very few of them would say, yes. Maybe some of you have heard these comments, “Why do we have to learn about this? I am never going to use... Read the full article >