Blog

If you are working with teens to plan bright futures, we would like to offer you a Sample Lesson Plan from our Healthy Foundations for Future Families curriculum. For the past 10 years, our organization Educate Tomorrow’s Parents (ETP), has been working upstream to prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences by educating teens before they form families. Our science-based curriculum meets essential standards for secondary school health education. There are several components, including a student...

Thanks to a grant from the Daviess County Community Foundation’s Women’s Fund, two area school corporations will be able to offer additional services to help improve the lives of students both in and out of the classroom. Daviess-Martin Special Education Co-op School Academic and Behavior Coach Missy Brothers and Kelly Miller, Washington Community Schools social worker, made the pitch for their project “Addressing the Emotional, Social and Academic Health of our Youth” last week at the...

We are among hundreds of Chicago educators who would welcome critics to visit one of the 120 city schools implementing new models for learning – with and without technology. Because, as it turns out, Chicago is fast becoming a hub for personalized learning. And, it is no coincidence that our academic growth rates are also among the highest in the nation. Before personalized learning, we designed our classrooms around the educator. Decisions were made based on how educators preferred to...

Regardless of how busy we are, we cannot underestimate the importance of cultivating a classroom culture in which students feel valued and respected because if our students aren’t learning, the other tasks are meaningless. And one way we can build this solid foundation for learning is to listen to our students. ELICITING STUDENTS’ THOUGHTS What are you thinking? M y students know that I care about what they think because their insights lead us all to deeper understanding. Fostering real...

Decades of research have shown that having more numerous and stronger connections predicts better health and well-being , but the shape of your social network matters too. People who are “information brokers” connect people who wouldn’t otherwise know each other. More broadly, being a good friend, teacher, or manager often requires taking the perspective of others—seeing the world through their eyes and understanding their joys and sorrows. These capacities depend on a social brain network ,...

On a rainy Saturday morning this spring, 40 teachers and school administrators sat on folding chairs in the basement of a Brooklyn school for an all-day workshop on how to talk about race in the classroom. Organized by Border Crossers, a nonprofit group that trains teachers, administrators and parents how to explore race and racism, the event was led by trainers Ana Duque and Ben Howort, both former teachers. The workshop began with a discussion of racism from both historical and current...

(Calif.) With an important legislative deadline quickly approaching, Senate education committee members passed about a dozen bills last week targeting topics including time off for teen parents, statewide assessment options and charter school transparency. AB 1951 would require the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to approve a nationally recognized high school assessment–such as the SAT or ACT–that districts can administer to students instead of the grade 11 California Assessment...

Hosted by EdSource and The Education Trust—West and recorded March 21, 2018, this video conference looks at how to define education equity and what California schools and districts can do to close achievement and opportunity gaps for their students. The discussion was moderated by Louis Freedberg, executive director of EdSource and Ryan J. Smith, executive director of The Education Trust—West. It featured a panel of education experts and practitioners with deep engagement and experience in...

Emotional development in schools is integral to the way that students develop academically, and it also sets them up to be responsible, caring citizens once they reach adulthood. Not only that, but having the ability to empathize with others has been shown to reduce aggression in problem children and reduce incidences of bullying in school. It’s a notion that educator and author Mary Gordon is intimately familiar with. As the founder and executive director of Roots of Empathy , she’s devoted...

Here is a link to a piece on how the small things teachers and coaches do (often unintentionally) affect us negatively for decades. Solutions and suggestions offered. We need to ponder more the message we get too from children's games. Their affect, like the affect of teachers and coaches and other educators, cannot be ignored. https://medium.com/@KarenGrossEdu/sadly-we-remember-the-bad-stuff-teachers-said-and-did-when-we-were-young-94d20e8d5b97

As we celebrate July 4 th , Independence Day, a day typically filled with cookouts, fireworks, parades, and honor of past sacrifices made, my thoughts are drawn to the 1,000’s of classrooms filled with students seeking their own personal independence. Unfortunately, due to the interruption of trauma in childhood, they have become dependent on the maladaptive responses they have acquired in order to mitigate, compensate, cope and survive the impact of the adversity dealt them. Dysregulated...

This past school year Every Neighborhood Partnership (ENP) had a great opportunity to collaborate with two Fresno Unified Elementary schools, Fresno State, Fresno City College and Alliant International University to pilot two unique programs that help to build resiliency and social-emotional life skills. Through this collaborative partnership, ENP was able to facilitate two evidence-based programs that help students to build and develop social and emotional life skills through yoga and...