A Principal's Reflections

JUNE 25, 2013

The following is a guest post by Juliana Meehan - Teacher of English at Tenafly Middle School and candidate for New Jersey principal’s certification through NJ EXCEL, currently interning with Principal Eric Sheninger at New Milford High School. Thank you, Steve, for your wonderful leadership (and the delicious breakfast)!

Education 261

Education K-12 Archiving Library 261

ED Surge

JANUARY 21, 2025

When people outside of school ask you what you do say, at a social event how do you describe your work? I'm a second-year doctoral student in educational leadership. My focus is on charter schools, multiliteracies and school librarianship. So you don't necessarily say, I'm a school librarian? That's what I do.

Charter School 100

Charter School Library Education Lesson Plan 100

The Hechinger Report

NOVEMBER 11, 2018

. As a middle school teacher, I often see my colleagues taking pains to keep students quiet during class. After all, the rhythm of the traditional classroom doesn’t leave much room for chatting among students, and socializing in class is often viewed as a proxy for poor behavior or inattentiveness. Build interdependency.

Leadership 111

Leadership Classroom Management Middle School Economics 111

Cult of Pedagogy

APRIL 1, 2024

” After extensive research, she decided that the path she wanted to pursue for her state was Educators Rising, which gets young people started on a path to teaching as early as middle school. “It takes years to be a great teacher,” Eckert says. And so it was just like, Oh wow. We got some stuff to fix.

Social Justice 220

Social Justice Pedagogy Leadership Library 220

ED Surge

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

After grieving a complete turnover in leadership last spring—waving goodbye to our head of school, our high school director, our middle school director and our school psychologist—our outgoing head of school decided that instead of hiring externally to fill the traditional leadership positions, we should try a new approach.

Leadership 126

Leadership Middle School Humanities Teaching 126

The Hechinger Report

JULY 3, 2023

At the start of my teaching career, I was the only full-time, Black, male classroom teacher for a predominately Black student population in a southwest Philadelphia middle school. These struggles are more prevalent in schools that traditionally serve students of color and those from low-income backgrounds.

Social Justice 145

Social Justice Leadership Elementary School Professional Development 145

The Hechinger Report

JANUARY 12, 2023

Each elementary school focuses on a specific area — engineering, math and science, the arts, leadership, or foreign languages, among others. In high school, students are expected to complete a career cluster by taking several courses in a subject area, such as health sciences, manufacturing, arts or business. Whittenberg.

Elementary School 139

Elementary School Education Middle School K-12 139

The Hechinger Report

MARCH 6, 2017

Our nine districts have been considering free or low-cost open educational resources alongside traditional options. All of our districts are members the members of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools, an 86-district coalition recognized for innovation and leadership in education.

Lesson Plan 108

Lesson Plan Professional Development Tradition Middle School 108

The Hechinger Report

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

Three recent reports from our organization, Education Reform Now , highlight transformative strategies that high-poverty schools across three states — Texas, Massachusetts and Colorado — are using to drive stronger student outcomes. No school governance model is predominant.

K-12 127

K-12 Professional Development Tutoring Government 127

Digital Promise

FEBRUARY 24, 2016

Sara is the Director of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools. Members of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools serve as examples of how forward-thinking leadership can transform learning. We are grateful for your leadership. You can reach her on Twitter at @sschappy. In Vancouver, Wash.,

K-12 91

K-12 Leadership Middle School Public School 91

Digital Promise

APRIL 4, 2022

When Renee Dawson, the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools coach at Crawford W. Long Middle School in Atlanta, met John*, an eighth grader with learning and speech disabilities, they bonded immediately. Student tech teams are an integral part of the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools initiative.

Middle School 118

Middle School Leadership Tradition Teaching 118

Digital Promise

MARCH 5, 2020

School libraries are shifting from traditional settings where information is consumed to modern library programs which support authentic student inquiry, design, and creation. Competency-based performance is not the same as traditional professional development.

Library 120

Library Artifacts Advocacy Professional Development 120

ED Surge

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

When a public school system in the San Francisco Bay Area explored replacing traditional grading practices with a form of “standards-based grading system” meant to eliminate bias, it sparked widespread opposition from parents. They signed petitions and showed up in force at school board meetings to rail against the changes.

Middle School 142

Middle School High School Teaching Social Studies 142

The Hechinger Report

DECEMBER 22, 2018

A Crew of seventh graders at King Middle School in Portland, Maine, plays a conflict-resolution game called “Is This Seat Taken?” Ten schools began using the model in 1993. Kids in traditional schools sometimes act like they’re on a cruise ship, where they sit on deck and teachers bring them stuff to do,” Berger said. “We

Middle School 111

Middle School Library Elementary School Tradition 111

The Hechinger Report

JULY 11, 2018

The February 14 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, gave new life to student activism, prompting a level of civic engagement among students that many had never considered. Van Tasel made sure students had time during the school day to work on their projects.

Civic Engagement 91

Civic Engagement Civics Leadership Elementary School 91

The Hechinger Report

MAY 13, 2018

Ninth-graders at the Science Leadership Academy work on a group project in science class. Philadelphia’s move toward the project-based model is part of a broader push to open alternatives to neighborhood comprehensive schools, which have struggled in the face of chronic underfunding. Photo: Amadou Diallo for The Hechinger Report.

Project-Based Learning 106

Project-Based Learning Leadership High School Tradition 106

The Hechinger Report

SEPTEMBER 24, 2018

I visited many elementary and middle schools where students, with bulging headphones wrapped over their heads, stared at separate computers, each learning something different at the same moment. It focused on four unidentified high schools, two in the Southeast, one in New England and one in the Midwest.

Charter School 111

Charter School Project-Based Learning Tradition Middle School 111

The Hechinger Report

AUGUST 13, 2024

“We have kids that on our benchmark knowledge assessments are scoring what is the equivalent of second grade, first grade, fourth grade,” said Fisher, who is also a professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University. Middle and high school teachers may also be hesitant to embrace the approach.

High School 145

High School Teaching Primary Sources K-12 145

The Hechinger Report

MARCH 1, 2019

In middle school we always did work as an individual,” says Rosalia Minyeti, an 11th-grader from the Bronx who found the adjustment challenging. “I It was launched in 2015 out of a recognition that schools adopting mastery-based principles were often doing so in isolation. “We This may be a missed opportunity.

Cultures 111

Cultures Leadership Economics Tradition 111

The Hechinger Report

NOVEMBER 28, 2018

The first schools to implement what Public Impact calls an “Opportunity Culture,” did so during the 2013-14 school year, and Edgecombe County Public Schools is set to become the first district to bring the model systemwide. Next year, the remaining five schools will do the same.

Elementary School 111

Elementary School Advocacy Cultures Public School 111

The Hechinger Report

MARCH 16, 2021

Until middle school, when a U-46 administrator — Wells’ friend’s mother, also Black — noticed that April’s grasp exceeded her classes’ reach. She coached Wells on how to talk with her middle school counselor. Wells spoke up for herself and got into honors classes, where she remained through high school.

Middle School 132

Middle School High School Elementary School Public School 132

The Hechinger Report

OCTOBER 10, 2018

Now the middle school, along with two of the district’s other elementary schools and its high school, have makerspaces. Walking through Havre Public Schools this year, a visitor would likely take note of the makerspaces. But this is hard. It’s the people.”

Project-Based Learning 103

Project-Based Learning Public School Elementary School Professional Development 103

The Hechinger Report

MAY 2, 2020

A network of charter schools in California and Washington developed the Summit Learning Program for their students almost a decade ago; the model got a boost in 2014 from Facebook engineers after Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, visited a Summit middle school. That’s pretty much gone with Summit,” Hinton Sainz said.

Junior High 134

Junior High Charter School Elementary School Social Studies 134

The Hechinger Report

MARCH 1, 2017

Although she earned a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate in math instruction for both elementary and middle school, she never had to take a class about students with disabilities. Christina Rodriguez teaches a math lesson at Bloomfield Middle School. No one taught her these strategies. Photo: Jackie Mader.

Middle School 100

Middle School Professional Development Teaching Advocacy 100

Dangerously Irrelevant

DECEMBER 19, 2018

Every school system has pockets of innovation. Those three forward-thinking teachers in the elementary school, that one grade-level team in the middle school, the department that’s really trying to do something different at the high school, that amazing principal over there, and so on. You’re out of luck.

Middle School 94

Middle School Elementary School Tradition High School 94

The Hechinger Report

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

(The Mathematica researchers focused on borderline schools that were just below and above a federal threshold to qualify for turnaround funds and found that the schools that went through turnarounds didn’t have better outcomes than those that didn’t.). Stricter school discipline for students has been a common theme in many turnarounds.

Charter School 134

Charter School High School Leadership Tradition 134

The Hechinger Report

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

The results from our large scale field trials and two years of operational use are promising – data show more equitable results for edTPA than traditional standardized measures of teaching knowledge and skills. in comparison to the nationally recommended standard of 42. There is much work to do. There is much work to do.”.

Teaching 88

Teaching Pedagogy Leadership Tradition 88

The Hechinger Report

JANUARY 26, 2021

At one table, the conversation turned to the growing pains of changing course from the traditional “sage on a stage” teaching model, where a teacher holds forth at the front of the classroom while students listen, to a student-focused, personalized model. “We Torres, on the other hand, said she misses a more traditional way of learning.

Education 145

Education Charter School Professional Development Tradition 145

The Hechinger Report

MAY 23, 2023

But after most schools shifted their classes online in early 2020, remote learning caught on with some families, including those who preferred to give their children the flexibility of learning from home, or whose children struggled with social anxiety in school buildings or hadn’t found success in traditional learning environments.

Charter School 114

Charter School K-12 Middle School Elementary School 114

The Hechinger Report

AUGUST 11, 2017

Moheeb Kaied, a seventh-grader this fall, shows a visitor how he checks his academic progress using a monitoring website that one of the teachers at the school developed. NEW YORK — Few middle schoolers are as clued in to their mathematical strengths and weakness as Moheeb Kaied. But Moheeb defended his school’s approach.

Middle School 110

Middle School High School Tradition History 110

The Hechinger Report

MAY 16, 2016

Ron Smith (left), a middle school network superintendent in Oakland, speaks to Jaime Aquino of New Leaders during a “learning walk” at a local middle school. It was almost the end of first period at Bret Harte Middle School when the five superintendents descended on math class. Photo: Jackie Mader.

Middle School 76

Middle School Leadership Professional Development Charter School 76

Digital Promise

APRIL 19, 2017

Teachers at Edmunds Middle School in Burlington, Vermont, recently participated in a professional development session focused on innovative approaches to problem solving. The students had more agency with this activity than with a more traditional, teacher-directed assignment.

Professional Development 56

Professional Development Middle School Tradition Leadership 56

The Hechinger Report

JUNE 6, 2018

Arlington is a fast-growing district, and Discovery Elementary opened in 2015 as part of an ongoing school-building program (it shares a campus with a middle school with a trailer park to accommodate its overflowing student population). When teachers get useful, timely data, they use it.

K-12 111

K-12 Elementary School Middle School Advocacy 111

The Hechinger Report

APRIL 25, 2023

Meanwhile, teachers help make decisions about the school’s future in their roles on the different committees — personnel, instructional leadership, scheduling, budget and finance — that meet monthly. In addition to the school-wide model, there are lighter-touch ways of embracing a teacher-powered philosophy, educators said.

Charter School 139

Charter School Government Sociology Social Studies 139

The Hechinger Report

JUNE 11, 2017

The modern high school building, with its wide hallways, sunny classrooms and up-to-date science labs, would seem the perfect setting for the education model of the future. Ted Finn, Gray-New Gloucester’s third principal in five years, acknowledged that the changing leadership has made the transition tricky.

High School 78

High School Social Studies Leadership Tradition 78

The Hechinger Report

OCTOBER 29, 2020

Now they are demanding a greater role in school policy and the decisions that shape their educations. She was hired as the student voice specialist at Chicago Public Schools in 2012 to oversee the district’s newly created “student voice committees.”. Credit: Alison Yin for The Hechinger Report.

Civics 143

Civics Civic Engagement High School Government 143

Dangerously Irrelevant

MARCH 11, 2016

Clear Lake Middle School (CLMS) knew where it wanted to go. CLMS took that idea and ran with it, substituting ‘teacher genius hour’ for some of its traditional professional development. Students who previously struggled with the traditional school model are finding their niches of expertise and success.

Project-Based Learning 35

Project-Based Learning Middle School Professional Development Tradition 35