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Mark Anthony Gooden on Culturally Responsive School Leadership
To better support underserved students, principals need to deepen their understanding of equity, says the co-author of a forthcoming report on leadership development.In this interview, Mark Anthony Gooden, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, and an ASCD author, argues that, to tackle deeply entrenched problems in schools and meet the needs of underserved students, today’s schools must be better versed in “culturally responsive school leadership” (CRSL). The interview draws on a report Gooden co-authored for the Wallace Foundation, maintaining that CRSL, a form of equity-centered leadership, should be more thoroughly infused into principal-development systems. -
Ready...Set...Success: A Formula for Leading Schools with Love
For compassionate discipline to be more than just a good intention, it requires a framework.
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Learning to Teach with Empathy Saved My Job
Lisa Westman’s actionable steps to an empathetic classroom environment can keep you going, even in the hard times.
It was pandemonium. I lost control. Amid the chaos, one student, no older than six, walked to the marble jar the classroom teacher used for rewarding good behavior, opened it, and scattered three months of collective behavior tracking across the floor.
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After a Year of Trauma for All, How Can We Discipline More Fairly?
Students of color are often disciplined more harshly. We can't let that happen this year.
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Prevention Interviews: Listening with Intention
What if we used the time usually spent punishing a student—often an ineffective strategy—to talk with that student in a way that helps them succeed?
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Planning Technology Integration for In-Person Instruction
Strategic and resourceful use of technology doesn't have to disappear once distance learning does.
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Instructional Planning After a Year of Uncertainty
During pandemic recovery, schools must be especially intentional about planning and pacing.
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Tell Us About Summer 2021
Readers share how pandemic-era teaching has influenced their lesson planning.
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What Can We Learn from COVID-Era Instruction?
Beware of doom and gloom reports. Looking at evidence of what went right could help schools break free of long-stifling practices.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy to come from COVID-related distance learning would be not learning from this experience to improve our teaching when we physically return to classrooms. A robust discussion of the evidence of success during this pandemic school year could be a major boost to how we teach and learn.
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Making Classroom Observations Matter
When school leaders use evidence-based tools focused on equity for observations, they have greater potential to improve classroom practice.
Dina Edwards, an elementary principal in San Francisco, recently had a conversation with a 4th grade teacher following her observation of a math class this teacher conducted on prime numbers. For the first time in her 10-year principal career, Dina did not start the post-observation talk with "How do you think the lesson went?" Nor did she do most of the talking.
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What Great Principals Really Do
A new research study sheds light on the impact of effective principals—and what makes them different.
A school's success is largely determined by the effectiveness of its principal—decades of research have made this clear. Less settled is the question of what principals need to know and do to drive positive outcomes in their schools.
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Why COVID-19 Is Our Equity Check
With students dispersed, schools and our society must confront long-simmering inequities.
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Keep It Simple, Schools
To ensure equity and engagement in remote learning, schools need to zero in on key priorities, including enrichment and manageable projects.
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Accommodations, Modifications, and Intervention at a Distance
To support students with IEPs during school shutdowns, educators need careful coordination and a focus on what matters most.
Never in our lifetime has a global health crisis caused the need for such a broad swath of long-term school closings as we are experiencing with the novel coronavirus outbreak. Teachers who have experimented with "flipping" their classrooms and other ways to teach online probably have a certain level of confidence in this sudden shift to remote learning. But for those who've never experienced online learning or teaching or feel less confident with digital technology, this can be an unwelcome and stressful change. The challenges are particularly steep for educators working with students with disabilities.
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Remote Learning’s Essential Questions
One prevailing perception we hear is that online learning is a lonely endeavor where relationships rarely flourish. We have found that placing emphasis on building relationships among students, parents and teachers makes a big difference.
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The Pivot to Remote Instruction
We can all point to spring 2020 and say, “This is when education took a new direction and changed forever.” No doubt, our profession has changed more in the past 12 months than it did in the past 100 years. That being said, it does not have to be so difficult, strange and uncomfortable.
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To Be Young, Gifted, and Innocent
To better support and nurture young students of color, educators must confront harmful stereotypes.
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Teaching Young Children Remotely
Early-grade students need social interaction and play to learn. How does that translate to the screen?
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Cultural Responsiveness Starts With Responsive Leaders
Cultural Responsiveness Starts With Responsive Leaders.
Daman Harris, principal of Wheaton Woods Elementary School in Rockville, Md., and I first became acquainted in my prior work as a teacher in Montgomery County, Md. He is leading a grassroots educator initiative to recruit, develop, retain and empower male educators of color, and over several years, we found we shared a commitment to this work.
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The Reality of Unconscious Racial Bias
The admittedly uncomfortable and sometimes tense task of navigating behavioral and attitudinal change in schools
BY SARAH E. FIARMAN AND TRACEY A. BENSON/School Administrator, February 2020 -
How I learned to Teach Reading
One teacher's journey to overcoming instructional confusion.
Reading is one of the most unnatural things that we teach children to do. It's not like learning to talk, which for most children comes naturally as a result of hearing spoken words. It's also not a matter of simple memorization, which kids can also pick up very early.
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A District Leader's Education in Early Reading
Why I decided our district needed to move in a new direction.
This past year has seen a significant uptick in discussion about reading instruction in schools. Despite reforms to standards, teacher evaluation, and a push for more technology in classrooms, reading scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress—among other worrisome literacy indicators—have declined slightly.
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The Heart of Reading Instruction
When I was in elementary school in the 1980s, I remember reading series like The Berenstain Bears. One of my favorite titles was Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room, which inspired an early journey into Marie Kondo-style organization.
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'I'm Afraid There Has Been a Mistake'
Many students with disabilities remain segregated from their nondisabled peers, educated in separate schools, self-contained classes, resource rooms and pullout programs. Decades of research show that this segregation in the name of special education is not as effective as inclusion when it comes to student academic, social and behavioral growth.
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Attitudes and Beliefs About Disabilities
Nearly 20 years ago at the start of my teaching career, I recall excitedly telling a colleague about the progress of Shanna, a student with autism who began participating in a general education science class. I shared that Shanna, who was 10, correctly answered a question about a geological formation called moraine.