About the Identity Safe Formative Assessment Five-Part Blog Series Formative assessment (FA) operates as a feedback loop. Together, educators and students set goals, assess, and adjust learning in real time based on collected evidence combined with feedback. Identity Safety is an equity-focused approach where students of all backgrounds feel
The Professional Learning Community movement, dating back to the 1970s if not before, has focused on students’ learning and the ways in which teams of educators can respond when students do not learn. Over time, adjustments have been made to the processes teams use to
Why? Whether we talk about it or not, our students regularly experience the impacts of social privilege, oppression, opportunity, power, and activism every day. Children in schools and communities are faced each day with disparities in opportunity and are often forced into systems of inequity that maintain social status quo. It is
Why I Left Silicon Valley, EdTech, and Personalized Learning It’s hard to say whether I chose personalized learning--or whether it chose me. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but when I moved halfway across the country in 2014 to join an education technology company and network of
One month into the new school year—a time that is typically filled with abundant hope, visionary plans, and great clarity—I find myself increasingly losing focus. And, while I take some comfort in the knowledge that that I’m not alone in feeling this way, I occasionally
Authentic dialogue across differences is powerful precisely because it allows us to see beyond the barriers of our own culturally-conditioned realities. Whatever mind-spaces we may have been socialized into, as teachers we are called to transcend our particular truths and perspectives and come to a
For the past five years my organization, InnovateEd, has supported a network of 30 school districts from across California to develop cultures, build capacity, and create coherent systems. We use a framework for systemic improvement to guide efforts at the district, school, and classroom levels toward creating a coherent system of continuous improvement. My new book, Districts on
What word would you fill in the blank space of this sentence with, if you were talking with a student in your classroom in an appeal to their capacity to empathize with their peers? “Please treat others as _____ would like to be treated.” Did you think
Not seeing racism and feeling its offense is a privilege only white people can have. When I was very young, I learned to skip rope to a simple tune my best friend taught me with the words “eenie meenie miney moe, catch a (n-word) by the toe.” Even now, every
Integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education has received international attention through the media, policy-makers, and professional organizations such as National Science Teachers Association and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics as a way to engage students in authentic and transdisciplinary problem-solving.