Math practice doesn’t have to be all exercises and worksheets. You know that, but do your students’ parents know that? Families probably know far more about teaching now after supervising hours of Zoom lessons during the various degrees of sheltering in place that families have experienced since the
We have so much to learn from the recent “pandemic teaching and learning” experience. The strongest message is to learn from what went well during COVID, and ensure we do NOT return to the old ‘grammar of schooling’. We should be collating and sharing all
Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” This is an incredibly challenging and difficult time for us and yet I believe we have an opportunity as educators to reshape and transform our education system from what we learned about COVID-19.
When the governor of Massachusetts declared that learning would continue while schools are closed, he added that the creativity of teachers would get us through this quarantine. Indeed, the creativity and hard work of teachers keeping students focused and engaged with learning has been impressive. However, we all have to shift our thinking in order to make distance learning work for each student. Teachers are only one third of the equation. Teachers must rethink how to structure learning so that parents and students can develop routines and apply self-direction skills to accomplish
In March 2020, McKinsey & Company published an article titled “Beyond coronavirus – the path to the next normal” which provided guidance for leaders to navigate the imminent restructuring of the global economic order. The scale of change caused by the coronavirus will continue to unfold in the months ahead, and will impact
Minute by minute, our world as we know it is changing before our eyes. Faced with such tremendous uncertainty, imagine what this feels like to our children! How best can we support them? For starters, we must be adaptable and recognize that academics are far less important than offering solace and hope so that we encourage social connections
It was finally my turn. It was my time to walk the campus and the stage. It was my time to be the upper, upperclassmen. And it was finally my time to hear people say that I had “senioritis”. I was excited. I was ready, and I might have even been a little
We have spent the last weeks watching many schools close their doors–some for the rest of this semester—to control the number of COVID-19 infections. I am excited to see our society’s strong commitment to public health. As many of us teachers face the daunting task of serving our students by transitioning to online instruction, most for us the first
With the prospect of schools being out for a while, I will review some of the Visible Learning influences that may help understand what really matters and what does not matter as much. First, does it matter that students are not in the physical place called school? There is a body of research on the effects of losing school time, but
Many teachers and families are concerned that children staying at home for an extended period of time—whether due to an illness, a natural disaster, or another emergency situation—aren’t learning as much as they would if they were in their regularly scheduled classes, even when teachers