Monday, December 18, 2017

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 10/26/2017

  • tags: hiring employment

    • Because of scarce resources, we often try to have one position fill many needs, usually with disastrous results.
    • Chang suggests organizations consider outsourcing the parts of a job that are outside the main scope.
    • But there’s a difference between wanting to nurture talent and blindly putting someone into a position based on gut feeling and hope.
    • We now use the Omnia Profile assessment at NAIS to fit
       candidates to a particular job. This tool has been invaluable in hiring people who are a strong match for the unique position. 
    • We often hire people because we like them as individuals, without thinking about how well they will perform in a team. As it turns out, research shows that givers can make the difference in team success.
    • they found that the single strongest predictor of group effectiveness was the amount of help team members gave each other. Further, they found that “in the highest-performing teams, team members invested extensive time and energy in coaching, teaching, and consulting with their colleagues. These contributions helped members question their own assumptions, fill gaps in their knowledge, gain access to novel perspectives, and recognize patterns in seemingly disconnected threads of information.”
      • helping-behavior facilitates organizational effectiveness by:

          
           
        • enabling employees to solve problems and get work done faster.
        •  
        • enhancing team cohesion and coordination.
        •  
        • ensuring that expertise is transferred from experienced to new employees.
        •  
        • reducing variability in performance when some members are overloaded or distracted.
        •  
        • establishing an environment in which customers and suppliers feel that their needs are the organization’s top priority.
      • Giver cultures: Employees help one another, share knowledge, offer mentoring, and make connections without expecting anything in return.
      •  
      • Taker cultures: Employees get as much as possible from others while contributing less in return.
      •  
      • Matcher cultures: Employees help only those who help them, maintaining an equal balance of give and take.
    • the competitive team finished the task more quickly, but the cooperative team completed the task with greater accuracy.
    • people have difficulty transitioning from competitive to cooperative rewards and developed a “pattern of cutthroat competition.”
        • Takers take personal credit for their successes. They will use the words “I” and “me” exclusively in responding to interview questions.
        •  
        • Takers often manage up and kick down. They are charming to supervisors but often abusive with subordinates. Grant suggests always getting references from direct reports to get a sense of this.
        •  
        • Takers engage in antagonistic behavior at the expense of others. They often put others down or will talk about their success in relation to how much better they are than others.
        •  
          

    • hire for character than for skill

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Monday, October 16, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 10/17/2017

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Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 09/20/2017

  • tags: daydreaming creativity brain breaks multitasking learning

    • It’s never too early to learn smart strategies to focus in on priorities and tune out what’s not immediately necessary.
    • Neuroscience has shown that multitasking — the process of doing more than one thing at the same time — doesn’t exist.
    • Multitasking is also stressful for the body. When people try to do several things at once, like drive and text, the brain uses up oxygenated glucose at a much faster rate and releases the stress hormone cortisol.
    • Rather than trying to do everything at the same time, the most productive people prioritize and block off their schedules to focus on one task at a time.
    • the basic principle of focusing in on one task at a time holds true for anyone.

       

    • “When they’re doing something, they’re really doing it,” Levitin said. “They get more done because their brain isn’t half somewhere else.”
    • “People who take regular breaks — and naps even — end up being more productive and more creative in their work,” Levitin said.
    • “You need to give your brain time to consolidate all the information that’s come in, to toss it and turn it.”
    • The brain has a natural way of giving itself a break — it’s called daydreaming. “It allows you to refresh and release all those neural circuits that get all bound up when you’re focused,”
    • “Children shouldn’t be overly scheduled,” Levitin said. “They should have blocks of time to promote spontaneity and creativity.”
    • Daydreaming and playing are crucial to develop the kind of creativity many say should be a focal point of a modern education system.
    • The world has changed much more quickly than the genome can keep up with, which means schools have a responsibility to help kids develop the skills to sift through the overwhelming stimuli.
    • It can be hard to focus on one thing when there’s a long, nagging list of things that need to get done in a day, both personal and professional. Levitin recommends writing all those things down on notecards, externalizing the memories into digestible bits that can be shuffled as priorities change. “My brain knows I’ve written it down and it stops nagging me,” Levitin said of his method.
    • he hyperactive child might be able to help develop a more creative set of ideas, while the more focused child knows how to take that idea
    • to fruition.

       

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Friday, August 11, 2017

Friday, June 9, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 06/10/2017

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Thursday, May 25, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 05/26/2017

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Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 05/25/2017

  • tags: coding

    • “If parents spend all their time filling up their child’s spare time, then the child’s never going to learn to do this for themselves.”
    • In 1993, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips wrote that the “capacity to be bored can be a developmental achievement for the child.” Boredom is a chance to contemplate life, rather than rushing through it, he said
    • “It is one of the most oppressive demands of adults that the child should be interested, rather than take time to find what interests him. Boredom is integral to the process of taking one’s time,” added Phillips.
    • Fry suggests that at the the start of the summer, parents sit down with their kids—at least those above the age of four—and collectively write down a list of everything their children might enjoy doing during their break.
    • Then, if your child comes to you throughout the summer complaining of boredom, tell them to go and look at the list.
    • I think children need to learn how to be bored in order to motivate themselves to get things done. Being bored is a way to make children self-reliant.”

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Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 05/18/2017

  • Design challenge competition.

    tags: design design challenge tinkering making maker

  • tags: writing pd professional development

  • tags: mindfulness discipline

    • Mindfulness is the awareness that arises through purposefully paying attention to the present moment in a non-judgemental way,
    • As we practice mindfulness, we begin to understand our mind-body connection better and learn not to be so reactive to thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.
    • With mindfulness, we develop a quality of attention that can be present no matter what is happening around us. This helps us feel more peace, ease, and balance in our lives and we develop more empathy, compassion, and love.
    • Several studies demonstrate that meditation can help children reduce stress and anxiety, increase attention and focus, and improve academic performance. Scientists have actually witnessed individual’s brains thicken in areas in charge of decision-making, emotional flexibility, and empathy during meditative practices.
  • tags: girls sex ed body image

    • “When schools dig in on the underlying reasons why kids violate norms, rather than reflexively and automatically punishing and sending kids away, outcomes can change quickly and dramatically. It’s especially important for everyone in a school to dig deep to decrease head-to-head conflict and understand behaviors that are often quickly labeled insubordination or disrespect.”
    • “Trust happens through thousands of small, purposeful interactions over time,” says Sarah Fiarman in this article in Principal. “[L]eaders earn trust when they keep promises, respond when teachers ask for help, and have difficult conversations with adults to ensure high-quality teaching for everyone.” Integral to all this is listening well, speaking wisely, and acknowledging one’s own biases.
    • “This requires slowing down, checking to be sure we understand correctly, and sharing back what we hear.”
    • Meeting anger or frustration with genuine, compassionate interest builds trust.
    • Changing course based on input is a sign of integrity, not weakness.”
    • A key value she worked to communicated was about listening to dissent and changing course if necessary.
    • Fiarman found that making quick visits to classrooms every day communicated respect and made her far more knowledgeable about instruction.
    • it engenders trust when your boss can speak to the specifics of your work.”
    • “Asking such questions helps me counteract my unconscious bias,” says Fiarman. “Recognizing the pervasiveness of bias is an important first step. Acknowledging that I might make mistakes because of this bias – then actively working to counter it – builds trust.”
    • Here are their ideas on making feedback less threatening and more productive:

       

                  • Separate coaching from evaluation.

    • “Coaching sessions should include no rubric scoring or other evaluations,”
    • Be thoughtful about receiving criticism. “The person getting the feedback has the power to decide whether it’s on target, fair, or helpful,” say the authors, “and to decide whether to use the feedback or dismiss it.”
    • When feedback rubs you the wrong way, it’s also important to dig deeper to understand what’s really going.
    • Be noisy about the importance of improving your school’s feedback culture – for students, for teachers, for parents, and for yourself.”
    • In this article in All Things PLC, consultant/author Douglas Reeves confronts these widely espoused misconceptions about grading:
    • if grades were effective motivators, homework completion, classroom engagement, and overall diligence would be sky-high. Not so!
    • for practice to be an effective tool for improvement, students need to be pushing the limits of current performance and getting continuous feedback – very difficult to orchestrate for 30 students working in their bedrooms. Second, as soon as teachers give grades for practice work, the incentive is for students to play it safe and not push into challenging or unknown territory.
    • the only feedback that matters is that the work was finished on time and correctly.
    • it’s unfair and demotivating for students to have their final grade pulled down for practice work.
    • Myth #3: Grades drive future performance. True, there’s a correlation between good grades and college success, and between poor grades and dropping out of school, but Reeves questions whether grades cause success and failure.
    • While it is possible that intelligence and work ethic forge the path from kindergarten to Ivy League and Wall Street, it is also possible that zip code, tutors, and connections – all artifacts of family socioeconomic status – are the underlying causes.”
    • Teachers giving zeros for missed assignments and refusing to accept late work lets students off the hook – and starts a spiral of doom with their final grades.
    • Averaging grades through a semester punishes students for early failures versus rewarding them for using early problems to improve final performance.
    • “Rather than using the last two months of the semester to build momentum and finish strong,” says Reeves, “because of a punitive grading system, they are doomed to failure well before the semester is over. There is nothing left for them to do except cut class, be disruptive, or ultimately, quit school.”
    • “grading policies are matters of equity, with disparate impacts on students, particularly based on ethnicity and gender. Boys and minority males receive lower grades just as they are more likely to be more severely disciplined for an infraction. Girls receive higher grades for the same level of proficiency. If racial and gender disparities of this sort took place in any other area of public life, the consequences would be swift and sure.”
    • Instead, he suggests replacing each statement of fact – Punishment deters unwanted behavior – with a testable hypothesis – If I penalize students for late, incomplete, and absent homework, then student achievement will improve – and conducting real-time experiments within the school.
    • He’s found that non-evaluative comments are “easy to receive, easy to give, and easy to act on.”
    • Teaching sentence stems can be helpful: I’m not sure I understand the opening of this piece… I’m not sure why you did this; can you explain it more?
    • Be specific.
    • Prior to peer feedback, the teacher should introduce a rubric and lead the class in a group critique of an exemplar paper, focusing on suggestions that will make a difference.
    • The teacher might also display samples of feedback statements and have students break into groups and rank them from helpful to unhelpful, taking note of sentence starters and phrases they can use in their own feedback conversations.
    • Be timely. One of the greatest advantages of well-orchestrated peer feedback is that students can get comments on their work immediately, rather than waiting days, perhaps weeks, for the teacher to wade through piles of papers.
    • “Unfortunately,” Eden concludes, “by second-guessing teachers’ judgments about how to maintain order, policymakers and district administrators are likely harming the education of many millions of well-behaved students in an effort to help the misbehaving few.”
    • “[T]hey are encouraged more than ever to present themselves as ‘sexy’ – not about being attractive or beautiful, but a very narrow, commercialized idea of sexy. What’s particularly complicated is they’re sold that idea [of sexiness] as being a source of personal power. There is a complete disconnect between that image of sexiness and an understanding of their bodies, their own wants, needs, desires, and limits, what those might be, having those respected.”

       

    • young women “are almost conditioned, starting in middle school, to have their bodies publicly commented on by young men, [and] they don’t think they have any power to really stop it.” In schools, she says, the “everyday chipping away of girls’ self-worth by reducing them to their bodies is completely ignored.”
    • We tend to silo conversations about sex as if it is not about the same values of compassion, kindness, respect, mutuality, and caring that we want our children to embody in every other aspect of their lives.”
    • The Internet – “Unfortunately,” says Orenstein, “the first thing kids Google is porn. The average age that kids today are exposed to porn, either intentionally or not, is 11. We have to ask what it means that kids are learning about sex from that realm before they’ve even had their first kiss and how that’s shaping them, their attitudes toward sexuality, and their expectations of sex.” Parents and schools need to explicitly teach kids to apply a critical lens to what they’re seeing, and shape values that will help them safely and wisely navigate this very challenging era.
    • “If you want to be a lifelong employee anywhere today, you have to be a lifelong learner.” He quotes education-to-work expert Heather McGowan: “Stop asking a young person WHAT you want to be when you grow up. It freezes their identity into a job that may not be there. Ask them HOW you want to be when you grow up. Having an agile learning mind-set will be the new skill set of the 21st century.”

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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 05/11/2017

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Sunday, April 30, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 05/01/2017

    • According to a study from the University of Washington Foster School of Business, humble people are more likely to be high performers in individual and team settings. They also tend to make the most effective leaders.

       

    • “Humble leaders foster learning-oriented teams and engage employees. They also optimize job satisfaction and employee retention.”
    • The research team defined humility as a three-part personality trait consisting of an accurate view of the self, teachability, and appreciation of others’ strengths.
    • “Two of the best predictors of performance—both academic and on the job—are intelligence and conscientiousness,” Johnson says. “We found that humility predicted performance better than both.”

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Thursday, April 20, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 04/21/2017

  • tags: Edutopia student-centered 21st century skills innovation critical thinking problem solving

    • Teachers at the school often say they’re “teaching kids to teach themselves” and rarely answer questions directly; instead they ask students to consider other sources of information first.
    • mixing age groups accelerates learning.
    • “When you get kids collaborating together, they become more resourceful and they see themselves as experts,”
    • Birmingham Covington’s unique bee project, like much of the coursework prioritized at the school, was driven by student interest.
    • “Science literacy is teaching our kids to be curious about the world around them, with the problems they identify,”
    • “Kids need to learn teamwork-based skills because every other class in any other subject that they have—third through eighth grade—requires them to work in different sized groups accomplishing different tasks,” Heckman explains.
    • The school’s voluntary Teacher Labs—facilitated by an instructional coach and organized around a clear, written protocol—enable teachers to reflect on their craft with support from their peers. Through the labs, small groups of teachers observe each other’s classes and then offer constructive feedback around a stated objective.
    • They put these skills to use in Thinkering Studio, an elective class where they design their own independent learning projects, and Engage, a class focused on design thinking—a system of solving problems that follows the steps of inquiry, ideation, prototyping, and testing.
    • In Engage, teachers Roy McCloud and Mathew Brown guide students to work on various self-directed, team-oriented projects like designing a new sport for third graders or building a roller coaster. Their support and feedback direct students toward the right resources while encouraging them to dig deeper: Did students ask the right questions? Did they get the right information? Did they go to other groups for feedback?

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Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Educational Resources & Tech Tools 04/19/2017

  • tags: 21st century skills critical thinking problem solving PLC program evaluation pd professional development reading literacy vocabulary bullying bullying prevention art arts education creativity character education movement

    • a synthesis of the skills they believe adults need for successful lives:

       

      Cognitive skills:

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Recall

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Application

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Analysis

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Evaluation

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Creative thinking

       

      Interpersonal skills:

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Communication

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Cooperation

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Empathy

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Trust building

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Service orientation

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Conflict resolution

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Negotiation

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Responsibility

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Assertiveness

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Advocacy

       

      Intrapersonal skills:

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Flexibility

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Adaptability

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Appreciation of diversity

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Valuing learning

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Cultural appreciation

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Curiosity

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Forethought

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Self-regulation

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Self-monitoring

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Self-evaluation

    • How many of these do schools teach? Just three, say the authors, even in schools where students get high state test scores: application, recall, and (sometimes) analysis.
    • interpersonal and intrapersonal skills almost never showed up.
    • Most teachers presented students with complex content, but the tasks students were asked to perform were simple recall and application
    • Many teachers assigned tasks with complex instructions and procedures, but little higher-level thinking was required of students
    • In a 10th-grade honors humanities class, for example, students were asked to invent questions to guide their study of Western imperialism in China (having just finished a unit on the colonization of Africa). Guided by the teacher, students brainstormed possible questions, decided which were most important, and edited questions until the questions were intellectually stimulating and open-ended.
    • It was the teacher, not the subject. This level of intellectual and affective demand cropped up in different subjects, grades, and classes with different student achievement levels. The variable was the teacher.
    • These outliers managed to weave rigorous instruction of content across the cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal domains, putting to rest the notion that content- and skill-focused instruction precludes higher-order thinking – and vice-versa.
    • These exceptional instructors created “a harmonious environment,” say the researchers, “demonstrating an understanding that doing so is a prerequisite to academic learning.”
    • Teachers adapted their teaching to the moment.
    • to teach a deep and broad range of skills while also addressing disciplinary knowledge – requires intelligence and years of practice.”
    • Instruction was tied to complex assessments. Often designed by the teachers themselves, these checks for understanding stood in contrast to the test-prep oriented assessments in other classrooms.
    • Teachers built strong relationships with students.
    • First, Nehring, Charner-Laird, and Szczesiul suggest that schools need complex, high-level assessments to make all classrooms accountable for teaching the full range of adult skills. Second, “excellence requires highly skilled teachers with finely tuned radar and improvisational ability.” And third, “good teaching is about caring relationships, a parental affection that gives and receives, that honors the fundamentally human nature of our work as educators.
    • Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) stresses the importance of professional development starting with clear outcomes.
    • “In education, getting better generally means having a more positive influence on the learning of our students and helping more students learn well,” says Guskey. “Knowing our destination provides the basis for determining the effectiveness of our efforts.”

       

    • What student learning outcomes do we aim to accomplish?

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->What evidence will tell us if we met the goal? (ideally more than one source of data)

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->What unintended consequences might occur, positive or negative?

    • “Looking beyond the intended goals to the broader array of possible outcomes is an important aspect of evaluation and vital to judging effectiveness,”
    • What sparks robust discussions in PLCs is looking at variations in students’ responses to individual items on common assessments and writing prompts.
    • “The primary purpose of this collaborative data analysis,” says Guskey, “is to guide these teachers’ professional learning experiences so they can improve the quality of their instruction and help all students learn well.”
    • One additional cautionary note: PLCs tend to jump into “debating new ideas, techniques, innovations, programs, and instructional issues,” says Guskey. “While these are important issues, we must remember that they are means to an important end that must be determined first. Our journey always begins by deciding our destination… Ninety percent of essential questions in any evaluation are addressed in the planning process, before the journey begins.”
    • “When a teacher models and provides direct instruction at the start of a lesson, it rarely enables students to explore mathematical tasks or engage in productive struggle,” says Drew Polly (University of North Carolina/Charlotte) in this article in Teaching Children Mathematics.
    • researchers have found that if students grapple with a task before the teacher explains and models it (and receive appropriate follow-up), they’re more engaged and learn better.
    • Polly details the 5E approach, in which students spend most of a lesson exploring mathematical tasks with limited support from the teacher, and some students get individual or small-group support:

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Engage – The class is given a math task or activity.

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Explore – Students have time to work on the task with their partner or a small group, with the teacher giving only instructions and circulating, sometimes posing questions to support students’ exploration.

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Explain – The class comes together to discuss the problem and how different students solved it. The teacher facilitates the discussion, perhaps choosing a main focus based on what was observed during the work time, and provides direct instruction as needed.

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Elaborate/extend – For the rest of the class, the teacher gets students working on activities, math games, and small-group activities that deepen understanding of the concept and zeros in on students who seem confused or off track.

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Evaluate – Students solve a final task or participate in a discussion of concepts, allowing the teacher to assess learning and plan for future lessons.

    • “[T]he size of a person’s vocabulary is one of the strongest predictors of his or her reading comprehension,” say Tanya Wright (Michigan State University/East Lansing) and Gina Cervetti ((University of Michigan/Ann Arbor) in this article in Reading Research Quarterly.
    • Students who enter school knowing fewer words are likely to continue with relatively small vocabularies and struggle with text comprehension throughout school. Students who start with larger vocabularies, on the other hand, have broader general knowledge, need to spend less time accessing memory of words (which frees up working memory to grasp the meaning of a text), read and enjoy their reading more, and build stronger vocabularies – a reciprocal relationship that tends to widen the achievement gap.
    • Teaching word meanings almost always improved comprehension of texts containing the words taught.

       

      • Teaching word meanings doesn’t seem to improve comprehension of texts that don’t contain the target words.

       

                  • Instruction involving students in some active processing was more effective than dictionary and definition work at improving comprehension of texts containing the words taught. One caveat: researchers don’t know how much active processing is enough.

       

                  • Teaching one or two strategies (e.g., context clues or morphology) for solving word meanings doesn’t seem to improve generalized reading comprehension.

       

    • Danny Gregory applauds the arguments made for the importance of art and music in schools: they improve motor, spatial, and language skills; they enhance peer collaboration; they strengthen ties to the community; they keep at-risk students in school and improve their chances of ultimately graduating from college; and
    • students who have four years of art score 91 points higher on the SAT than students who don’t.
    • In middle school, the majority start to lose their passion for making stuff and instead learn the price of making mistakes.
    • In short, every child starts out with a natural interest in art, but for most it is slowly drained away until all that’s left is a handful of teens in eyeliner and black clothing whose parents worry they’ll never move out of the basement.”
    • As of 2015, only 26.2 percent of African-American students have access to art classes.
    • Gregory has a startling suggestion: take the “art” out of art education and replace it with creativity education. Why? Because creativity is something that almost everyone agrees is vital to success.
    • Solving problems, using tools, collaborating, expressing our ideas clearly, being entrepreneurial and resourceful – these are the skills that matter in the 21st century, post-corporate labor market. Instead of being defensive about art, instead of talking about culture and self-expression, we have to focus on the power of creativity and the skills required to develop it. A great artist is also a problem solver, a presenter, an entrepreneur, a fabricator, and more.”
    • We need to make sure that the kids of today (who will need to be the creative problem solvers of tomorrow) realize their creative potential and have the tools to use it.
    • A total of 21 percent of students said they had been bullied in the following ways: 13 percent made fun of, called names, or insulted; 12 percent subject of rumors; 5 percent pushed, shoved, tripped, or spat on; 4 percent threatened with harm; 5 percent purposefully excluded from activities; 2.5 percent told to do things they didn’t want to do; and 2 percent had their property purposefully destroyed. Girls reported more online harassment (16 percent) than boys (6 percent). These were the locations where students said the bullying occurred:

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->42 percent in hallways or stairwells (similar for boys and girls);

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->34 percent in classrooms (perhaps mainly during entry, transitions, and exit);

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->22 percent in cafeterias;

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->19 percent outside on school grounds;

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->12 percent online or by text;

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->10 percent on school buses;

       

      <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->9 percent in bathrooms/locker rooms.

    • hallways and stairwells, taken together, are nearly twice as likely to be the source of the problem as the cafeteria, playground, or buses and bathrooms. Supervision and vigilance in those fluid spaces between classes is likely to benefit vulnerable students disproportionately.”
    • dance, gesture, and other forms of movement can improve motivation, engagement, and learning.
    • students in classrooms that integrated movement were “significantly more excited by, engaged in, and focused on the lessons” than they were with conventional teaching methods.
    • Dancing to memorize information
    • – Doing a dance skip-counting numbers (5, 10, 15, 20…) to the “Macarena.”
    • Applying movement to assessments
    • – To test knowledge of synonyms and antonyms, pairs of students jump straight up and down three times, then choose to land on either their right or left foot; if both land on the same foot, they must come up with synonyms for a word on the board; if they land on opposite feet, they must name antonyms.
    • – The teacher gives each group of students sets of fraction cards and they take turns moving to another group in search of equivalent fractions, bringing possible matches back to their group to see if they’re correct.
    • Moving among stations
    • Forming lines, rows, or other groupings – Each student gets a card with a punctuation mark or a word and students silently arrange themselves to form a complete sentence.

       

    • Representing terms or ideas with actions – After reading a book about emotions, students stand and act out furious, satisfied, courageous, and other words.

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