Twenty-first-century education can not be about simply filling kids’ heads with knowledge, but rather it is about teaching them the skills and attitudes that they need to become learners. Today, through our digital connections, more information and knowledge than ever is at our fingertips. Just to read through everything on Wikipedia would take a lifetime. …
Often, when I am leading Community Meeting I ask about relationships among the different Quaker Values. For example, I might ask, “What is the relationship between Equality and Community.” When we had Meeting for Community to kick off today’s service day, we sat outside in a nearby park, surrounded by the community we had planned…
There is magic in sharing personal stories that go beyond books or storytelling. Perhaps it’s the special way children feel when they know that others are listening to a story about something that was their own unique experience. In the Polka Dots classroom, we make time to share quotnewsquot every morning during morning circle. Kids…
A couple of weeks ago, two students in my room—a boy and a girl, friends who often play as part of the same group—were on the outs. Small conflicts kept erupting. On the advice of one of our parent volunteers, who had just finished a difficult recess with them, I pulled those two students aside…
In March and April, the middle school students completed a racial justice unit in ELA class. One group of students read Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes and another read Blended by Sharon M. Draper for their book clubs and discussed the books weekly. Both groups also read articles about the origins of the Black…
The last element that makes a “modern classrooms” approach to math instruction work is mastery-based grading. I typically set mastery at 80% accuracy. There are numerous benefits to a mastery model: I am more able to understand what each student has and has not mastered I can use that knowledge to provide more targeted instructional…