Helping Teachers Set Goals
Instead of trying to do everything, focus on what will help you and your students feel a sense of competence in the classroom.
One of the reasons I was burning out as a teacher was a growing sense of incompetence. I couldn’t figure out why I was always so far behind with work. I felt like my students and I worked diligently, yet every April, I was having to cut whole units that I didn’t have time to teach. (I guess we’re not getting to Rocks and Minerals this year!) Where did all the time go? Was I really so incompetent that I couldn’t get to all I was supposed to teach?
The Power of Words
When I joined The Estée Lauder Companies in 2000, my boss, Leonard Lauder, the CEO at the time, reinforced my mother’s lessons of gratitude and thank-you notes, underscoring them as a communications and managerial tool. (“Nothing makes me happier than writing a good thank-you note,” he writes in his memoir.) A phenomenal communicator, well known as an elegant and thoughtful man who built the empire that carries his mother’s name, Lauder observes that gratitude opens doors to meaningful relationships: “I find that thank-you notes, even a one-liner, help me establish a connection. Once you’ve established a rapport, you can offer thanks as well as advice and suggestions,” he told me.
3 critical areas of focus for building student relationships
Two education leaders detail strategies for ensuring students feel seen, heard and respected — and how that can help learners realize their potential.
What is the value of building student relationships? What does it mean for our students, our teachers, and our schools? Researchers across the nation as well as business and educational experts agree that building relationships can be one of the most critical steps in establishing and maintaining student success.
For students, relationships mean feeling valued by a teacher; feelings that are based primarily on emotion.
Should teachers follow the curriculum script?
Some educators say district-provided curricula aren’t culturally relevant and don’t serve student needs. Experts fret about too much drift from standards
It’s a Sunday in June, and high school history teacher Chris Dier is poring over readings, lesson plans and other resources to put together next year’s curriculum for his Advanced Placement U.S. and World History classes.
School doesn’t start until mid-August. But Dier, Louisiana’s teacher of the year in 2020, has followed this same routine for years. He spends part of his Sundays throughout the school year and summer preparing lessons for his classes. In his 14 years of teaching, Dier said he has never really had a curriculum provided by his school district that he can use without making significant adaptations. In fall 2020, he started teaching at Benjamin Franklin High School, in New Orleans, a top-performing charter school that doesn’t offer teachers any curriculum or materials.
Don’t hit that button just yet!
Pause Before You Post: A Social Media Guide for Educators in Tense Political Times
Emotions were already running high this election season when the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump pushed them to new levels, flooding social media with disinformation and crass and inappropriate comments that landed some educators in hot water.
The moment serves as a reminder that as the presidential election campaigns switch into high gear and schools come back into session, it’s an important time to teach students the skills needed to be responsible digital citizens.
Supporting Teachers with Best Practices
The unintentional missteps teachers and administrators are making
As an instructional coach and former virtual coach, I have observed countless classrooms across the nation, and it’s disheartening to see how many of our well-intentioned practices are slowly killing student curiosity. It’s a subtle process, but the cumulative effect is turning learning into a lifeless experience.
I’ve observed five major ways we’re unintentionally stifling curiosity and issue a call to action for educators, administrators, and policymakers to join the curiosity revolution:
Improving Team Meetings
How To Take Your Weekly Team Meetings to the Next Level
Transforming weekly team meetings from mundane check-ins to dynamic, productive sessions can significantly impact team efficiency and morale. A recent Harvard Business Review study found that 71% of senior managers view meetings as unproductive and inefficient. To counter this trend, it’s essential to revitalize these gatherings with strategies that engage and invigorate team members. As an executive leadership coach, I advocate for a more holistic and interactive approach to team meetings. Here’s how you can elevate your weekly team meetings to foster better communication, collaboration, and productivity.
Bilingual Psychologists are Needed
As Schools Serve More Immigrant Children, Demand Grows for Bilingual Psychologists
A couple of years ago, as schools that had been forced to go virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic began to bring students back on campus, Pedro Olvera noticed that his phone started ringing more.
Olvera spent much of his career as a school psychologist in Santa Ana Unified School District, just a stone’s throw from Disneyland, where about 40 percent of students are English learners who speak Spanish.
Teaching Concepts over Process
As a mathematics education researcher, I study how math instruction impacts students’ learning, from following standard math procedures to understanding mathematical concepts. Focusing on the latter, conceptual understanding often involves understanding the “why” of a mathematical concept; it’s the reasoning behind the math rather than the how or the steps it takes to get to an answer.
So often, in mathematics classrooms, students are shown steps and procedures for solving math problems and then required to demonstrate their rote memorization of these steps independently.
Expanding Access to Algebra
Bob Moses, who helped register Black residents to vote in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement, believed civil rights went beyond the ballot box. To Moses, who was a teacher as well as an activist, math literacy is a civil right: a requirement to earning a living wage in modern society. In 1982, he founded the Algebra Project to ensure that “students at the bottom get the math literacy they need.”
As a researcher who studies ways to improve the math experiences of students, I believe a new approach that expands access to algebra may help more students get the math literacy Moses, who died in 2021, viewed as so important. It’s a goal districts have long been struggling to meet.
