What Teachers Are Talking About This Week
October 27, 2016 | Sign up to receive The Teachers Edition.
Restorative Practices Create Opportunities for Students
Students all over the country are suspended and expelled for
a wide variety of transgressions, but
KIPP Summit Academy Director of Culture, Ric Zappa, and his school knew these actions created an
unproductive climate for students and administrators. The school team decided
it was time
to focus on an approach that would build community, not destroy it. Since
2011, the Academy has engaged in restorative practices to keep students in
school and to get them back on track for academic success (Zappa, Chalkbeat.org).
 Decisions about education laws and policies are often made
by elected and appointed officials, but how often are teachers consulted for their
expertise on the subject? IndyStar reporter,
Matthew Tully, sat down with Social
Studies teacher, Micah Nelson, to
discuss what utilizing teacher
expertise in education policy decision-making would result in for communities.
Nelson shares what teachers would prioritize
and urges lawmakers to visit a
classroom to gain a better understanding of the challenges teachers face every
day (Tully, IndyStar.com).
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Raising Students' Awareness of the Dangers Caused by Drug Misuse
The Drug Enforcement Administration and Discovery Education have joined forces to combat a growing epidemic of prescription opioid misuse and heroin use nationwide. Operation Prevention's mission is to educate middle and high school students about the impacts of opioid use and kick-start lifesaving conversations in the home and classroom. The program includes self-paced learning modules, digital lesson plans, a student video challenge and a parent or caregiver toolkit.
 Make History This Thanksgiving
This November, StoryCorps is once again bringing you The Great Thanksgiving Listen, a project based on a simple idea:
find an elder you love and interview them about their life.
Download the free
StoryCorps App to record and archive your interview in the American Folklife
Center at the Library of Congress. Last
year, thousands of high schools participated
and preserved over 50,500 individual recordings. In 2016, StoryCorps is again
working with educators to preserve the voices and stories of an entire
generation of Americans over a single holiday weekend. The project is free and
open to all students age 13 and over, whether in private, public, charter,
homeschool, or any other educational environment. College students and
professors are also welcome to participate. #thegreatlisten.
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 University of Pennsylvania
professor, Joan Goodman examines
the use of chants, songs, and clapping in “no-excuses” charter schools to control behavior. She argues that the calculated use of “joy”
tactics diminishes the depth of learning. Instead of focusing on developing genuine
interest in learning, the “no-excuses” schools may focus more on how to control
students to meet adequate test scores and make them compliant with authority figures (Goodman, EduShyster.com).
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LGBTQ Students Still Experience Obstacles in School
From
Teasing to Torment: School Climate Revisited, A Survey of U.S. Secondary School
Students and Teachers reports that “despite legal and cultural changes, we
see that LGBTQ students continue to face hostile school climates, although
there have been small, gradual improvements.” This is a follow-up to a report
from 2005 which investigated the kinds of challenges LGBTQ students encountered
in their school experiences (www.glsen.org).
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Decoding Educational Jargon. The Glossary of Education
Reform website from the Great Schools Partnership and the Education Writers
Association has a searchable list of many
terms and hot topics (Marshall Memo).
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Early Learners Tackle Tech. ED and the Department of Health and Human Services recently released a policy brief on the use of technology with early learners. The brief, developed in consultation with the American Academy of Pediatrics, will help parents and caregivers make wise decisions about media use, and provides four guiding principles for families and early childhood educators on the use of technology with young children.
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Activities for Active Learning Days. As part of the White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Active Learning Day, 100Kin10, together with 20 partner
organizations, put together an online
resource hub to help teachers find brief activities that they can easily
integrate into their classroom on Active Learning Day (and beyond!). The
activities, spanning all grade levels from PreK - 12 and across the STEM
disciplines, have been curated from and by 100Kin10 partners.
 5. "Teacher-led professional development is the only p.d. I've received that changed my practice." Teacher, DoDEA
4. "Teachers saved my schools." Principal, New York
3. "What risks are you taking today?" Teacher coach, Maryland
2. “We
need to shift the focus to the whole picture of a school, not just the
numbers.” Principal, Pennsylvania
1. “I
see the excitement in my fellow future educators and it helps me be excited!”
Pre-service teacher, Pennsylvania
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