Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

AeroFarms Celebrates World Environment Day with Bronx School PS 85

Newark, New Jersey (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AeroFarms®, a Certified B Corporation and leader in indoor vertical farming, will celebrate World Environment Day this coming Monday, June 5, at PS 85 The Great Expectations School with the official launch of its AeroFarms Community Farms program. This program promotes hands-on environmental education and year-round access to fresh and nutritious leafy greens through the proprietary AeroFarms unit and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics) curriculum. The launch and celebration will help create life-long nutrition learners and will cultivate students and parents’ interest in incorporating more healthy leafy greens into their daily diets.  

“Our PS 85 community is extremely excited to celebrate World Environment Day together and partner with the AeroFarms Community Farms program to bring hands-on, STEAM learning to life in such a unique way for our students to experience growing and tasting their own food from seed to plate,” said Sara Medina, Principal at PS 85. 

World Environment Day is a time to reflect on how our society can encourage worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment, an important component to both the PS 85 community and AeroFarms. Being built with circular solutions in mind and creating opportunities for environmental protection is vital to AeroFarms product line and mission, which is to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity.   …Read More

Newark Public Schools Expands Use of Lexia Core5 and PowerUp to All of its Elementary Schools

Newark Public Schools (NPS) has approved expanding implementation of Lexia Learning’s Lexia® Core5® Reading (Core5) and Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® (PowerUp) throughout its K-5 and K-8 schools. This decision comes after the district’s trial subscription successfully helped teachers both within their classrooms before the pandemic and with remote learning that began in March. In all, the strong ESSA rated literacy solutions will now be serving almost 20,000 students in 41 schools. The district has also decided to support their educators through this critical time by ensuring strong, ongoing implementations of Core5 and PowerUp via yearlong Success Partnerships with Lexia.

“We were using Core5 in just six of our elementary schools prior to the pandemic,” said Dr. Mary Ann Reilly, assistant superintendent for Teaching and Learning. “When COVID-19 hit and our schools transitioned to remote learning, we were able to quickly expand Core5 to all our elementary schools. The program was flexible enough to enable us to provide continuity of instruction to students remotely, targeting literacy gaps and even accelerating learning. We’ve been impressed with the programs and how helpful Lexia has been with the transition. We’re confident that our students will continue to make gains with good teaching and Lexia.”

The district’s purchase also includes Lexia Academy, the company’s eLearning platform offering on-demand professional learning courses. The academy gives the district’s educators access to “anytime, anywhere” support that helps them develop best practices for meaningful instruction when using Lexia products. Newark educators have embraced courses on topics like Structured Literacy, remote teaching strategies, and effective reading instruction for students with dyslexia.…Read More

Newark Board of Ed, Prudential Financial, and Discovery Education Launch Partnership Supporting Academic Achievement

The Newark Board of Education (NBOE) has joined forces with Prudential Financial, Schools That Can, and Discovery Education to create an innovative public-private partnership that supports student academic achievement and builds confidence in math skills through a unique suite of dynamic digital resources.

Through this new collaboration, NBOE’s educators, students, and families in grades K-12 are empowered with exciting digital resources, standards-aligned activities, and vetted, high-quality content carefully curated by grade level. These new digital resources will play a critical role in continuing each students’ academic progress on any device, whether at home or in the classroom.

Among the resources now available to NBOE’s teachers and students is Discovery Education Experience. Experience – Discovery Education’s flexible, award-winning K-12 learning platform connects educators to a vast collection of compelling high-quality, standards-aligned content, ready-to-use digital lessons, and professional learning resources. Together, these resources give educators what they need to facilitate instruction in any learning environment, with the ultimate goal of generating long-lasting educational impact.…Read More

Rosetta Stone Announces Winners of the Emergent Bilingual Educators of the Year Award Program

Rosetta Stone Inc. announced the 10 winners in its first Emergent Bilingual Educators of the Year award program. A total of $20,000 in grant donations and $75,000 in subscriptions to the Rosetta Stone® English for Education language learning program were awarded to teachers of English learners (EL).

Victor Machado, an ESL teacher at East Side High School in Newark, New Jersey, won the $10,000 grand prize, along with a schoolwide semester’s subscription to Rosetta Stone English. The two runners-up are Timothy McGrath and Virginia Valdez. McGrath is a K-5 ELL teacher at West View Elementary School, a small inner-city school in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Valdez is a kindergarten teacher at Minnie Mars Jamieson Elementary at Chicago Public Schools. Each won $5,000 grants as well as the schoolwide semester’s subscription to Rosetta Stone English.

Machado was nominated by the Bilingual Department Chairperson Brian Donovan who submitted an essay describing how Machado helps his students. Donovan wrote of Machado: “He is able to synthesize all the tools required to educate a student and turn his class into a fun engaging ESL lab, where technology is used to leverage student achievement and where students take ownership of their education.”…Read More

5 Newark principals suspended indefinitely, allegedly for opposing One Newark plan

Five Newark public school principals were suspended indefinitely on Friday, including four who spoke at a community meeting opposing proposed changes to the state-run school district, according to two sources who sought anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press, The Star-Ledger reports. A video on YouTube shows four of the administrators with mayoral candidate and Newark Councilman Ras Baraka, who is on leave as principal of Central High School, at the meeting at the Hopewell Baptist Church. The Wednesday meeting was held to oppose Superintendent Cami Anderson’s One Newark reorganization plan. The suspension of the fifth principal was the result of an incident unrelated to that meeting, according to the sources…

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