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.

Fascinating: Can analytics help schools hire the best teachers?

As K-12 school administrators know, finding the best talent for their schools is becoming more challenging, with fewer people entering the teaching profession and more teachers retiring. With no near-term end in sight, hiring and retaining great teachers may be problematic for years to come.

While the teacher shortage used to be confined to rural areas, it now is a nationwide problem impacting nearly every U.S. school district. For some districts, administrators have trouble filling specialized teaching positions, while other districts find it difficult to fill all positions.

According to a recent report by the Learning Policy Institute, if supply trends persist at these current lows, the annual shortfall could grow to 112,000 teachers by 2018.…Read More

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This no-brainer tool combats teacher turnover

Teacher turnover has an impact on all stakeholders in the school environment, and research shows that students struggle to perform well in schools with turnover year after year. Retaining effective staff can be a big challenge for schools and districts, as can figuring out how to solve the issues around this problem.

In “Using Data to Combat Attrition and Keep Good Teachers,” Henry Wellington, CEO and founder of Upbeat, discussed issues that cause teacher turnover and how schools and districts can intervene.

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The must-have for a SIS? It’s not what you think!

Earning buy-in from stakeholders is one of the most important factors when moving to a new SIS.

At Mooresville Consolidated School Corporation, where I work as a data management coordinator, our former SIS was unreliable, inaccessible, and had limited functionality. With frustration building among staff, we selected a new SIS that would allow us to become more efficient, engaged, and empowered.

It was at this time that we realized we needed to not only change our procedures for implementing a new solution, but also ensure the buy-in from staff, teachers, students, and parents. Change can be difficult, especially when you’re transitioning to a new SIS, and we wanted to make sure all stakeholders were on board throughout the entire process.…Read More

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District chief: Why school success stops and ends with teachers

I believe the hardest day of any job is the very first day. On that first day, the basic, most elementary parts of the workplace are foreign. Where do I park? Where is the coffee? How do I log in to my new computer? The list of things to learn goes on and on.

However, a new job also brings tremendous opportunity. The day I walked into my new role as CEO of Ohio’s Youngstown City School District (YSCD’s), I sensed the tremendous passion and promise of the district’s approximately 5,300 students and 500 teachers. While 99 percent of YSCD’s students are economically disadvantaged, I could feel the power and energy within the school system.

The question was, “How do we unlock our school district’s potential?”…Read More

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Wow! This inquiry-based, technology-rich school has no tech staff

When I first became principal, I was compelled to explore all aspects of what it meant to be a 21st-century learner in an international baccalaureate context: as a global citizen, as a collaborative co-creator of knowledge, as a caring human being. We must equip every child to manage and thrive in this complex and fragile world in which we live, and to do so with tolerance and respect for others. Being a caring and competent user of technology is core to being a productive, proactive citizen…and we accomplish this with no tech staff. Let me explain:

Wildwood IB World Magnet School is a top performing K-8 public magnet school. We are a diverse urban learning community, where our families speak 23 different languages. Wildwood has students with a wide range of physical and cognitive abilities, as well as students with medical and physical fragilities. We are economically diverse as well, with students from poverty through affluence. We run an open lottery, and our 488 students come from around the city.

IB is fundamentally and foremost about the student, not about a program. It aligns to my mantra of student ownership of learning. At Wildwood, we have been holding K-8 student-led report card conferences for parents for six years. We have been doing individualized student data folders for as long. Students design and run all kinds of schoolwide projects and clubs. They plan and deliver many school assemblies like Pi Day, and they engage in all sorts of action and service, both inside the formal IB units of inquiry and outside of it.…Read More

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3 better alternatives to “gotcha” tactics for teachers

[Editor’s note: This piece is the first in our May series on “Tales from Innovative Principals.” Be sure to check back every week for a new Principal POV story!]

I have been in school administration for 12 years now, and one of the things that I absolutely have learned to hate is the formal teacher evaluation process. In the past, it worked like this: I inform a teacher that it’s evaluation time, we have a pre-meeting, they put on a show, I take notes on the show, we sit down and we talk about the show that I saw (which in no way represents what they do every day), and then I give them an evaluation. The whole procedure was ridiculous to the point that I always dreaded it.

I wanted observation at Howard University Middle School (HUMS) to be a way for teachers to become better teachers, so for the 2016–2017 school year, we started asking them to capture videos of their lessons. The idea was that I could look at a video the way I wanted to: see a piece, stop, go back and look at it again, and then provide feedback that the teacher could use to improve their practice.…Read More

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8 things teachers want you to know about their profession

Teachers who are “career changers” and who have come to the teaching profession from other fields say their career change brings benefits to the classroom, according to a new University of Phoenix College of Education survey focusing on how K-12 teachers view their profession.

Those benefits include real-world experience, new ideas, teacher diversity, and unique teaching styles and perspectives.

Just in time for Teacher Appreciation Week, the survey takes a look at teachers’ satisfaction with their careers and also takes stock of the impact teacher shortages have on schools.…Read More

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5 ways to reduce the harrowing STEM teacher shortage

No technology can replace high-quality teachers. But what happens when high-quality STEM teachers become hard to find, and what happens when STEM teacher applicant pools dry up? And how can the U.S. extend critical STEM learning opportunities to its youngest students?

Students today need more STEM learning opportunities inside classrooms and outside of school. Those opportunities can occur across content areas. But there are barriers to this learning, including teacher recruitment and training, the way STEM learning is structured in some schools, and existing policies.

A Top Education Priority…Read More

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This is how you make PD engaging for teachers

Teachers constantly juggle a number of different national, state, and district initiatives in today’s fast-paced and complex educational environment. Organizing professional development days that meet the varying needs of every teacher has become increasingly difficult as the pace of change far exceeds the number of days allowed for PD. To that end, Garnet Valley has adopted the acronym C.H.O.I.C.E., taken from Brad Currie (@bradmcurrie) and Jason Bretzmann’s (@jbretzmann) book, Personalized PD: Flipping Your Professional Development for its framework when designing professional learning days.

In keeping with our goals of offering and utilizing C.H.O.I.C.E. (Constant Progress, Honoring Professionals, Ongoing, Individualized, Collaborative, and Energizing) sessions, our district divides the professional learning calendar into three distinct models: Technology Boot Camp, Assigned Professional Development Days, and CHOICE Professional Development Days.

All sessions are driven and organized based on feedback from staff and analyzed by the district’s LEAP Committee, all utilizing face-to-face, synchronous, and asynchronous blended instruction. Our teachers choose their specific learning topics at their own pace with their preferred instructional model.…Read More

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#3: Classroom observations may hurt teachers more than they help, study says

[Editor’s note: This story, originally published on January 19th of this year, was our #3 most popular story of the year. The countdown continues tomorrow with #2, so be sure to check back!]

Teachers might be at a disadvantage during classroom observation of their instructional practice, which is one of the most widely-used tools for high-stakes job performance evaluations. And whether or not students have a history of high classroom achievement could be the reason why.

Research from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) indicates that evaluations based on observing teachers in the classroom often fail to meaningfully assess teacher performance.…Read More

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