How a true teacher hero advocates for student equity and belonging

The 2023 eSchool News K-12 Hero Awards honors educators for their exemplary use of innovative edtech to support student learning. Interviewed and profiled here is winner John Arthur, a 6th grade teacher at Meadowlark Elementary School nominated by Follett. Stay tuned for two more winner profiles to come.

John Arthur, a sixth-grade teacher at Meadowlark Elementary School in Salt Lake City, was the 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year and one of four finalists for 2021 National Teacher of the Year.

Now in his 10th year of teaching, John’s students have gained national recognition as champions for children and immigrants like them through music videos and other digital content they create and share across platforms as @9thEvermore (on YouTube and Twitter/X). Moreover, he uses Kwame Alexander Bookfest book club from noted author Kwame and Follett to help his students see themselves in story, build literacy skills, and allow students to share their experiences and emotions through books.…Read More

Empowering staff and students with a sense of belonging

Key points:

  • When students feel supported, they’re more likely to share their struggles
  • Mental health partnerships can better support students and staff
  • See related article: How to build relationships with students
  • Get the latest news on student and staff well-being by visiting eSN’s SEL & Well-Being page

Belonging is a fundamental human need. We are all searching for a sense of connection with the people and places in our lives. Students and school staff are no different, so it’s crucial to ensure learning environments foster a sense of belonging.

When students have a strong sense of belonging, they are more likely to be engaged in school and to perform well academically. Unfortunately, new data shows that only 62 percent of high school students feel connected to others at school, and nearly one-third of students experience poor mental health.…Read More

5 strategies to ignite student engagement

Key points:

When you think of education, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For some, it might be a pile of homework or a stack of books that need reading. Others may recall the flashcards they used to memorize specific formulas or expand their vocabulary. All these examples have a place in the learning ecosystem, but true education should be about so much more. Student learning should involve curiosity, discovery, and the opportunity to experiment with a variety of different solutions. To put it more simply: true education requires student engagement.

Every teacher hopes to ignite, empower, and engage the students who walk through their classroom door. Ample research has shown that student engagement is crucial to overall learning and long-term success. However, implementing this is easier said than done. To better ignite student curiosity and interest, teachers should consider trying one of these strategies that help make student engagement second nature:…Read More

How AI could save–or sink–creative writing in schools

Key points

This story originally appeared on the Christensen Institute’s blog and is reposted here with permission.

Ninth-grade English was a paradox for me—both the best and worst year for helping me learn to write. …Read More

Nothing but winning: Edtech honors announced by eSchool, IEI, and Classlink

When did October become awards season in the world of edtech? This week’s newsfeeds are stuffed with announcements for finalists and honorees for both educators and vendors on the best and brightest developments for teaching and learning.

The winners:

Of course, we need to start with the most prestigious! The eSchool News Hero Awards, honors educators for their exemplary use of innovative edtech to support student learning:…Read More

5 tips I’m excited to share with first-year teachers

Key points:

I’ll never forget my first day as a teacher. I was so excited to begin my career teaching kindergarten students who were deaf or hard of hearing. My enthusiasm petered out when I saw green paint spilled all over my classroom. Overwhelmed and flustered, I hadn’t accounted for mishaps like this to be part of my lesson plan and was quickly faced with the realization that there were many things that happened in the classroom that weren’t accounted for in my lesson. Thankfully, one of my fellow teachers reassured me in the aftermath by saying, “You clean it up and try again tomorrow. Now you know not to put as much paint in the cup next time.”

Throughout my 26 years of teaching, I’ve heard similar accounts from other first-year teachers anxious to get their footing in their new roles, but more than anything, they wanted to connect with their students and students’ families. They wanted to avoid cleaning up spilled paint, searching for the right lessons or managing repetitive tasks that took time away from their students.…Read More

Cartwheel Raises $20 Million Series A Funding to Tackle the Student Mental Health Crisis

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Cartwheel, a platform helping schools tackle the student mental health crisis by delivering affordable, evidence-based telehealth services with no waitlist, today announced that it has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures. Reach Capital joined the round, as did earlier investors General Catalyst, BoxGroup and Able Partners. The funding will allow Cartwheel to expand mental health services to hundreds of thousands of new students in current service areas, as well as school districts in new states.

There is an unprecedented mental health crisis among kids and teens. Depression in teens has more than doubled in the past 10 years, and a third of high school girls have seriously considered suicide. Youth today lack access to high-quality care, with symptoms often left untreated for years. As a result of the shortage of mental health providers, limited insurance coverage, and long waits, schools are increasingly expected to take the lead in supporting student mental health.

Founded in 2022, Cartwheel has quickly become a trusted mental health partner to schools. The founding team, which includes Chief Medical Officer, Juliana Chen, MD, a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist, had collectively spent decades working in schools and community mental health clinics and felt the need for stronger school-community partnership to improve accessibility, quality, and financial sustainability of mental health care.…Read More

Technology as a bridge–not a shortcut–to student relationships

Key points:

The research is clear: Connections are game changers in helping young people from low-income households achieve upward economic mobility later in life.

The critical role that relationships play in the opportunity equation was well-documented in political scientist Robert Putnam’s 2015 book, Our Kids. Putnam’s argument was further confirmed in recent, large-scale research by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights, who mined 21 billion data points from de-identified Facebook data to discover that cross-class connections were a leading predictor of upward mobility in adulthood. The analysis also offered school-level data charting “economic connectedness”–or lack thereof–within individual high schools and colleges across the country.…Read More

Will cybersecurity receive E-rate funding?

Key points:

Since 2016, more than 1,300 schools have been victims of cyberattacks, including student data breaches, ransomware attacks, email scams, and other incidents, according to a January 2023 report by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

A recent Sophos survey reveals that in 2022, 80 percent of schools were targeted for a cyberattack, up from 56 percent in 2021. Schools are now the leading target for cybergangs, according to The74. The education sector is particularly vulnerable compared to other industries. It reported one of the highest rates of ransom payment, with 47 percent of K-12 educational organizations paying the ransom requested. These organizations, on average, paid $2.18 million in recovery costs (when paying the ransom) vs. $1.37 million if they chose not to pay, Sophos reports.…Read More