Resources

From sardonic opinions to marketing tactics, system leaders have been deluged with a torrent of commentary and predictions about learning loss. The leadership challenge right now is to sort out the obvious reality of losses that have occurred because of the pandemic from nebulous abstractions of loss. It is tempting to slide back into content coverage and …

3 Approaches To Uncovering Learning Loss And Learning Gains … TO WHAT END? Read More »

Given the extraordinary demands on school communities throughout the pandemic, there is real concern about where students are in their foundational skills, conceptual understanding, and ability to apply their learning in novel situations. This concern, framed as “learning loss,” includes choices to cut out or cut back on unit topics, challenges of student engagement in …

Profile Of A Right Now Learner: Uncovering Learning Loss And Learning Gains Read More »

What to cut out? Cut back on? Consolidate? Keep? Create? Educators face a critical challenge:  how to engage their learners in a curriculum that is responsive to where their students are right now — addressing learning losses and gains — in service to where they aspire to be. Over the past year, all of us have had …

3-Part Process For Making Deliberate Curriculum Choices: Read More »

When  Finland was recently crowned happiest country again in 2020, we reached out to our Finnish colleague to check in and see how he and his country were faring. Two and a half years ago , we had an opportunity to co-design and take a tour of Finnish schools with  Educational Leadership Consultant Mikko Salonen.  We recently corresponded …

10 Decisions Finland Makes In Schools That Can Directly Inform Our Post Pandemic Response Read More »

Headlines announce and policies pronounce that 2021 will be the mother of all summer schools.  With schools and districts scrambling to make up for learning loss due to the pandemic, dollars are being thrown at summer schools to lift up students in order to prepare for the start of the upcoming academic year. Summer enrichment …

Cool Summer School: An Appalachian District Leads The Way Read More »

This past year, many of us tidied up our closets and junk drawers inspired by Marie Kondo’s prompt to “keep only those things that speak to the heart and discard items that no longer spark joy. Thank them for their service and let them go.” Sparking joy is strikingly on-point when it comes to cleaning out an …

Reexamining An Overstuffed Curriculum – Does It Spark Joy? Read More »