The Educator's Notebook

featured articles

On Good Teaching: Can We Have Both High Achievement And High Engagement?
Hechinger Report - 7/11/22

“The academics found that there was often a tradeoff between “good teaching” where kids learn stuff and “good teaching” that kids enjoy. Teachers who were good at raising test scores tended to receive low student evaluations. Teachers with great student evaluations tended not to raise test scores all that much… It was rare, but the researchers managed to find six teachers among the 53 in the study that could do both types of good teaching simultaneously. Teachers who incorporated a lot of hands-on, active learning received high marks from students and raised test scores. These teachers often had students working together collaboratively in pairs or groups, using tactile objects to solve problems or play games. For example, one teacher had students use egg cartons and counters to find equivalent fractions. These doubly “good” teachers had another thing in common: they maintained orderly classrooms that were chock full of routines.”
Which Disciplines Focus Most On Which Competencies
Center for Curriculum Redesign - 6/1/21

“Every discipline has a key role to play for development of Competency expertise and transfer. If all disciplines focus on teaching their top Competencies, benefits will exist at the curricular, course, and learner level. Curricula will be integrated with relevant Competencies which will in turn increase content relevance and depth of understanding of what it means to proactively practice and contribute to each field. At the same time, teachers will feel less pressure to cover all the Competencies beyond their content area, by either addressing one cursorily or otherwise cognitively overloading learners.”

admissions

Does Going Test-Optional Actually Change Admissions Outcomes?
Hechinger Report - 7/13/22
“Admissions Without Applications”
Inside Higher Ed - 7/11/22

“In the fall, the college plans to consider some students who haven’t actually applied for admission at all. They will be students who have created profiles through Sage Scholars, which has offered a service since 1995 to help students afford college. This year, in addition to presenting students whom colleges might want to recruit to apply, Sage will also offer some of its several hundred members the chance to look at the profiles (which will contain the interests, grades and test scores of students who have them) and admit students directly… By creating a profile, “you are just saying ‘I’m interested in college.’”

cognitive science

“The Brain Has A Low Power Mode That Blunts Our Senses”
Wired - 7/10/22
Move, Move, Movement. Motor Memories Are Encoded Differently
Stanford - 7/8/22

“These findings suggest that, in addition to being dispersed, motor memories are highly redundant. The researchers say that as we repeat learned skills, we are continually reinforcing the motor engrams by building new connections — refining the skill. It’s what is meant by the term muscle memory — a refined, highly redundant network of motor engrams used so frequently that the associated skill seems automatic.”
Growth Mindset Interventions Work Best When Class Practices Support Them
Research Gate - 10/1/21

“Direct-to-student, computer-delivered growth mindset interventions have shown promise as a way to improve achievement for those at risk of failing in school; however, these interventions only benefit students who happen to be in classrooms that support growth mindset beliefs.”
More On How Movement Can Aid Learning
KQED - 6/29/21

creativity

One Way Of Defining Innovation (In Business)
McKinsey - 7/15/22
“Humor Boosts Creativity”
John Spencer - 9/16/19

curriculum

On Emotional Literacy As A Key Skill For Students
Deseret News - 7/13/22
More Schools Are Teaching Students About Personal Finance
CNBC - 7/8/22

“I was present as the students’ teacher, Marina White, demonstrated the power of investing and compound interest. “This one decision, to give up a couple Starbucks every weekend and each morning you walk in here, can make you a millionaire by the time you retire,” she says. Many of White’s students are “in shock” when they learn that their behavior and choices can so strongly influence their financial future.”

diversity/inclusion

Rubrics Can Mitigate Bias In Hiring
Inside Higher Ed - 7/12/22
On Code-Switching And Supporting Multi-Language Classrooms
Cult of Pedagogy - 7/10/22

“Not all students feel they can bring their whole selves into the classroom. Even the most well-meaning teachers can unwittingly do more harm than good. Many bicultural and bilingual children report experiencing a sense of loss when they acquire their second language (Casesa, 2013) and it’s not by coincidence that their educational setting plays a part in this.”

health

A Mental Health Checklist For Heading To College
New York Times - 7/8/22
Close Friends Are A Key To Good Mental Health. But How Many?
New York Times - 6/10/22

“If your goal is simply to mitigate the harmful impact loneliness can have on your health, what matters most is having at least one important person in your life — whether that’s a partner, a parent, a friend or someone else, said Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas. “Going from zero to one is where we get the most bang for your buck, so to speak,” Dr. Hall said. “But if you want to have the most meaningful life, one where you feel bonded and connected to others, more friends are better.””

humanities

Ada Limón Is The Next US Poet Laureate
New York Times - 7/12/22
Reading Literary Fiction Leads To A More Complex World View
Literary Hub - 7/8/22

“Interestingly, the finding was specific to literary fiction as a genre. In fact, the authors found that “early-life reading of narrative fiction that presents more standardized plots and characters, such as romance novels, predict holding a less complex worldview.” …The key to a complex worldview, the authors argue, is not exactly about empathy, as other studies would have it, but about internalizing the concept of difference.”

leadership

Four Elements Of Leading WIth Heart To Build Purpose-Driven Performance
NAIS - 7/12/22
8 Ways Teachers Need More Support From Leaders
Harvard Graduate School of Education - 7/1/22
On Networking For Leaders: Operational, Personal, Strategic
Harvard Business Review - 1/1/07

professional development

On Teachers Watching Colleagues Teaching (Part 2)
Larry Cuban - 7/16/22

“Uncommon as it may be, encouraging teachers to collaborate by observing one another lets these solo practitioners to learn from one another through comparing and contrasting their ways of teaching lessons. Doing so reduces teacher isolation and insulation baked into the age-graded structure of one teacher with one group of students in classrooms arrayed along hallways plowing through a packed daily schedule. From solo practitioner to collaborative practitioner, then, becomes more than a dream. Such a return on investment may far outstrip the time costs.”
On Teachers Watching Colleagues Teaching (Part 1)
Larry Cuban - 7/12/22

“Surely, observing a fellow teacher elsewhere in the school or the district for a few lessons followed up with a discussion–without making judgments of a “good” or “bad” lesson—offers a splendid opportunity to learn new and, perhaps, better ways to carry off a reading, math, or science lesson while interacting with students. Teachers learning from teachers is an under-used resource in “professional development,” the jargony term for teacher improvement.”

pedagogy

On Helping Students Practice Saying And Hearing The Word “No”
Edutopia - 7/11/22
"4 Shifts To Move From Teacher Centered To Learner Centered”
Katie L. Martin - 1/13/19

social media

Short, Text, Check-Ins With Friends Make An Outsize Difference
New York Times - 7/11/22

stem

Extraordinary Images And Lessons From The James Webb Telescope
New York Times - 7/15/22
“How A Public School In Florida Built America’s Greatest Math Team”
Wall Street Journal - 7/14/22
DALL-E And Whether AI-Generated Art Will Replace Human Art
Wired - 7/13/22

“The project helped convince him that image-generating AI will lead to an explosion of creativity that permanently changes humanity’s visual environment. “Anything that can have a visual will have one,” he says, potentially upending people’s intuition for judging how much time or effort was expended on a project. “Suddenly we have this tool that makes what was hard to imagine and visualize easy to make exist.” It's too early to know how such a transformative technology will ultimately affect illustrators, photographers, and other creatives. But at this point, the idea that artistic AI tools will displace workers from creative jobs—in the way that people sometimes describe robots replacing factory workers—appears to be an oversimplification.”

tech

McKinsey’s Primer On The Metaverse
McKinsey - 7/15/22

workplace

Stop Emailing: Pick Up The Phone Or Visit Your Colleague
Fast Company - 7/11/22

“A survey by the communication platform Loom of more than 3,000 office workers found that 91% have had digital messages misunderstood or misinterpreted at work, and for 20%, the misinterpretation has caused them to get reprimanded, demoted, or even fired… In contrast, face-to-face conversations or video calls allow for more layers of meaning to be conveyed between and among parties. “Aspects of a message such as emotion, tone, sense of urgency, or sarcasm can be more easily conveyed in these communication-rich channels,” says Dalton.”
Looping: “Staying With The Same Teacher The Following Year Benefits Students”
KQED - 6/29/22

““It’s not a magic bullet, but it does seem to have a positive effect,” Wedenoja said. “I think it also says something larger about the fact that relationships between teachers and students are important.””

other

"In Praise Of Pointless Goals”
Atlantic - 7/9/22
Audubon Announces Its 2022 Photography Award Winners
Audobon - 7/1/22
How To Quit Helicopter Parenting
Atlantic - 5/10/22
On Having A Piano In The House
Austin Kleon - 12/2/20

The Educator's Notebook

Search thousands of curated articles from all back issues

Articles on July 17, 2022

featured articles

admissions

cognitive science

creativity

curriculum

diversity/inclusion

health

humanities

leadership

professional development

pedagogy

social media

stem

tech

workplace

other