Article Archives

Radical Dreaming

Following unbridled curiosity is the central work of children. And, contrary to what industrialized education might demand of us, enabling the deep work of childhood to flourish is the actual central work of educators, school leaders, caregivers, and anyone bestowed with the honor of raising and educating young people.

The Bookworms and Mr. Reading Pot

Every Friday, Mr. Reading Pot would make a grand entrance into the classroom and be seated in the middle of a large circle of squirrely kids. Mr. Reading Pot was a bad-tempered and curmudgeonly fellow.

Convergence

Teachers plan meaningfully and rigorously in ways that allow the synergy of soft and hard skills to interact

The Power of YES

It was the week before the exhibition at High Tech Middle Chula Vista. My eighth-grade class had spent the last eight weeks exploring the question “What makes us resilient?”

How to Start Continuous Improvement Without Stopping Everything

One of the key principles of continuous improvement is that you should spend a lot of time understanding a problem but this is not necessarily feasible in a large school district

A Project is a Type of Unit, Not a Type of Lesson

There are two questions I hear a lot from visitors to High Tech High that are TOTALLY different, but both based on the same misconception about Project-based Learning.

Collaboration Doesn’t Always Mean “Group Work”

Lots of teachers come to High Tech High, see how collaborative the teachers are, and get inspired to make their first project a massive interdisciplinary collaboration between, say, English, Spanish, Biology, and Algebra. This is almost always a bad idea.

How to Create the Right Community Partnerships for You

The relationships between students and their community partners exist across a spectrum that can be surveyed in the project planning.

Deeper Learning Observation Guide

This observation guide can help educators and students get a better sense of when and how they observe evidence of deeper learning

4 Attention-Getters That Work from Kindergarten to Grad School

Here is a paradox of teaching: if you want your classroom to be full of conversation and self-directed learning, you need to be able to quickly capture everybody’s focus.

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 27

What if we treat people, from the beginning, as imaginative, intelligent, playful creatures who deserve to be understood as such?

An Improvement Project Tackling Chronic Absenteeism

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Ferdinand T. Day (FTD), a Title 1 elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia, noticed an alarming increase in chronic absenteeism rates that disproportionately impacted Hispanic students

Lesson Launch: The Wow Factor

Much like a movie’s opening scene, the launch of a lesson should grab everybody’s attention, spark curiosity, and get students asking questions.

Deconstructing Construction Projects

Last spring I was standing in my fifth-grade classroom, mid-project, rearranging student groups when I realized we had a problem. My students were building scale models of dog houses and cat condos that they had designed—and would ultimately build—to donate to a pet-adoption event later that spring.

Reading List: True Project Stories

This collection is called “true project stories” because it’s all about teachers (and students) telling the stories of the projects they’ve done, from the heights of achievement to the depths of despair.

Classroom Design for Busy People: Make a “Tribute Wall”!

As a new teacher, I faced the same dilemma every fall: What to put on the walls of my classroom?

Exhibitions Photo Gallery

A gallery of exhibition images to inspire your next exhibition of student learning!

Three Principles that Guide my Grading as a College Professor

“Grading” for me means more than just marking mistakes and putting a number or letter on an assignment. This is because, for the last ten years, I have used specifications grading in all my classes.

A Meeting I Actually Look Forward To: The Coaching Huddle

Every two weeks, my Network for College Success (NCS) colleagues and I connect with each other to learn and grow our practice as Transformation Coaches.

Sometimes the Bias You Need to Disrupt is Your Own

I’m going to share with you how undertaking antiracist and antibias work with schools forced me to confront my own blind spots.

Can’t I Just Let the Kids Decide What to Make?

Q: It seems restrictive to tell every kid to make the same kind of product when we’re doing a project. How should I decide what parts of the project to be flexible on and which are non-negotiable?

A Simple Way to Help Reluctant Students Start Asking Questions

All through my schooling in India, the one thing I learned was to not ask questions. Questions derail the smooth flow of a lesson’s delivery, taking it into unforeseen territories and uncharted waters.

What if kids just copy the model?

The answer to this question is, literally and precisely, “I’d like to see them try.”

Student Led Conference Model Agenda

Are you planning this year’s SLCs? Save time and make sure you’ve covered everything, with this SLC agenda!

How (and Why) to Start a Project with a “Model Critique”

“We critique and discuss what makes the work powerful: what makes a piece of creative writing compelling and exciting; what makes a scientific or historical research project significant and stirring; what makes a novel mathematical solution so breathtaking.”

Self-Assessment Strategies for Students

How can assessment practices be designed to best support student learning? In school, the term “assessment” is often shorthand for “grades”—or, perhaps, tests, quizzes, rubrics, and similar evaluative tools. However, thinking of “assessment” as interchangeable with “test” or “grade” limits the potential for assessment practices to lead to meaningful and deeper learning.

Reading List: What is this thing we call PBL?

Sometimes the simplest questions lead to the most complexity…

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 26

In 2009 I began an internship at the Innovation Unit in London. It being an internship, I was doing a little of everything, but my main project was Learning Futures, whose goal was to make school more engaging for students.

Remembering David Price

Charged with the challenge and the honour of trying to capture the spectacular quality of David Price’s life, an image, not words, came to mind.

Improvement from Scratch

School operation teams, the backbone of making the school day happen across the country, are often invisible. With little acknowledgement of success, it’s easy to notice when things fall apart: when buses don’t arrive on time, admission numbers are lower, computers stop working, or thousands of dollars are wasted on food ordered, but never eaten.

Energizers and Icebreakers (minimal set-up required)

These games are easy to play and require minimal setup.

The Route To School Improvement Is Hiding In Plain Sight

“You know how you can tell you’re in a happy school within 30 seconds of walking through the front door?” This is a statement/question that I’ve experienced on countless occasions during a lifetime spent in education. It has a ring of truth to it and we’ve all felt it as visitors or (worse) inspectors.

Giving Teachers a chance to “Test Drive” their Lessons

M’s fourth graders were buzzing as they worked in pairs to solve the math problem M. had just presented to them. The other educators in the room circulated and listened in as students used academic language to discuss their answers with each other, jotting down notes about what their partner had said and the language they had used.

Exploring Internship Opportunities

Thirty potential mentors from local organizations, nonprofits and businesses were sitting across tables facing dozens of eleventh-grade students.

Your Classroom Isn’t An Island

My fourth-grade classroom was covered in cardboard boxes. The entire back wall was piled high with donated boxes. The tables were covered in glue and paint cups sat in the sink. As I began to clean up some paint splatters, I smiled to myself as I thought about how I ended up in this situation.

Schools as Equitable Communities of Inquiry

We wrote this chapter several years ago, in response to a request from the Sitra Foundation in Finland that we envision the school of the future. The chapter is dated in some respects, but apart from minimal updates and revisions for clarity, it appears here as written.

Continuous Improvement In Social Impact Organizations

During a time when people feel overwhelmed by endless professional development opportunities, new technology, and new approaches to doing their work, we wanted to emphasize that the continuous improvement model is not a totally new framework for most organizations.

How We Put On A High School Music Festival

We came up with the idea of planning and putting on a music festival. We looked at each other, paused, then simultaneously said, “Naaahhh.”

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 25

The Issue 25 letter from the editor

A Handbook for Community Partnerships: Internship

This is one in a trio of articles that provide tried-and-tested, actionable advice for community partnerships in school. This article focuses on internship. You should also check out the other articles, on service learning and externship.

A Handbook for Community Partnerships: Externship

This is one in a trio of articles that provide tried-and-tested, actionable advice for community partnerships in school. This article focuses on externship. You should also check out the other articles, on internship and service learning.

Writing or Writer?

Am I teaching them to write, or am I inspiring writers?

Nurturing Student Well-Being and Engagement through Belonging

Educators have known for years that social, emotional, and cognitive processing are all neurologically intertwined and that school connectedness has long-lasting protective effects for adolescents.

A Handbook for Community Partnerships: Service Learning

This is one in a trio of articles that provide tried-and-tested, actionable advice for community partnerships in school.

Integrating Community Partners in Project Based Learning

Use this resource to bring community partnerships into your projects

Eliminating the 0-100 Scale

The 0-100 scale for grading divides points unevenly in each grade chunk creating a situation where a small number of failing grades can outweigh a larger number of passing grades

How to Tell a Story of Learning in a Podcast or Video (Workshop)

The resources you need to run a workshop on telling stories of learning (or just to learn how to do it yourself!)

The 2×10 Intervention

A concentrated approach to boosting student trust and growth. Try this strategy to deepen class connections and encourage students to reinvest in learning goals.

Providing Wise Feedback to Students

Effective teaching involves setting high expectations for students and providing them with the necessary support to meet those expectations, fostering an environment where students can thrive through understanding, guidance, and belief in their capabilities by the instructor.

Mood Board Welcome Routine

A supportive welcome routine that is authentic and establishes trust and respect in your classroom through humorous mood boards.

Rock On! A Virtual Reality Geology Project

A fourth grader from High Tech elementary North County stood inside a crater of an extinct volcano. He contemplated where to go next…

It Takes a Village to Raise a Writer

We called our project the Earth Authors Program. It began with Ramnath setting the groundwork by giving children an authentic reason for writing.

The Six Relationships that Characterize Great Schools

Underlying Deeper Learning are the relationships that make learning meaningful and sticky.

Using Continuous Improvement to Streamline the IEP Process

IEP goals are the heart of the educational program and it is possible to improve the system design so that 100% of IEP goals can be achieved, setting students up for a lifetime of access and success.

A Troubleshooting Tool for School Improvement

NYC Outward Bound Schools have developed a new version of the Lippitt-Knoster model to aid school leaders and teams in managing complex change for equity improvement.

Putting the Science of Reading into Practice

Lesson study works especially well for areas of teaching that have rigorous research, like the science of reading.

They Have a Point…

I want to tell you a story. It’s a story about innovation. It’s a story about improvement. It’s a story about equity.

The Performance Cycle: Building Community

A learning community’s activities and relationships are designed to help set a learner’s feet on a path toward a positive social future.

Teach Like A (Historically Accurate) Pirate

Eighteenth century pirates were participating in one of the most ambitious experiments in radical democracy in the history of humanity.

A Weekly Student Survey Transformed my Teaching

We learn most from the real experts in our classrooms: our students

How to Collaborate with a Park: A Guide for Teachers

One of the biggest time-sucks in project planning is locating, vetting, and integrating relevant resources required for project-based learning

The Peace and Well-Being Film Project

How did the teachers connect the perspectives of different subjects into a single film project?

Getting to Great

He hesitated, “In general, I think anyone can do what they set their mind to do as long as they know they are not alone in doing it,”

How I Planned a Project Using ChatGPT

Middle School teacher Sean Gilley explains how he uses Chat GPT to share the load on project planning, so he can focus on the parts of teaching that matter most

The Joy of Collaborative Short Story Writing

What would it look like if you got three students to write a beginning, middle, and end to a short story?

Strengthening Family-School Partnerships

Could a partnership between the school and families with open communication be the key to student success?

What Does It Take For Black Teachers To Thrive?

Currently, our nation is experiencing a national teacher shortage that has disproportionate effects on students

Dance Dance Reconstruction

I never intended to become an advocate for teaching history in elementary school; it’s something that just sort of happened…

Learning Behind the Lens

A student reflection on collaborative project work

The Price of a Good Education

“Hey, I’m gonna need that hundred dollars by the end of the day,” Max said as he double-checked the owed amount on his collection sheet.

Lightning In A Bottle: The Al Qamar School Story

“Paagalon ka school” (“School for lunatics”), “The Motley Crew’, “The Rag-Tag Army” were the not-so-flattering epithets the community used to describe our school —one would have thought we had started a rock band, not a tiny little school with nine children and grand ambitions.

What Did You Learn in School?

This is a story about the lessons White boys learn in school. Or at least it’s about what I learned in school- about race and class and gender and what we do or don’t owe each other.

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 24

The Unboxed Issue 24 letter from the editor

Time for Connection

The past years of the pandemic has made it difficult for students to connect with each other, which is essential for their growth and development, and as teachers, it’s important to provide opportunities for them to connect peer-to-peer despite the limited time.

Hazmat Suit in New York City?

I was dead certain that my 8th graders would not be able to guess what was going on with the picture I had selected…

Balance of Convergence & Divergence in Building Efficacy

WHEELS, an NYC Outward Bound School believe in the power of continuous improvement cycles to increase the collective efficacy of teacher teams…

C3 Mobility

College students lead and engage with high school students to provide mentorship for the college transition

Going Beyond The Equity Pause: The CARPE Student Fellowship

So you want to involve students in your improvement work. Where do you start? Naturally, most improvers will begin by conducting empathy interviews.

Swimming Against the Current: Resisting White Dominant Culture

Practical advice for “walking the walk” in equity-focused improvement work

The “Totes of Hope”: A Mental Health Humanities Project

To address the youth mental health crisis, 11th grade Humanities teacher Andres Perez and his students at High Tech High Chula Vista sewed tote bags for patients at Rady Children’s Hospital Psychiatric Outward. Along the way they learned about the systematic issues in society that could lead to troubling mental health issues, and how to take action toward them. They also learned the importance of iterating a product and a process, and giving grace to oneself through it all.

“Worksheets Won’t Make Good Artifacts”

What happened when a large Kentucky district decided to go big on Deeper Learning

“Dear Math, You are Dreadful”

15-year veteran math teacher, Sarah Strong, and her high school student, Gigi Butterfield, get into why kids hate math (at least some of them), and what to do about it.

How to Codesign with Students

During our seven years as High Tech High students—and eventually, student leaders in the Student Ambassador program—we worked alongside our teachers and school leaders to plan and make decisions both in and out of the classroom.

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 23

The Issue 23 letter from the editor

Why Root Cause Analysis?

Introduction text to using root cause analysis

Improvement as a Tool for Our Collective Liberation

Brandi Hinnant-Crawford talks to Stacey Caillier about how improvement science can be used to dismantle oppressive structures

Struggling with Improvement? Try a Planned Experiment!

Ben Daley recommends “planned experiments” as a means of inquiry and an alternative to the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle

Educators Building Software

How a team of educators built a suite of software for students, teachers, and administrators without knowing how to code.

Intentional Integration: Technology Choices for Teachers

Technology is no longer an occasional variation in a paper based learning environment. Increasingly, the laptop is the learning environment.

Four Ways Game Design Levels Up Engagement in Your Classroom

There’s a lot that project-based teachers can learn from game designers…

Two Approaches to Grouping Students in Projects

Early in the spring, I got a phone call from a school principal asking what Unboxed had on group roles in projects…

Rock Stars, Eggs, and Teaching

What really counts in the “egg drop challenge” is what happens after an egg breaks…

Building Bridgemakers (Excerpt from Hip Hop Genius 2.0)

When Walter arrived at St. Paul, Minnesota’s High School for the Recording Arts (HSRA), he was already an activist…

Liberate Your Curriculum

A liberated curriculum is a curriculum that represents, elevates, honors, and integrates all young peoples’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds and cultural ways of being.

What is PBL?

A key question for PBL educators: how will we know if we are doing project-based learning well?

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 22

It’s got me thinking about how much of my media diet consists of stories of either “well-intentioned people who ended up making things worse for interesting reasons,” or “ill-intentioned people who made things worse for predictable reasons,” and how little time I spend with stories of people succeeding at making some bit of the world a bit more fair, humane, and livable for everybody in it.

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 21

Before 2020, you could have been forgiven for thinking that school buildings were an anachronism.

The Six Equity Stances of Liberatory Project-Based Learning

The Six Equity Stances of Liberatory Project-Based Learning creates a way to identify, challenge, and critique the social forces that reproduce inequity and oppression.

What an English Language Learner Coordinator Does

Schools are full of adults who aren’t classroom teachers, but a classroom teacher can go through their entire career without really…

Learning is a Full-Body Sport, So Take Care of Your Full Self

Are you supporting your wellness as we transition out of the hardest school year in history?

Honors Pathways and “Small-ologies”

The honors biology pathways allowed students to develop relationships and no part of school felt more absent during distance learning than relationships.

Increase Student Ownership with a Student-Facing Project Map

A PBL scaffolding tool for communicating the project road map

When Place Shapes the Product

Genesee Community Charter School is centering students in a place-based curriculum provides them with a deeper understanding of…

Student-Led Conferences: A How-to Guide

Traditional parent-teacher conferences often only passively include the student, if at all. Student-led conferences are just the opposite.

A Community Committed to Deeper Learning

Almost exactly one year into the global pandemic, the deeper learning community gathered virtually…

Glossary — Issue 20

We try our best to make Unboxed a jargon-free zone, but there are invariably a few words that may be unfamiliar. We’ve done our best to define them here!

Designing the Largest Classroom: Online Learning at Scale

We need to assess our resources before we can design online experiences. The online classroom…

Making Game Controllers Accessible to Everyone

Teachers Corey Clark, Curtis Taylor & Matt Gottilla designed the AbleGamerz Project…

Radical Self-Love: A 3rd Grade Project Story

Our encouraging words, listening ears, hugs and high fives make a big difference in the…

Serving English Language Learners Starts by Serving Teachers

I stood in front of the classroom, testing guidelines in hand, as 17 sixth-grade studen…

Morning Meeting: Rooting the Day in Community and Social Justice

Mara Gonzales ditched the “Would You Rather” questions in her Morning Meetings and now starts the day with discussions about recognizing privilege…

Improvement as a Journey

Every trip begins with a desire to get from where we are now to where we want to be…

Issue 19 Glossary

We try our best to make Unboxed a jargon-free zone, but there are invariably a few words that may be unfamiliar. We’ve done our best to define them here!

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 20

For teachers, the end of every year feels like the conclusion of a quest: you’re physically and mentally exhausted, you feel deeply bonded with your traveling companions, and as you look back you recall your feats of courage, dexterity, and cunning, as well as your questionable choices, missed opportunities, and all the people you wish you had done more to help.

A Found Year

As an educator for over 30 years, serving as a teacher, principal, and assistant superi…

Doing Lesson Study in Math

Alec Patton interviewed MAIC Director Daisy Sharrock, and Improvement Coaches …

We’re About All Kids, and All Kids Being Successful

The percentage of seniors who completed their FAFSA forms at …

Improving FAFSA Completion Rates

We are attempting to represent the findings of a major Continuous Improvement project …

Culturally Responsive Continuous Improvement

In the fall of 2019, I was entering my third year as an Induction Coach …

Quick Jots to Support Student Reading

Independent reading is the reading students do that has potential …

Julie Ruble’s PDSA Reports

During Induction, participants complete four PDSA cycles …

Continuous Improvement in the Classroom: A Teacher’s Perspective

Our topic was “close reading,” and when we were sharing strategies …

Bringing Continuous Improvement to Induction

California’s credentialing structure is a two-step approach …

Ten Lessons Learned About Improvement Networks that Work

In the midst of a national reckoning with centuries of racial injustice …

Protected: Putting the Science of Reading into Practice

I felt a wave of panic. Adriana didn’t remember all of her letters and sounds. Yet she was testing on our F and P assessments as an average reader in my classroom. About 30% of my students were reading at a first or second grade level, about 30% were reading at a third grade level, and the last 40% were reading at a fourth or fifth grade level.

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 19

Welcome to the Winter 2020 issue of Unboxed, which focuses on “Continuous Improvement” in education.

Welcome to Unboxed Issue 18

In this first-ever retrospective issue of the journal, we showcase a range of previously-published articles which tackle the topic of literacy, along with a new interview with an educator who has been deeply influential to High Tech High schools.

Student-Centered Teaching, Teacher-Centered Leadership

The first journal entry I wrote as a brand new apprentice teacher is dated September 13…

Logs from San Diego Bay.

These words are written in memory of Jay Vavra, my former teaching partner…

Exhibiting Student Writing.

Exhibitions of student learning, with their many projects, activities, and associated…

On the Trail of the Literacy Campaign: An Internship in Cuba.

As I sit in a small living room, an elderly woman details her experiences fifty years ago.

Lila Speaks.

As of yesterday, it had been 13 weeks, or 55 school days, since school started. Yet it was…

Doing the Project Yourself: Reflections on the Writer’s Craft.

In the world of project-based learning, prototypes are necessary for success…

Graffiti Discussions: Igniting the Silent Majority.

“The main thing to do is pay attention. Pay close attention to everything…”

Making Critique Work.

I introduced critique to my class after reading Ron Berger’s manifesto, An Ethic of…

Crafting Beautiful Lessons

Ron Berger is interviewed on his approach to engage students in the creation of “beautiful work”

Educational Video Games And Transdisciplinary PBL

The above scene occurred in a recent session of the Minecraft Mathematics Middle School…

Deconstructing Myths And Clarifying Truths

There are times when I recognize the importance of my job as a history teacher more…

Building Empathy Through Action

Teenager. What does that word make you think about? Do you think of recklessness and…

Why Dewey Needs Freire

So many silos. In the darkness and confusion of these post-election days, this is one…

Deeper Learning and Equity

What does it take to do both?

“Thou Talk’st of Nothing”

In today’s media-saturated society, it can sometimes feel like a sisyphean feat to…

An Edu-Nerd’s Heaven

To say that my first year of teaching was a struggle would be the professional…

Executive Function And The Provenance Of Patience

Later, though, after the third time my mother had asked me the same question within the…

Diverse By Design

These conversations may be hard, but my discomfort is small compared to what my peers…

Engineering A Mindset

Exploring An Elementary Engineering Classroom

Who Killed The PD Day?

Top-down compliance measures and listening to “spray and pray” guest presenters are…

Little Bits Of Magic

My colleague was craving opportunities for us to share a success from our classroom, an…

The House That Built Me

After spending almost two weeks building a house from the ground up, I learned how to…

Student Consulting

Disrupting Student-Teacher Hierarchies

The Case For Collaboration

Many have likened teaching to art. I think there’s something to that. Both are creative…

Uncovering The Why In The Way We Teach

I was proud of the countless teaching strategies I had already collected before I began…

Redefining Well-Behaved In The 21st Century Classroom

I had never given a thought to the term well-behaved until I heard another teacher use…

Does Deeper Learning Make A Difference? Yes It Does!

Established in 1946, American Institutes for Research (AIR) is an independent…

Three Inadequacies

My students had no chance to invest in the long-term crafting of beautiful work and no…

A Test That Teaches Trust

The challenge is to convince my diverse students (a representative ethnic and…

A Journey With Venetia Phair, The Girl Who Named Pluto

In British Primary, we were encouraged to follow our students’ interests in developing…

Every Classroom Should Be A Maker Space

Early on, I held up published books ranging from 50 to approximately 150 pages. “This…

Creativity Is A Decision Anyone Can Make

How can we encourage students to decide for creativity? Students develop creativity not…

Writing “Downtown”: Student Voice in Teaching Writing

Like my students must do in their writing, I must attend to my audience. Using what I…

Choosing Sean

Deeper learning experiences are needed by our students today. Right now. This very…

When Exhibition Might Not Be Enough

On the day of our second school-wide exhibition last year, a student’s words nearly…

Other People’s Children Are My Children

To be clear, this is NOT a guide, and I do NOT have all the answers, or any answer for…

Breadth And Depth: Can We Have It Both Ways?

That led us to give a talk about breadth and depth. I advocated for depth; she for…

Thank You Tiger! My Teacher Wake Up Call

His dad had told him that he’d have a job with him as a bricklayer on the building…

Fishbone Protocol Workbook

Protocol to engage in the fishbone diagram

Fishbone Diagram Example

An example of a fishbone diagram about the problem of groupwork roles

Why Root Cause Analysis?

Introduction text to using root cause analysis

Empathy Interview Workbook

Use this workbook to prepare and reflect about the empathy interview process

Aim Statement Protocol

Use this protocol to tune and refine your aim statement

Evaluating Aim Statements Work Book

This work book will help you craft, and revise, an Aim Statement for your improvement project!

After a Progressive K-12: First Gen Voices on College

“I think that HTH has such a different way of teaching their students that really…

Getting More Students Into College

A Foray Into Improvement Science

The Good, Bad, and Ugly of a Successful School Project

“Human history is punctuated by the prolific rise and inevitable collapse of…

10 Principles for Distributed Leadership

The hardest part about teaching (well) and leading (well) isn’t creating meaningful…

Rigor Reconsidered

School as “a place where you were just forced to go,” and where the curriculum…

My Education at the Met

In this keynote address at Deeper Learning 2015 in San Diego, the author describes how…

Knowing Why

We forget to ask ourselves Why and learning becomes a “chore” or a “must do” as we pass…

Logs From San Diego Bay

By the end of our first year together, our students produced a field guide, The Two…

Home Visits

What I’ve come to know, however, is that spending time in the home of each student gives…

Designing a Collaborative Learning Environment in Math

What do I want for my students? I want them to be active learners, able to ask questions…

Sizzle and Steak

So, exhibitions can be exceptionally stressful for everyone involved, but that’s no…

When Teachers Exhibit

How can teachers further develop new professional learning and then share it? Is there an…

Doing the Project First

This is one of the most important steps in designing curriculum because it allows for the…

Failure: The Mother of Innovation

This vignette from our work in the field illustrates an interesting attitude we have, as…

72-Mile Classroom

From the crest at Volcan Mountain, to the coast at Dog Beach, lies the 72-mile classroom…

Assessing Quality Teaching

Over the course of my career, many other professional texts written by powerful, practicing…

From Socratic Seminar to Space Science

I have been doing Socratic Seminars in my physics class long enough to know when they go…

What Does it Mean to Think Like a Teacher?

When, as an infant, you come to terms with the fact that your mother leaves the…

Permission to Wonder: Using Art to Deepen Learning

We were asked to be accountable for our teaching: were we effective? Did people learn what…

Making Critique Work

I introduced critique to my class after reading Ron Berger’s manifesto, An Ethic of…

Growth Through Reflection

“Ms. Georgia, is it reflection time yet?” an eager student asks. “You betcha, Alex. Go…

A Reel-y Authentic Project

Raising thousands of dollars in a short period of time to start a student run, non-profit…

Teaching, Learning, and Relationships

In this panel discussion, aired as part of a MOOC on Deeper Learning, students share…

A Humbling Lesson in Listening

My class and I often have short, morning conversations (commonly known as…

Students as Experts in Professional Development

Involving students as experts in our adult learning community has been a great way to…

Education, Expanded

The High Tech High system is a hotbed of intellectual thought on the topic of education,…

Mindsets and Student Agency

We can’t force students to develop agency and drive their own learning. It must come from…

Teachable Moments: A Lesson In Listening To Students

Many teachers will tell you about a “teachable moment”—that magical moment of learning…

Don’t Just Talk About Character: Teach Habits

When was the last time you were involved in completing a project for work that didn’t…

Scaffolding Creativity Through Design Thinking

Many students commented that they struggled with their design and working with their group. I noticed these challenges as well.

Taking A Stand On Controversial Issues

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

A Differentiated Lesson, A To Z

My students have a wide range of background knowledge in mathematics. They also process…

Gaining Perspective: Guiding Student Reflection

We’ve all had those days when a couple of minor things go wrong and suddenly the whole day…

Deeper Learning For Professionals

Many of the professional development experiences we have as K-12 educators are lackluster.

Design Thinking vs. “Refrigerator Projects”

Do you remember as a child the sheer thrill that came with having your work displayed on the…

Deeper Learning In Common Core Math Projects

Would teachers continue to be able to personalize and bring in adult world connections through math…

Change Leadership For Learning

In this UnBoxed interview, Tony Wagner, first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology…

Solving Real-World Problems With Open Source Software

In what follows, I will explain how a recent project of mine benefitted from working…

An Artful Thinking Classroom

I projected the image onto the screen and gave my eighth grade students several quiet…

I Want to be a Leader Who…

I want to be a Leader who…

Critical Thinking in Presentations of Learning

The questions asked by the teachers were probing to the point where [my son] had to go on…

Introducing Peer Critique to Students

Revision is commonly met with groans of, “I don’t know what to change,” and subpar…

Relationships Matter in School Integration

Hey, white girl. Move out the way!”

Everyone a Mentor

As he listens to his classmate read her story, his eyes grow wide. He turns to…

Revealing Riches: Mentoring in Clinical Credentialing

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “The greatest good you can do for another is not just…

Upside Down Exhibition

Envision believes that through focusing on rigor, relationships, and results, we can…

The Politics of Assessment

Assessments such as exhibitions and internships are intrinsically authentic but are few…

The Power of My Mistakes

Below I discuss three times in the past year when I have tried my own projects. In each case, I learned about how to present the project to students. I have also been embarrassed and pleasantly surprised by how much better my students’ work was than my own.

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