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Issue 28: Spring 2025

This issue highlights stories of school improvement and practical tools for educators. It features how Parkway Academy supports students during the school day, how NYC Outward Bound schools are rethinking advisory, and how the Teaching Matters Network is using identity questions to boost literacy. Tools include Baltimore’s method for turning routine processes into improvement projects, Chicago’s protocols for data reflection, and RISE Network’s resources on tracking absences and fostering improvement through personalized strategies. Additional insights come from educators like Loni Berqvist, Aneesa Jamal, Peter Jana, and Sara Sadek, who explore student voice, reading engagement, skill development, and child-centered learning.

We Have All This Data, Now What?

Too often when teachers get data, they don’t know what to do with it. At the University of Chicago Middle Grades Network, we use two protocols in succession (the first with staff members, the second with students) to transform data into effective action. The staff meeting protocol is called “What? So what? Now what?” and based on what we learn from that, we organize a “data circle” with students. Here’s what that looks like in detail.

Tackling Chronic Absenteeism

Tracking  absences quarterly allows schools to spot trends and changes faster, whether they be  something to celebrate or a student who needs more support. When we track the number of absences by quarter, just a few missed days in a row can trigger early intervention or celebration.  

Tidepool Protectors

Through fieldwork and research, students learned how tide pools are created and how the environment changes with low and high tides

Student-led Advisory

Try Stuff was a hit! Crew advisors were thrilled to hand over some of the facilitation, and students came up with all sorts of creative lessons to share with their Crews.

Art Saves The Whale!

This multi-grade art project had students create sea creatures out of recycled materials.

WIN Time at Parkway Academy

Parkway faculty carved out time in their daily schedule to pull specific groups of students to work on a particular skill or intervention,

Play It By Ear Project

Students partnered with the SoCal Beep Baseball Association to design soldered equipment to make the game more available.

Love Languages for Educators

By learning to recognize the preferred ways in which people in your life understand love, you can better connect with people.

Policy Project

Students developed persuasive speeches about a local issue that was based in biology research to speak at a city council meeting

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?”

Tempered

Students learned about music, rhythm, and self-awareness by creating instruments from objects made of glass.
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