How I learned to love text-based planning
Kate Shanahan
In this video, a 4th grade teacher from Fall Hamilton shares her perspective on what it was like to transition from a standards-based to text based approach to planning.
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As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, our primary concern is helping ensure equitable opportunity for all students.
Working alongside schools, we’ve learned that great teaching is grounded in standards, data, and insights shared among educators. We believe a blog can help us make a difference by spreading the ideas and effective practices of educators we work with.
We’re proud of the expertise our team has built over our ten years, and we'll be featuring contributions from ANetters across the org on topics in which they’ve immersed themselves.
Help us spread opportunity for all students: please share posts that you find valuable with your colleagues. And please add your thoughts in the comments: we would love this blog to facilitate knowledge-sharing in all directions.
Filtering by Category: Educator Stories
Why leader learning matters
Kate Shanahan
As a school leader, you can get so focused on student learning that you overlook your own learning. But the instructional leadership team at MAS Charter School see a direct connection between leader learning and teachers’ and students’ achievement.
Read MoreUsing data to help students and teachers
Kate Shanahan
If you ask Mission Achievement and Success Charter School for the secret to success, you’ll likely hear “data.” But it’s not just about collecting data. It’s about using data to enhance teaching.
Read MoreWhite Street School jumps from turnaround to the highest status
Kate Shanahan
After building strong structures around a teaching and learning cycle, White Street School jumped from “underperforming” at Level 4 to Level 1, the top category in Massachusetts state accountability system.
Read MoreLa Cima’s focus leads to huge gains on ELA summatives
Kate Shanahan
Anyone would feel overwhelmed trying to take on several new priorities at once. Once Chrissie and her leadership team focused on just one instructional priority, they started to notice a marked difference.
Read MoreAn A+ school culture
Kate Shanahan
In the minds of school leaders, culture ranks high on the list of priorities: creating a rock-solid community and ensuring everyone plays an active role in fostering the values and beliefs that serve as the anchor for the school.
Principal JoAnn Myers accomplished just that.
Read MoreTeachers drive their development at the Condon K-8 School
Kate Shanahan
How do you make professional development more engaging and practical for teachers? Involve your teachers! At the Condon K-8 School in Boston, teachers design and facilitate their PD—and the impact on teacher investment and collaboration has been incredible.
Read MoreLet your students drive their learning
Kate Shanahan
Tamara Johnson and the staff at University Prep have always focused on students. But recently, teachers and leaders have taken it to a whole new level. Throughout each lesson, teachers and leaders maintain a laser-like focus on what students say and do, and how they are progressing toward mastery of the learning goal.
Read MoreMath teachers target aspects of rigor at Gerena
Kate Shanahan
“Rigor” is on every math teacher’s mind these days, and for good reasons. Rigorous teaching is key to improving student learning. At German Gerena Community School, an ANet partner in Springfield, MA, Math ILS Lindsey Lindequist developed an innovative approach to analyzing interim data that promotes rigorous teaching.
Read MoreExtra time selecting resources and planning yields results for Stanley
Kate Shanahan
Stanley Elementary School is known for their dedicated educators, who care deeply about students and are constantly developing their practice to meet the needs of their students. As first-year ANet partners, they’ve chosen instructional priorities that will align instruction with standards. In ELA specifically, they’re prioritizing complex text. In math, the focus is on the major work of the grade.
Read MoreLeveraging assessments for instructional change
Kate Shanahan
Most educators agree that assessments shouldn’t be a “departure from instruction” but, rather, an “integral part of it.” They’re on board with changing the conversation around assessments from student scores to what students have learned, and many agree that teachers should take the assessment.
However, in light of the ever-increasing demands on the time of teachers and leaders, the questions become when can this work be done? And, is this work truly worth it?
Integrating planning and PD saves time, gets results
Guest User
If there’s one thing teachers and school leaders are short on, it’s time.
That's what led Marilyn McCottrell to streamline her sessions with her teachers. Instead of carving out separate times for professional development and curriculum planning, she’s found a way to enable teachers and leaders to tackle both of these critical aspects of their work at the same time.
Read More3 steps to productive coaching observations
Guest User
Most of Isaac Castelaz’s professional development work doesn’t happen in a packed conference room or a post-observation debrief. It happens before he ever sets foot in a classroom to observe a lesson when he sits down to study and internalize the lesson himself.
Read MoreStudent discussion at the heart of learning
Guest User
A classroom culture that values discussion encourages students to take ownership of their learning. Discussion engages students and allows for real-time feedback, which can ultimately deepen their understanding of math content. In this video you’ll see some of fifth-grade teacher Carina Pruitt’s strategies for building an effective culture of student discussion in her classroom.
Read MoreBuilding teacher capacity at DCIS at Ford
Guest User
We’re proud of the good work going on in our partner schools, and our contributions to it. With an eye to building teacher capacity, the administrative team at DCIS at Ford is focusing teacher learning for 2015–16 year on deepening educators’ understanding of the Common Core standards and what it will take for every student to master grade level content.
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