Educators now understand far more about the neuroscience of learning and are more aware about the impact anxiety and stress have on students’ ability to concentrate and retain information. Schools also have more advanced technology at their disposal to track behavior and academic performance.

These developments allows district leaders to further fine-tune intervention strategies to better address their students’ needs. ���School culture is the foundation of academic achievement,��� says David Hardy, deputy superintendent of academics at Saint Louis Public Schools. ���How a child behaves isn’t something separate from how they perform academically.���

Here are four new ways districts are approaching intervention:

1. Rethinking behavior

PBIS guides teachers in changing how they respond to student behavior. Schools can build on the foundation of PBIS by encouraging educators to go one step further and change how they think about behavior, says Lori Desautels, an assistant professor in the College of Education at Butler University in Indiana.

Instead of asking ���What’s wrong with this student?��� educators should ask, ���What happened to this student?���

A lack of sleep, chronic stress at home, poor nutrition ��� all these factors can activate the brain’s stress response system, Desautels says. Even boredom can cause the release of cortisol���otherwise known as the stress hormone. ���Anxiety is the new learning disability in our country right now,��� says Desautels, adding that many teachers bring their own stress into the classroom.

Desautels works with districts across Indiana to help teachers understand neurobiology and how the human brain regulates emotions. Teachers learn to be more patient with a student who is acting out as a reaction to pain or trauma, and how to recognize their own emotional triggers.

One way of addressing elevated stress hormones���which in turn make it harder for students to concentrate or control their emotional responses���is to help teachers and students recognize when a child’s ���fight-or-flight��� response is being triggered. To regulate their emotions, students can learn mindfulness strategies such as deep-breathing or closing their eyes for 90 seconds and focusing on a specific taste or sound.

A similar effort to view student behavior through a sharper lens is called trauma-informed instruction. As a part of that, teachers are counseled on how their own demeanor can play a role in negative interactions with children who are suffering stress. This approach also focuses on creating an emotionally safe environment where educators help students find ways to improve their behavior���rather than always punishing students for acting out.

Counselors and district administrators at San Jose USD in California are beginning to receive training in trauma-informed instruction, and are learning how to incorporate it into PBIS, said Dane Caldwell-Holden, San Jose’s director of student services.

���Now we’re not simply just saying, ���We’re going to recognize you for being good,’��� Caldwell-Holden says. ���We’re going to say, ���When things don’t go well for you, we have interventions that are going to try to support you that so they don’t have to happen again.���

2. Pre-intervention strategies

Districts with well-established intervention programs for identifying struggling students have shifted priorities to ���pre-intervening��� before learners ever run into trouble.

Schools can take a proactive approach by adding social-emotional learning as a ���Tier One��� support within their RtI or PBIS framework���that means it’s provided to all students. Social-emotional learning emphasizes self awareness, self management and responsible decision-making to empower students to overcome academic and social challenges.

MacArthur Elementary School in Long Beach USD implemented an SEL program in 2014-15, with an emphasis on growth mindset ��� the belief that your own skills, intelligence or talents can grow with effort.

That year, only 53 percent of MacArthur’s students indicated that they had a growth mindset. In 2015-16, that number jumped to 81 percent of students, after the school introduced SEL. 91心頭istrators also provided professional development to staff on how to encourage growth mindset in students and, at the same time, ELA and math test scores at the school increased across all student subgroups.

Framing a task in a way that students believe they can achieve it will often get a better outcome, says Jim Wright, a New York State-based RtI trainer and author of RTI Toolkit: A Practical Guide for Schools. But teachers often need ��� and may not be getting ��� coaching in the best ways to galvanize students who are disengaged and losing hope, Wright says.

Using a framework like SEL can also help make academic intervention programs more successful in middle-and high school grades. There’s often a dramatic loss in motivation as struggling students transition to middle and high school, Wright says.

3. Keeping students in class

Increasingly sophisticated screening programs make it easier for teachers to identify and track struggling students, but that doesn’t mean pulling more kids from class for academic interventions.

There’s a growing consensus that taking kids out of core classes to give them extra support doesn’t help them catch up ��� it actually creates larger learning gaps, says Garth Larson, director of learning at the Winneconne Community School District in Wisconsin.

Larson, who has worked as a consultant with close to 1,000 school districts across the country on RtI implementation, says a growing number of schools are changing the structure of the day to provide academic support without taking time away from core classes.

At Winneconne, for example, all students receive ���core instruction plus,��� Larson says. The ���plus��� takes place during a daily, 30-minute block of time when all students receive specialized instruction���from intensive academic interventions for struggling students to enrichment for high achievers. The blocks are staggered by grade, so that reading specialists and other teachers are available.

Since launching this new approach, Winneconne’s students have posted double digit increases in overall proficiency scores in ELA and math, Larson says.

Creating time for all students to receive personalized instruction also allows districts to move away from using ���tiered language,��� Larson says. Labels can impact how teachers interact with students, and also changes how students think about themselves, Larson says.

���One thing a lot of districts are trying to do is, instead of sorting kids into tiers, just say, ���This is the group of students that is going to get very specialized support,’��� Larson says. ���It’s just a simple change in language, but it’s a much different view in how to look at kids.���

4. Better technology

The development of new technologies and programs for identifying kids with academic or behavioral challenges has made it much easier for districts to implement successful intervention programs.

Saint Louis Public Schools uses a technology platform to track behavioral interventions and to support a positive campus culture. Teachers use iPads to report positive or negative classroom behaviors.

Hardy, the St. Louis deputy superintendent, says immediately sharing detailed data with parents has improved school climate and also helped increase community involvement. Giving parents information on behavior makes them more engaged and better equipped to work with teachers. ���It adds that extra layer of communication that gets lost in paper, or just lost in translation when you don’t have it at your fingertips,��� Hardy says.

Sharing information among educators is equally important, says Wright, the RtI trainer. That’s why district’s should look for systems that track student interventions year-after-year. If a fourth grade teacher provides the right intervention for a student struggling in math, that information should be available the following year to that child’s fifth grade teacher.

���One teacher can work a miracle,��� Wright says, ���but if no one can build on that miracle, then it’s often wasted.���

Jessica Terrell is a freelance writer based in Hawaii.

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“I don’t think anyone has any clear answers at this point���there’s a lot to learn” says Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. “What are the rights schools have toward students or personnel who might have used during the day or prior to the school day? Is it treated the same way as alcohol? What are the legal options?”

Scott’s organization opposed marijuana legalization last spring, voicing concern that increased access to the drug could impact students’ brain development and exacerbate the number of youths requiring behavioral and mental health interventions.

Colorado: The guinea pig

Although marijuana use among teens has remained relatively constant since Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012 (according to the 2015 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey), administrators say it’s too soon to know how legalization may or may not impact test scores or graduation rates.

Tom Turrell, superintendent of Byers School District in Colorado, says he’s seen an increase in student marijuana use over the last three years, with school staff finding the drug hidden in campus restrooms more frequently. While recreational marijuana use is legal in the state for adults over 21, it remains illegal for minors and schools forbid its use or possession during school hours. The only exception is for medical marijuana treatments, but doses must be administered by guardians, Turrell says.

Marijuana possession on campus was cause for automatic expulsion before the 2012 law, Turrell says. Now it’s treated more like alcohol possession���students face suspension before expulsion.

Byers does random searches on campus with a drug-sniffing dog, but local police are limited in how they can test whether a student is under the influence of marijuana, Turrell says.

Monitor use

And some K12 leaders question how to monitor school staff. “How do we ensure a sense of righteousness for employees and for students?” says Richard Lyons, superintendent of Maine’s RSU #22 School District.

In Maine, educators have a range of concerns about marijuana legalization ��� from students showing up to campus high to the impact of parents smoking at home. For example, Lyons says children of parents who smoke at home could influence peers whose parents are less permissive about marijuana consumption.

Also, some parents might grow their own marijuana plants at home, so their children would have easy access. The new legislation will also impact schools if implementation of the law doesn’t ensure keeping pot out of kids’ hands, Lyons says.

Lyons hopes the new law can be addressed in a way that reduces teenager use through strong oversight. But he emphasizes the need for state and local officials to monitor student use and then work to develop strong early intervention programs. Specific solutions have yet to be created.

“Once we see the protocols and bylaws that give us guidance in how to adhere to this new law, then we can see what will be appropriate” Lyons says. It’s not clear when that might occur.

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Educators will learn about the many ways to reach this goal at this year’s National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference, which carries the theme “celebrate social responsibility.”

Various presentations at the conference this year focus on Hurricane Katrina, an event with special meaning at this year’s conference, which is being held in New Orleans from Nov. 13 to 15.

Colleen Sears, an assistant professor of music education at the College of New Jersey, says the hurricane is an opportunity for K12 teachers to explore issues of social responsibility through the lens of music and art.

Sears created a high school social studies curriculum using clips from When the Levees Broke, a Spike Lee documentary about the hurricane, and a mini-opera titled Katrina Ballads.

Watching these pieces facilitates conversations about social justice in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and in more recent events across the country including police shootings, and issues of race and social inequality.

Discussing events that happened a century ago or even decades ago is easier for students than discussing events, such as police brutality and refugees from Syria, that are happening now, she adds.

“Music, film and art can be a really powerful bridge between the safety of talking about things that happened in the past and being able to talk about issues that are happening right now that are simultaneously affecting our classrooms and our communities,” Sears says.

The financial struggles of many hurricane survivors can also spark conversation and lessons learned. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta developed a high school economics course called “Katrina’s Classroom: Money Skills for Life.”

“Katrina’s Classroom,” uses video interviews with local high school students about the hardships they experienced after the storm??from losing all their belongings to having to financial challenges starting over in a new city??to teach personal and emergency financial planning, says Claire Loup, a senior economic and financial education specialist with the bank.

Personal financial planning might not seem like an obvious social studies topic, but Loup says the topic leads to broader lessons about the national economy, and can encourage a sense of social responsibility in students by teaching them to question the claims of politicians.

Both curriculum approaches can be adapted to any community or current event, Sears and Loup say.

C3 uses vary

Another key topic at the conference, and one that has a range of applications, is the ongoing adoption and implementation of the C3 Framework.

Not all states use the framework, but a growing number of districts use it to drive everything from professional development to curriculum selection.

The framework, which emphasizes inquiry-based learning, is not a set of standards but rather guides states in updating social studies curricula.

One C3 project garnering strong interest is the New York State Toolkit, a free open source K12 social studies curriculum based on the C3 inquiry arc, says David Bailor, director of meetings and exhibits at NCSS. The inquiry arc??a set of four steps or “dimensions” for framing social studies lessons around questions or inquiries??is at the heart of the C3 framework.

Another promising C3 area is a growing collaboration between social studies teachers and English teachers. NCSS is working on a project??funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?? examining how the framework can be used to meet Common Core State Standards in the areas of literacy.

The C3 Literacy Collaborative project is aimed at putting the C3 Framework into practice in the classroom, while aligning curriculum and assessments with state literacy standards, says Ana Post, director of external relations and council communication at NCSS.

For example, Post adds, because social studies lessons often have rich historical documents to pull from, they provide great opportunity for meeting the nonfiction text requirements of the CCSS.

Jessica Terrell is a freelance writer based in Hawaii

The post Social studies inspires responsible citizens appeared first on District 91心頭istration.

That’s a message presenters will send at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference, which will be held in April in Boston. The Common Core State Standards and their focus on critical thinking and conceptual understanding are among the top issues that will be addressed this year, says NCTM President Diane Briars.

Most districts in Common Core states have spent the last few years aligning curriculum to make sure they were teaching the correct mathematics for each grade level. Now the focus is shifting to the Common Core’s Standards for Mathematical Practice, which describe not what should be taught, but how students should be engaging with mathematics, says NCTM presenter and math consultant Grace Kelemanik.

Students should be debating with one another and engaged in hands-on math learning, says Mark Goldstein, an NCTM presenter and vice president of teaching and curriculum at the Center for Mathematics and Teaching, a California nonprofit working on middle school Common Core curriculum.

Changing classrooms from rows of students memorizing facts to actively engaged learners in coming years will be buoyed by a slew of other advancements in mathematics instruction. They include improvements in classroom technology, the growth of 1-to-1 programs in schools, flipped classrooms, and efforts to better integrate formative assessments into daily instruction.

Indeed, from changes in K12 standards to new recommendations on what students should be studying in the first two years of college, there is a remarkable coherence of vision right now about how to transform math education, Briars says.

Diving into Common Core math

The eight Standards for Mathematical Practice in the Common Core describe math processes and ways of thinking that students should master. Many teachers have an understanding of just a few of the standards, and might be overlooking the most important ones because they are the most complex, Kelemanik says.

The three practices that could have the biggest impact are:

MP2: “Reason abstractly and quantitatively.”
MP7: “Look for and make use of structure.”
MP8: “Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.”

“Those three math practices actually define three different ways of thinking mathematically, or three different entry points into a mathematical problem,” Kelemanik says. “If you can develop those three different lines of reasoning, then you can develop grit. You can persevere in your problem solving.”

Students become comfortable with these habits of thinking when they are integrated into daily classroom routines �����just like the procedures teachers have for handing in homework or lining up for lunch.

MP7 is really asking students to understand how numbers and shapes get put together and taken apart, Kelemanik says. In a classroom routine that Kelemanik and her colleagues developed called “contemplate then calculate,” a teacher flashes a problem, covers it up after a few seconds and then�����instead of asking for the answer right away�����has students break down the problem with the person sitting next to them.

For a second- or third-grade subtraction problem such as 103-97, students might notice that 103 and 97 are both very close to 100. Instead of stacking the numbers and subtracting, the teacher asks students to find the answer with the fewest number of steps using a shortcut�����like visualizing both the numbers on a number line.

The goal of the strategy is to get students to start thinking mathematically. It can be applied across grade levels�����from simple subtraction problems to complex algebraic equations, Kelemanik says. The key is for teachers to use the process to teach students the properties that allow them to use the shortcut.

Helping English learners

The Common Core and other college and career readiness standards�����such as teaching math using real-world problems and encouraging student discussions�����also could be a big help to English language learners, says Briars, the NCTM president.

Research shows that increased discourse in class is one of the best ways to build English language skills, says Susie Hakansson, an NCTM presenter and president of TODOS: Mathematics for ALL, an education advocacy organization.

That also means calling on English learners to answer questions in class, something that teachers might not do in an effort not to embarrass these students, Hakansson says. Finally, it’s important to maintain the rigor of the mathematics. Just because students don’t understand the language doesn’t mean they don’t know or can’t learn the content, Hakansson says.

Providing visuals that help students understand the language and developing lessons that are multi-modal are other ways to help English learners, Kelemanik says. English learners also should be allowed to communicate their thinking through manipulatives, such as cubes and tiles, and by writing, drawing and annotating texts in different colors, she says.

Developing formative assessments

Students studying to become teachers are often taught to focus only on summative testing, overlooking the importance of integrating formative assessments into daily instruction, says Skip Fennell, an NCTM presenter and former president of the organization.

Changing this mindset has never been more important, as Common Core’s emphasis on conceptual understanding means teachers need to gain insight into students’ thought processes�����not just their ability to solve an equation, says Matt McLeod, NCTM presenter and research scientist at the Education Development Center.

The best formative assessments are developed during the lesson planning process, says Fennell, part of a group of NCTM presenters who have been working for the last two years on developing a toolbox of five formative assessment techniques for teachers to use. The five techniques are:

Observation
“Show me,” in which students demonstrate how they solved a problem
Interviewing students one-on-on or in groups about the lesson
“Exit tasks,” which should be a problem or meaty task
“Hinge questions” that relate to the key goal of the lesson.

Better preparing students for college

Two new reports analyzing changes to college math instruction also could have big implications in K12, says Briars, who will be presenting key takeaways from the reports at the April conference.

The first report is from Transforming Post Secondary Education in Mathematics, a project involving professors from top universities across the country and sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It was released after the organization’s first annual meeting in June. The other report, from the Mathematical Association of America, will be released this year.

Universities are working on transforming the first two years of collegiate mathematics to improve students’ in-depth conceptual understanding of mathematics, Briers says.

And such transformation will likely mean an increased emphasis on statistics and modeling in high school mathematics classes. District leaders also may have to better prepare students for calculus, while also reducing the number of students who end up pushing themselves to take the advanced subject in high school because they haven’t yet mastered the underlying concepts.

“The big message we are hearing from [universities] is, ��蔵�����it’s not a race,’ ” Briars says. “Make sure you are having students develop deep conceptual understanding before they are moving on to take more advanced mathematics.”

Jessica Terrell is a freelance writer based in California.

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