I recently read about a school where graduation rates rose from 73% to 90%. And, their dropout rate fell from 14% to 3%. All in less than five years! How? Online education. The Walker County Board of Education in Jasper, Alabama setup more than 160 courses containing 5,000 lessons for their students to access online. Students behind in
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October Is “Shakedown” Month!
October Is the Most Difficult Month… Are things getting a little “intense” in your classroom? Are your kids stressed out at home? Several years ago, my daughter’s 1st grade teacher, Robert, sent an email update: This week was something of a challenge. Tears and arguments cropped up on several occasions. By Thursday, I was fairly exhausted. Then
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How Does the Brain Really Learn?
One of the biggest problems with education is most educators are not taught how their students actually learn. You’ve probably heard about “left vs right brain” learning, or “visual, auditory and kinesthetic” learning. But, today we are going to peel that all back and go a layer deeper… into something far more universal that applies
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The Challenges of “D-I-Y” Study Skills Programs
Trying to Piece Your Own Study Skills Program Together? It’s “back to school” season, which means I’ve been talking to a LOT of educators in the past few months. That’s normal for this time of year. However, something is different this year. I’m hearing something I’ve heard a lot over the past 20 years, but
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Why We Can’t See Our Own (Writing) Mistakes
Just a few weeks ago, we ordered some new return address labels. See anything wrong? About 100 went out before we caught the mistake. Oops! And, every so often, we publish an email or blog post with a typo or two. Oops! In our company, we all live and breathe the content we publish. Every single
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THE Right Way to Teach with Student-Led Software
Teaching with student-led software raises many questions for teachers… Should I introduce the lesson before having the students jump in to the software? Or, should I let them explore the software, and then discuss the content with them? What if students want to progress farther ahead in the software on their own? Should I let
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MUST SEE: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
If you don’t yet know what all of the fuss is over, stop what you are doing right now and go see the movie, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? The film is not riveting. Yet, it is COMPLETELY riveting. Whether you were a fan of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood as a child or not, Fred Rogers Research consistently confirms there are two critical ways to raise test scores on standardized tests: Build “cognitive flexibility” with metacognitive strategies.1 If students don’t have problem-solving strategies for learning the content, well… they won’t learn it! Obviously. Teach the curriculum, not “to the test.” Teaching “to the test” –also known as “item teaching”– actually lowers test scores; “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist; using technologies that don’t yet exist, to solve problems that we don’t know are problems yet!” – Karl Fisch, educator “Critical thinking” and “problem-solving” skills are cited by employers as their “greatest need” in the workplace. But, national and state curriculum standards are loaded so I was a freshman in college when study skills radically changed my life. I went from struggling in K-12 to “straight As” in college. About six weeks after my first semester of college success, however, I was suddenly overcome with a deep, visceral ANGER. “Why didn’t someone teach me how to learn before!?” I was mentallyStandardized Tests:
Two Proven Ways to Raise Test ScoresBuilding “Critical Thinking” & “Problem-Solving” Skills… with Google
Read MoreStudy Skills Reduce High School Dropout Rates
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