“What are your values as a person? What are American values? Do you think the country is living up to those values today? Why or why not?”… I wrote to dozens of teenagers — young people I’d met at protests, young Republicans I’d talked to around Election Day, teenagers who were already vlogging about their high school experiences on YouTube. I also reached out to Christian youth groups, home-schooling associations, L.G.B.T. rights organizations, groups representing Native American youth and many other organizations, asking them to recommend young people who might want to participate.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been told to strive for balance. Yet I’ve noticed something interesting: The times in my life during which I’ve felt happiest and most alive are also the times that I’ve been the most unbalanced… I think far better than striving for balance is striving for what psychologists call internal self-awareness, or the ability to see yourself clearly by assessing, monitoring and proactively managing your core values, emotions, passions, behaviors and impact on others.”
Further analysis revealed that having a caring adult at school is linked to a greater likelihood of self-reported excellent grades at school, and this relationship is strongest for high school students.”
What I never imagined was that these kids would end up teaching me more than I could ever teach them. And it’s good that I never imagined that, because it hasn’t happened at all… I am an unstoppable teaching machine, whereas my students are like a different kind of machine that just happens to do a little bit of teaching inadvertently.”
To level the playing field and maintain validity, it should end the pretense that the SAT is timed, throw away the clocks, hire more proctors, and give all students as much time as they want or need. If timing is essential, the College Board better get to work to protect the validity of its prize product.”
That many scientific discoveries were stumbled upon by accident is no accident at all. We all need time and space to get ever so slightly lost, to dream our way into creative thought, and to develop our richest insights. This is true of all learners, expert or novice.”
Even adaptive competencies become maladaptive if taken to the extreme… For example, extreme resilience could drive people to become overly persistent with unattainable goals.”
On the one hand, students now seem far more engaged in school and committed to college. From 2014 to 2016, the percentage of ChiTech freshmen on track to graduate in four years rose from 63 to 78 percent… On the other hand, ChiTech’s standardized test scores have remained stagnant and well below district averages.”
If you are reading something lengthy – more than 500 words or more than a page of the book or screen – your comprehension will likely take a hit if you’re using a digital device. The finding was supported by numerous studies and held true for students in college, high school and grade school. Research suggests that the explanation is at least partly the greater physical and mental demands of reading on a screen.”
It was not that he disliked it. It was that he… hated it. I was taken aback—I had enjoyed the process of researching and writing the book. So, I had expected, a reader would too. No, Scott said, the way you’ve done this doesn’t work.”
Writing crystallizes ideas in ways thinking on its own will never accomplish.”
I spent my career in technology. I wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids.”
After a decade and a half, and at a cost of about $12 million annually (around one percent of the state's education budget), Maine has yet to see any measurable increases on statewide standardized test scores.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson