Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
There is a reason that we’ve written so many stories about students doing cool projects in and with their communities! Relevant, real world learning experiences are highly engaging for young adolescents. The learning and work feels meaningful, and youth feel energized with their emerging sense of agency: I can make a difference in my community. …
Continue reading “Introducing our Community Engaged Learning Toolkit”
There is a reason that we’ve written so many stories about students doing cool projects in and with their communities! Relevant, real world learning experiences are highly engaging for young adolescents. The learning and work feels meaningful, and youth feel energized with their emerging sense of agency: I can make a difference in my community. …
You know the vibe when you walk into a classroom where everyone is engaged and buzzing with learning, and the room is humming with good energy? It’s not accidental. Culture takes deliberate work to build and grow. Learning is happening. Collaboration is smooth. Laughter is present. How do we get more of that? Building community, …
Continue reading “Introducing our NEW Community & Culture Toolkit!”
You know the vibe when you walk into a classroom where everyone is engaged and buzzing with learning, and the room is humming with good energy? It’s not accidental. Culture takes deliberate work to build and grow. Learning is happening. Collaboration is smooth. Laughter is present. How do we get more of that? Building community, …
In this episode, we welcome author, educator, and Vermont transplant Kathleen Kesson who talks about Community Schools Blueprint: Transforming Our School Community Partnership. Kathleen and I talk about the possibilities we see for widening the cracks in traditional schooling by building opportunities for students and communities to support one another in authentic, real-world ways.
Like so many students this past year, the 7th and 8th students at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont, were in a hybrid mode of learning due to Covid restrictions in their school. They spent two days in the school building in small group pods and three days learning remotely from home. The three …
Continue reading “How a PTO connected students with community during COVID”
How do we effectively engage people in our community who aren’t already predisposed to discuss race and the impacts of racism? How do we pull people into a community conversation on race? Especially people who aren’t already striving to be more antiracist? I’m not entirely sure, but I do know that the more community conversations …
Continue reading “Lessons learned from a community conversation on race”
How do we help students connect to their communities, and consider how to enrich community life? That’s the question Chrissy Park and her 3rd through 5th grade students at Burke Town School, in West Burke VT, have spent their year exploring. Together and in-person, they considered ways they could all take part in their community. …
Continue reading “Connecting students to community in the Northeast Kingdom”
Using mergers as community opportunities Vermont Act 46 mergers challenged communities to restructure systems. Under a mandated merger, two schools came together to build one thriving community, focused on building a healthy culture. Challenging, yes? Through a shared, engaging advisory program, these two schools worked together to establish a culture that explicitly values: identity development …
Breaking bread & stereotypes with formerly incarcerated Vermonters Food and community are inextricably linked. Birthdays, funerals, weddings, holidays: a meal with family and friends is a powerful component of our life celebrations and milestones. We create connections and build relationships around the dinner table, the buffet line, and the sheet cake. What happens when we …
Starting how you mean to go on New year, new students. New school, sometimes, and a whole new opportunity to help a group of students celebrate and explore their individuality while respecting and appreciating each other’s differences. And yours, too. Let’s explore five resources for building community in your classroom during the #1st5days.
Meet the Compassionate Faces of the Shires How do your students recognize compassion? Do they recognize it in the faces of your community? In Manchester VT, one educator set about teaching her students to recognize and honor compassion in community members.
Meet the Humans of Burke So many schools operate in isolation from the very communities they are situated in. Do your students know community members? Does your community see your students as young community members? One small school in Vermont’s remote Northeast Kingdom interpreted the popular “Humans of New York” project to foster connection between …
Hope launches in the Northeast Kingdom As part of participating in the UN’s Global Goals, students at Burke Town School, in West Burke VT, kicked off their service learning projects by inviting their community’s leaders to come to the school and ask for what they needed. What would make West Burke a better place to …
Continue reading “Kick off project-based learning with a community event”
How did an 8th grader turn his passion project into a summer job? I found Connor in the tech ed room during the first session of Brainado, a school-wide Genius Hour at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont. He was taking apart a lawn mower. When asked why, he shrugged and mumbled something about …
Connecting learning to local communities, including community members, businesses, museums, cultural centers, organizations, and educational institutions.
Community conversations about education What would you tell your neighbors about your school? What do you think they’d say in return? The Washington West Supervisory Union has set out to find out, by hosting a series of community conversations. Life LeGeros, a Tarrant Institute professional development coordinator and WWSU community member, is taking part in …
Starting up with our students Another exciting year is upon us. It may be difficult to wrest our attention from these glorious days of Vermont summer but never have the opportunities for good teaching been more open to us. As one teacher noted upon leaving this summer’s Middle Grades Institute, “I can bring about positive change in …
Middle school students power Brattleboro’s radio days Brattleboro, Vermont was incorporated back in 1753, a former military fort that embraced trading, commerce and the power of nearby Whetstone Falls to spur mill production. It was where Rudyard Kipling settled to write The Jungle Book, and where Harriet Beecher Stowe came to seek the famous 18th …
Continue reading “Making history on the radio with community partners”
4 lessons learned A few months back, I wrote about how the Washington West Supervisory Union (WWSU) here in Vermont had initiated a series of conversations with the community with a kick-off film screening and discussion. I noted that “the most exciting thing about the conversation was the feeling in the room that we, as …
Continue reading “Facilitating community conversations about education”
A tech-rich case study from rural Vermont The team from Hazen Union Middle School, in Hardwick, Vermont, conducted an action research project over the fall semester of 2015, centered around deepening students’ connection to their community. They called the unit “I Belong”. It provided students with tech-rich opportunities to engage with the small and rural community of their …
4 lessons from a recent gathering On Friday, March 11, more than 50 participants from public and private schools, community education partners, and higher education from Vermont and the surrounding region gathered for a Community Based Learning workday, put on by Big Picture Learning, Eagle Rock School, Big Picture South Burlington, and Partnership for Change. …
Continue reading “Community Based Learning in Vermont: What’s going on?”
A case study in engaging your community I attended an event last week that was of huge personal and professional importance: a screening of the film Most Likely to Succeed followed by a facilitated conversation. As a new community member, it was inspiring to see a transformative vision of schooling put forth by education leadership. As …
Continue reading “How schools can conduct a community conversation”
Last week we looked at the sugaring operation at Essex Middle School. The students at the Edge Academy built a sugar house a few years ago, and now they produce maple syrup for their school every year. Math teacher Phil Young has intertwined the project with his mathematics curriculum, and students use iPads to support …
Continue reading “Sugaring and the community part 2: Students become teachers”
Early spring is sugaring season in Vermont. We produce the lion’s share of the domestic output of maple syrup, and we’re pretty proud of it. The process of tapping trees, collecting sap, and boiling it down has many connections to STEM education. The students and teachers of the Edge team at Essex Middle School built …
Continue reading “Sugaring, STEM, and community connections”
Here in Vermont we’re lucky to have a strong sense of community spirit. Co-ops, partnerships, collectives; these concepts run through many different parts of our lives. We also happen to live in a state with a rich and developing science and technology start-up scene. These two parts of our culture can combine to grow partnerships …
Continue reading “In support of Community Partnerships in STEM”
Family & Community Involvement Part of successful technology integration in schools is the welcoming of families and community members into the dialog around 21st century learning. Whether it’s communicating with families about 1:1 rollouts and take-home devices, or providing connections between motivated students and worthwhile community projects, here are some resources to help guide your …
Free app for students to make quick and easy back-to-school slideshows
Meet the digital anthropologists of Cabot, Vermont In fulfillment of their project-based learning research this past spring, this pair of middle school students decided to learn more about different regions of the U.S. by interviewing members of their small, rural Vermont town who had lived in those communities. They took the resulting interviews and embedded …
Continue reading “How to: showcase community interviews with digital tools”
John Dewey once famously said, “We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” As the Tarrant Institute for Innovation Education (TIIE) sunsets as an organization, we found it appropriate to reflect and share some tidbits of what we have learned. Here are some thoughts and reflections from former TIIE staff (alphabetized by …
Continue reading “Some final reflections from former TIIE staff”
We have a saying around here that “middle school is not a building” and we also believe that classrooms do not have to be rooms. There are so many benefits to being outside for humans’ wellbeing and for students’ learning. We’ve collected our favorite blog posts – find the toolkit’s permanent link here. Outdoor and …
Continue reading “Introducing our Outdoor and Place-Based Learning Toolkit”
We have a saying around here that “middle school is not a building” and we also believe that classrooms do not have to be rooms. There are so many benefits to being outside for humans’ wellbeing and for students’ learning. Outdoor and place-based learning are tightly connected with so many other things we hold dear. …
Equity is the moral imperative behind all of the work we do here at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education. In this new toolkit, we have collected many of our favorite posts about equity, including analyses and syntheses about equity in general, how to support equity in professional learning and in classrooms, and examples of …
The moral imperative behind our work at TIIE has always been equity. It is also the basis of the middle school movement that we hold dear, which originated as a challenge to the status quo of junior high schools. As progressive educators, we promote shifts in education to bring more equitable outcomes, more humane learning …
Dillin, a seventh grade student at Newark Street School (NSS), had this to say about starting school with 30 minutes of daily movement: “So my perspective is, I really like it. It gets you healthy. Your heart beats, and then you get ready for the day you have after you’re done doing it. Like you …
Continue reading “Prioritizing daily movement and experiential learning in Newark”
At the Tarrant Institute, we write a lot about Project Based Learning (PBL). We consider it one of the engaging and meaningful instructional pedagogies that we endorse. As an approach, PBL offers many of the traits that address the important needs of young adolescents. It engages students in thinking about real-world problems, gives time for …
Continue reading “Introducing our new Project Based Learning toolkit”
At the Tarrant Institute, we write a lot about Project Based Learning (PBL). We consider it one of the engaging and meaningful instructional pedagogies that we endorse. As an approach, PBL offers many of the traits that address the important needs of young adolescents. It engages students in thinking about real-world problems, gives time for …
It’s no secret we’re big fans of advisory around here. And we don’t just mean the time on the schedule that’s called “advisory,” but the practice of circling up with students to build relationships and connections, share ourselves, and laugh, play, and maybe occasionally even cry together. Which is why we’re so excited to announce …
It was a perfect match. The sixth grade team at Lyndon Town School were looking for an end of year interdisciplinary project. They wanted students to reconnect with the community after two years of pandemic schooling. The Town of Lyndon was calling for community members to help generate ideas about how to improve downtown. They …
Many schools and classrooms across the country identify student skills for success. Ideally, those skills cut across content areas and are grouped within grade bands. They are communicated and prioritized within the learning community. While Vermont’s AOE has identified five Transferable Skills, some learning institutions choose different ones – sometimes also known as “21st century …
Many schools and classrooms across the country identify student skills for success. Ideally, those skills cut across content areas and are grouped within grade bands. They are communicated and prioritized within the learning community. While Vermont’s AOE has identified five Transferable Skills, some learning institutions choose different ones – sometimes also known as “21st century skills”. …
Continue reading “NEW Essential Skills & Dispositions Toolkit”
A positive and collaborative adult culture is essential to a positive and collaborative student culture. As educators, we must attend to both. We can’t expect our student culture to thrive if that quality is not present in our adult community. As adults, we set the tone. Schools should be places where everyone is a learner, …
Continue reading “Introducing our NEW Adult Culture toolkit”
A positive and collaborative adult culture is essential to a positive and collaborative student culture. As educators, we must attend to both. We can’t expect our student culture to thrive if that quality is not present in our adult community. As adults, we set the tone. Schools should be places where everyone is a learner, …
Introducing our updated PLP Toolkit Knowing each student well is essential to a year of flourishing for students and educators. It’s a prerequisite to ensuring equitable access to belonging and wellbeing, a culturally-responsive learning environment, and deep learning. And it enriches the relationships so central to a thriving school. Personal learning plans (PLPs) can …
Continue reading “PLPs to Know Students Well: Introducing the Personal Learning Plan Toolkit”
The Why We teach a precious and somewhat precarious age group. Our middle grades students are in the throes of one of life’s most pivotal and seminal periods in human development. They are growing faster than at almost any other time in life, and are grappling with some of life’s most significant milestones which will …
The school year is almost over and this one may well be remembered as your toughest yet. If hardship makes us stronger, we’ve got that covered. And, we have learned lots about how to be, live, and teach in this challenging time. My first two posts nudge us to consider slowing down and rethinking what …
Continue reading “What Matters Most Now: Lesson Three – Authenticity”
Lovely listeners, welcome back. I’m Jeanie Phillips, and on this episode, I get to talk about “The Last Cuentista”, a book by Donna Barba Higuera. It’s a fantastic middle grades book that touches on the tension between technology and organic life, duty and desire, along with what we know about identity — and how we …
This is a the first in a series of blogs with attention to education priorities in the not-so post pandemic world. The Crisis I have been immersed in middle school education for decades. I have always been grateful to belong to such an amazing community of educators who share the same magnificent obsession. Because this …
Continue reading “What Matters Most Now: Lesson One – Slow Down”
Welcome, listeners, to another episode of vted Reads: talking about books by, for, and with Vermont educators. In this episode… we own an oversight. On this show, we are dedicated to breaking down systems of inequity in education. We administer flying kicks to the forehead of intersectional oppression! But we haven’t yet talked about disability. …
Continue reading “#VTED Reads: Care Work with Dr. Winnie Looby”
Testing helped me be successful in school. And it was horrible for my learning. I was good at tests. The more standardized, the better. Multiple choice questions were my jam. I specialized in figuring out the correct answer even when I didn’t understand the material. My *bs* abilities were off the charts, which helped for …
Continue reading “Rethinking assessment to rebalance education”
As we move through another calendar year impacted by COVID, I find myself taking stock of what’s important for our young people. While this pandemic has irrevocably changed all of us, it has perhaps impacted children and young adults even more significantly. What’s more, our schools have been tasked with nearly impossible charges. Keep humans …
Jeanie: In this episode, I sit down with educational phenoms Christie Nold and Jess Lifshitz. And we’re joined by Brendan Kiely, Author of The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege. Now, you might be wondering what The Other Talk actually is. As many of you know, black people and other people of the global …
#vted Reads is a podcast by, for and with Vermont educators, discussing books for professional development and use in the classroom. Host Jeanie Phillips sits down with an educator, student or author each episode and together, they look at a book they feel is relevant for Vermont learners. Whether it’s YA, popular press or professional …
What if we could give more time to educators, many of whom are overworked and in danger of burnout? The Kingdom East School District (KESD) did it, and other districts could too. Recognizing that educator wellness is the foundation for student wellbeing and learning, KESD added ten early release days to their calendar. Teachers use …
Continue reading “How one district gave teachers the gift of time”
Listeners, I’m going to ask you to bear with me on this one. This is one of my favorite episodes we’ve ever recorded because, in it, you’ll hear students at U-32 school in Montpelier, Vermont, get to bring their questions about the book “Dig”, by A.S. King, directly to the author. If you haven’t read …
Many of the routines of the school day have been frayed by the pandemic. From kids unable to engage in work to walking out of class altogether, we are seeing norms and relationships stretched and tested like never before. This might even be described as “normal” right now — as in that it’s the norm, it’s …
Lovely listeners: today is a work day. Now, we all know that talking about anti-bias work is a vital component of the kind of school change that makes our classrooms safer and more engaging for students of color. Doubly so when we are white educators, and when we teach in predominantly white spaces, in predominantly …
Dear Readers, We are rolling into that time of year when we hope that you find time to get cozied up to a good book. These short amounts of daylight should beckon us to find warm and bright spots within our homes. For many of us at TIIE, that means getting into your favorite chair …
Need more student engagement and wellbeing? Join the club! Educators are always looking for ways to get students more engaged with school. In this third school year impacted by the pandemic, engagement and wellbeing are more important than ever. Ample research links extracurricular opportunities to student engagement and to social emotional learning. We also know …
Continue reading “Student clubs for engagement and wellbeing”
Lovely listeners: we’re baaaaaaack! And we missed each and every one of you. To celebrate our return, in this episode we brought back guests from *Vermont* Reads, a statewide program that encourages everyone across Vermont to read one book each year, and then turn and, you know, talk to one another. We are HUGE fans. …
With contributions from Emma Vastola Take a moment to think about a learning experience that was meaningful to your students. How do you know that it was meaningful? How did they communicate that to you? In the Two Rivers Supervisory Union (TRSU), middle grades students are documenting their meaningful learning experiences using PLPs. You can …
In late October, the middle school 7th and 8th grade team at Flood Brook School realized that the 2021 school year was off to a rocky start. Students and teachers alike were pretty miserable. So, they bravely brought their entire team community together – that’s teachers, students and support staff – for a three day …
The recent issue of the research journal Middle Grades Review was extraordinary for two reasons. First, it focused on the intersection of personalized learning and social justice education. And second, Vermont educators authored all but one of the articles. I encourage folks to peruse the entire issue, but this may not be realistic in the …
Continue reading “A Vermont-centric look at personalized learning for social justice”
Even in the best of times, October can be a tough month for teachers. And it’s hard to call covid times the best. In the latest issue of Educational Leadership, noted teaching coach Elena Aguilar suggests several ways to boost teacher resilience. Paired with understanding what personal efficacy looks like for young adolescents, teachers and …
Continue reading “Building resilience (for all) through personal efficacy”