Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
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, …
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 …
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 …
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.
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. …
Hooray for summer! Sure, we usually say something along those lines this time of year, but this year? ONCE MORE WITH FEELING. And with that, we turn to our Tarrant correspondents for a peek into the reading bags, shelves, carts and– *squints* — trees, that keep our folks out of trouble.* We’re off reading and …
On this episode… we have Ann Braden!!!! Ann is one of my favorite authors, and she’s also a former Vermont educator with a new book out, The Flight of the Puffin. Flight of the Puffin truly feels like a middle grades book for our time: it’s the story of four completely different middle school students, …
“Increasing Student Self-Direction” was a webinar presented by Rachel Mark as part of the 2020-2021 UVM Tarrant Institute Professional Learning Series. We present it here in its entirety. You can either watch the webinar recording, listen to an audio version, or read the annotated transcript. Follow-up questions about self-direction in your classroom? Email rbmarkvt@gmail.com. …
Imagine a place where every person can be their authentic whole human selves. A culturally responsive learning environment is a place where everybody belongs. The posters and images on walls, books and materials on shelves, the furniture and flow of the space all radiate belonging. These tangible items convey important information: what is valued, …
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Are you there, #vted? It’s me, Jeanie. On this episode of the podcast, we’re re-joined by one of the very first guests on our show, Jory Hearst. She returns to talk about All-American Muslim Girl, by Nadine Jolie Courtney. Jory shares her own journey through and relationship with Judaism, and the ways she found her …
We talk a lot, as professional development coordinators and as educators, about self-direction. We think a lot about ways to support self-directed learners, offering them “choice and voice” while trying to make sure we support them in their learning. (And hey, educators, you’re learners too. I’m a learner. We are all, to some degree, self-directed …
Continue reading “Scaffolding success for self-directed learners”
On this episode, it’s the return of Aimee Arandia Østensen! She’s here to talk with me about The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. We reflect on what we read growing up, and have deeply spicy thoughts about fan fiction, Island of the Blue …
Editorial Note: This post was scheduled for publication prior to the events in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. As ever-increasing cracks in the foundation of our democracy reveal weakness and corruption, so too do these revelations allow the light of justice and truth to penetrate. As educators, our work to help young people learn …
It’s not you; difficult conversations are a lot right now. While it’s fair to say that the history of the world consists of “being a lot” at regular intervals, right now is a moment where multiple unlikely catastrophes have collided, exposing deep rifts in conventional society. A lot of people we know and love hold …
Continue reading “How to have difficult conversations in the classroom”
In this episode, we sit down with the executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council, Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup. The Vermont Humanities Council runs Vermont Reads (not to be confused with Vermont *ed* Reads), in which they choose a book for our whole state to read, ponder and talk about. This year, that book is Angie …
This show is a little different. Listeners, I want you to think of this show… as a pre-show. Let me explain. Today I’m joined on the podcast by Aimee Arandia Østensen and we start discussing the book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I say ‘we …
Getting books in the hands of students is crucial to supporting their sense of well-being and reducing anxiety during the Stay-at-Home order. And while we here are massive fans of ebooks, we also don’t want to overlook the importance of the good old-fashioned paperback. To recap: paperbacks are good. Ebooks are good. Audiobooks, graphic novels, …
Continue reading “How to get physical copies of books to students”
The other day as I imagined my thirteen-year-old self stuck at home for the remainder of the school year, I panicked! By now I would have read, and re-read my entire library. Where would I get more books? Never fear: books are everywhere! Fiction has always been a means of escape for me, a way …
Continue reading “How to get ebooks in the hands of students”
I’m Jeanie Phillips, and welcome back to #vted Reads, the podcast for, by and with Vermont educators. And I? Am still here. As are you. Now, we recorded this episode with our lovely friend Lindsey Halman back in February 2020, a time that at this point feels almost like a long-ago Camelot, or perhaps as …
Listeners: how do you talk to your students about the special love that exists between a woman and a Sasquatch? Or between an insect and a robot-powered building? And where and how do you determine which texts are appropriate to give to students? On this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Sarah Birgé, a …
Continue reading “#vted Reads: Dreadful Young Ladies, with Sarah Birgé”
Bright Spots: They say imitation is the highest form of flattery… I guess I’m flattered. It never ceases to amaze me how humorous middle school students are by accident, and not when they try to be. I try to tell them I’m the only funny one around. To which they reply: “Funny… looking!” It’s safe …
Thank you for joining us for another episode of #vted Reads. This time we will be discussing The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. We’ll look for ways to make classroom moments more powerful, explore opportunities to raise the stakes for your students, and visit the popsicle hotline. Oh, and we’ll talk …
Continue reading “#vted Reads: The Power of Moments, with Rachel Mark”
Welcome back to #vted Reads! Now, I recorded this episode back in September out in San Antonio, at the School Reform Initiative’s Fall 2018 meeting. Author Terra Lynch was kind enough to chat with me about her book for the podcast between sessions. Recording spaces were kind of hard to come by at the conference, …
Continue reading “#vted Reads: Protocols in the Classroom, with Terra Lynch”
with Katy Farber From real and relevant to what to do in the event of a mountain bike accident, the last predators in Middlesex, and the all-important question of who is responsible for the pizza at your exhibition of learning. That’s right: librarian Jeanie Phillips talks all about service learning with author and educator Katy …
The Good, the Bad, and the Bot What does it look like when twitter bots work towards improving our world? Bots have a rightly deserved rap for being used nefariously, but much less attention is paid to when they’re used in ways that enhance the world. And you may have students for whom the exercise …
Continue reading “4 ways twitter bots can help save the world”
What proficiency-based learning looks like Winooski Middle and High School, in bustling Winooski, VT, has been quietly making the journey to proficiency-based learning and proficiency-based graduation requirements for the past six years. And the resources they’ve constructed along the way — to support students, teachers and families — celebrate cultural and ethnic diversity and challenge …
Continue reading “Winooski’s Graduate Proficiencies & Graduate Expectations”
Acknowledge, share, recognize The end of the school year is every bit as happy and joyous as it is chaotic and stressful. Make sure that you slow down the hands on the clock to bring closure to your advisory. Acknowledge the successes and challenges of the year. Share the positive things you’ve all learned about …
Standard 3-part story-driven post: 1) what it is, 2) what it looks like in a school, 3) how to do it in your school
Standard 3-part story-driven post: 1) what it is, 2) what it looks like in a school, 3) how to do it in your school
Practice makes proficient What’s special about a proficiency-based environment? Practice, that’s what. I know, it sounded weird to me too. As a former math teacher, I thought of practice as the mind-numbing repetitive stuff that students had to do in order to attain fluency. Practice was for straightforward procedural skills. But Sam Nelson, a social studies …
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If you buy them, kids will code. This statement was the driving philosophy behind our purchase of a class set of Sphero programmable robots to coincide with our school’s participation in the International Hour Of Code Day this year. During our introductory assemblies for the Hour Of Code, one Sphero was demonstrated as a teaser of …
What was once a standard in news broadcasting and video game production has now found a new home in classrooms. Students and teachers have embraced the teleporting powers of the green screen which adds addition layers of engagement and perspective for school projects. The best part, for schools budgets, is this is a very inexpensive …
Incorporating student choice into reading This screencast, from Crossett Brook Middle School, in Waterbury, Vermont, describes an action research project based on the premise that students would benefit if day-to-day classroom instruction reflected the choice and self-direction at the heart of Personalized Learning Plans (PLPs). In addition to the positive response of students, one of the …
Why create and use e-books in the classroom? Resources like e-books are a common “first step” when we think about integrating technology into the classroom. However, simply substituting an e-book for a traditional book ignores the opportunity to shift towards more student-centered practices. In a recent article, Chronis Kynigos reported on a joint effort between teachers …
Setting goals for summer learning and beyond It’s Day 3 of the 2015 Middle Grades Institute, a gathering of more than 200 Vermont educators all passionately invested in technology-rich, student-centered educational change. And with the Act 77 deadline requiring a Personal Learning Plan for every student in Vermont grades 7-12 coming up in November, talk …
Continue reading “4 educators reflect on personalized learning”
Learning on and off-line civics Whenever I taught civics, I repeatedly told my classes that I would measure my success as a teacher on how many of them were voting in elections in five years. Of course, I had no way to measure this, but it was one of my most concrete goals of teaching …
Here’s a great way to dip your toes in the digital credentialing waters: DIY.org. What Is It? Geared for kids 8 and up, DIY.org features dozens of digital badges heavily geared towards doing and making. To earn a badge, students choose to complete 2 or 3 challenges from an array of 7 or 8, and …
Keith Nemlich, educator at Manchester Elementary/Middle School, sat down with us and answered six questions about the state of edtech. “I’d like to be obsolete. Seriously. When my school no longer needs me and our students are independently accessing technology in appropriate and meaningful ways, then I’ll know that I have been successful. What would …