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Innovative Education in VT

A blog exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change

  • ABOUT US
    • We stand against systemic racism.
    • Our Communications Diversity Policy
    • The Tarrant Institute
    • Our staff
      • John Downes
      • Emily Hoyler
      • Life LeGeros
      • Rachel Mark
    • Our schools
  • Our book
    • How to use this Educator’s Guide
    • Ch 1: Defining Personalized Learning
      • 1.1 The Three Pillars of Personalized Learning
      • 1.2 The Definition of a PLP
      • 1.3 New Student & Teacher Roles
    • Ch 2: PLPs Aren’t Just For The Teacher
      • 2.1 Knowing Students Well
      • 2.2 Avoid the Pitfalls!
    • Ch 3: Laying The Groundwork for PLPs
      • 3.1 What Are Your Pedagogical Priorities?
      • 3.2 Structures to Support Personalized Learning
    • Ch 4: Starting with the Learner Profile
    • Ch 5: Flexing Your Pathways
      • 5.1 Engaging Pedagogies for All
    • Ch. 6: Scaffolding for Equitable, Deeper Learning
    • Ch 7: PLPs & Proficiency-Based Assessment
    • Ch 8: Student-led PLP conferences
    • Ch 9: Sustaining Innovation
    • Chapter References
  • TOOLKITS
    • Action research
    • Adult Culture
    • Advisory
    • Digital citizenship
    • Community & Culture
    • Equity toolkit
    • Essential Skills & Dispositions Toolkit
    • Family & Community Involvement
    • Flexible classrooms
    • Genius Hour
    • Identity
    • Makerspaces
    • Negotiated curriculum
    • Personalized Learning Plans (PLPs)
    • Proficiency-Based Education
      • Learning Goals
      • Formative Assessment
      • Summative Assessment
    • Project-Based Learning
    • Reflection
    • Remote Learning
    • Scheduling
    • Service learning
    • Student-led conferences
  • VIDEOS
    • Middle Grades Conference (MGC)
    • PLP videos
    • Proficiency-Based Learning Videos
    • Student-Led Conference Videos
    • Tech Tips
  • PODCAST
    • #vted Reads Episode List
    • #vted Reads Videos
  • ARCHIVES
  • EVENTS & COURSES
  • CONTACT

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News Uncategorized 

What Matters Most Now: Lesson One – Slow Down

May 12, 2022May 11, 2022 Nancy Doda 1 Comment reflection

This is a the first in a series of blogs with attention to education priorities in the not-so post pandemic

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The Teacher Leaders Hero’s Journey

January 8, 2020February 25, 2020 Audrey Homan 0 Comments

Teacher Leaders are agents of innovative school change Situated in the heart center of education, teacher leaders are the true

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trauma-informed personalized learning
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Trauma-informed personalized learning

September 23, 2019April 29, 2022 Tim O'Leary 2 Comments

Seeing back-to-school activities & personalized learning through the lens of trauma-informed classroom practices I had a eureka! moment this summer.

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What does integrated studies look like at Flood Brook?

June 3, 2019November 15, 2019 Audrey Homan bright spots and belly flops, Flood Brook Union School

At Flood Brook School, middle level teachers believe in an integrated approach to curriculum delivery. Four years into implementing an

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Jon Brown’s Learning Lab Lessons Learned

May 20, 2019November 15, 2019 Audrey Homan bright spots and belly flops

Bright Spots: They say imitation is the highest form of flattery… I guess I’m flattered. It never ceases to amaze

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Diversity Detectives library audit banner
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Ottauquechee’s Diversity Detectives in:

May 17, 2019May 19, 2019 Katy Farber 0 Comments equity, Ottauquechee School

The Case of The Library Diversity Audit Whose stories are being told in your library? Whose stories are being left

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What makes a podcast? A digital recording and an online sharing service
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Get started podcasting with students

February 6, 2019February 11, 2021 Audrey Homan 1 Comment digital storytelling, podbox, podcasting, podcasting on an iPad1

New to podcasts?  Listen to a few! Before you jump into creating a podcast, get familiar with the format.  Here

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Stowe student leadership
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Stowe students lead school change

January 2, 2019April 12, 2022 Susan Hennessey 0 Comments Stowe Middle School, Up for Learning

How student-adult partnerships can scaffold student leadership “Did you know that the same areas in the brain light up when

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education for sustainability
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Why and how to teach education for sustainability

June 18, 2018September 10, 2018 Emily Hoyler 0 Comments Cornwall School, Global Goals, NGSS, sustainability

Teaching to heal the world “How can we improve the systems we’re a part of?” That’s the question my team

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Phys ed 2.0: More learning, less suffering

May 30, 2018June 18, 2018 Life LeGeros 0 Comments Crossett Brook Middle School, heart rate monitors, PE, phys ed, physical education, Shelburne Community School

Personalizing PE In this era of personalized learning, it’s not just the jocks that find P.E. enjoyable. At Crossett Brook

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A student-led short story unit at Crossett Brook

May 2, 2018February 13, 2019 Prodigy students @ Crossett Brook Middle School 0 Comments Crossett Brook Middle School, Flocabulary, language arts, peer conferences, peer conferencing, short story unit

7th and 8th graders take the initiative to share their stories with the world. Ms. Cicchetti’s 7th and 8th grade

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Stowe Protean
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A tale of two tech tools

April 23, 2018September 10, 2018 Susan Hennessey 0 Comments Stowe Middle School

Students test drive tools to enhance & amplify project work When Stowe Middle Level educators met to plan for the

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Teddy Shelburne Community School
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Therapy dogs in Vermont schools

April 9, 2018August 7, 2019 Scott Thompson 2 Comments Crossett Brook Middle School, Shelburne Community School, therapy dogs, trauma-informed education

Who let the dogs in? For some students, being ready to learn when they arrive at school is a big

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How do *you* mitigate heat transfer at your old elementary school?

April 7, 2018April 10, 2018 Noah Hurlburt 0 Comments Global Goals, Proctor High School, Science Saturday

Local connections with worldwide implications In our current study of heat transfer, our class decided to connect science concepts to

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Telling a complex story through imagery

March 19, 2018March 26, 2018 Susan Hennessey 0 Comments Learning Lab

The power of metaphorical thinking A picture can speak a thousand words and convey a complex concept that text on

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The 8th grade consultants shaping education at Burke Town School

February 12, 2018February 13, 2018 Katy Farber 1 Comment Burke Town School

The power of the student consult If you’re wondering what engages, excites and motivates students, the answer is easy: ask

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3 tech-rich ways to study local history

January 31, 2018January 31, 2018 Audrey Homan 0 Comments Lamoille Union Middle School, Mount Abraham Union High School

Place-based learning with real world implications For your students, learning about the local landscape can be amazing. What’s that tree?

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brainado and the rise of the project-based PLP
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The rise of the project-based PLP

January 12, 2018September 26, 2018 Life LeGeros 1 Comment Crossett Brook Middle School, Fayston Elementary School, Shelburne Community School

A new recipe for Personalized Learning Plans Rather than trying to get students to care about existing PLPs, some schools

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Choose Your Own Adventure with Google Earth

October 20, 2017April 14, 2022 Susan Hennessey 0 Comments Google Earth, Schoology, Stowe Middle School

The virtual reality cure for wanderlust Despite this gorgeous fall weather here in central Vermont, I’m suffering from a bad

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Courage lives on

September 24, 2017April 19, 2018 Katy Farber 0 Comments #everydaycourage

  This fall, we’ve been talking  about everyday courage in schools. We’ve written about the courage it takes to start a

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How to cultivate mindfulness in classrooms

September 21, 2017April 19, 2018 Emily Hoyler 1 Comment #everydaycourage, Cornwall School

The #everydaycourage of doing nothing As we cultivate more self-direction in students, their lives get more complicated. They have a

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The #everydaycourage of staying curious in the face of negative feedback

September 15, 2017April 19, 2018 Emily Hoyler 0 Comments #everydaycourage

Feedback often feels like criticism. But what if we used it as an opportunity to grow? In third grade, I

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#everydaycourage and trauma-informed education

September 11, 2017August 7, 2019 Alex Shevrin 0 Comments #everydaycourage, trauma-informed education

#everydaycourage is always around us if we can slow down to notice it. I spent many years working in a

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How to start a difficult conversation

September 8, 2017June 18, 2018 Audrey Homan 0 Comments #everydaycourage, Champlain Valley Union High School, The Cabot School, Washington West Supervisory Union, WWSU

Conversations begin at home. And at the bus stop. Also the market. And– So much of the change we need

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The #everydaycourage of talking about race in Vermont schools

September 7, 2017June 18, 2018 Jeanie Phillips 0 Comments #everydaycourage, equity, Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School, social justice

How will your students prepare for active engagement in democracy? Last spring Christie Nold, a 6th grade teacher at Frederick

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The #everydaycourage of sharing our work as educators

September 1, 2017June 18, 2018 Jeanie Phillips 0 Comments #everydaycourage, collaboration

3 ways to de-privatize our practice My first teaching job was in the library at a large, open-concept elementary school

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Diverse books for conversations around identity

August 30, 2017June 18, 2018 Katy Farber 0 Comments #everydaycourage, literacy, media literacy, social justice

The birth of a YA teacher’s book club “Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong.

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What it looks like when students teach

August 29, 2017April 29, 2022 Audrey Homan 0 Comments #everydaycourage, Essex High School

“It really is nice being able to teach others. I know that I had an effect on them.” The Essex

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#vted leads the way with #everydaycourage

August 28, 2017June 18, 2018 Scott Thompson 0 Comments #everydaycourage, Burlington High School, Franklin West Supervisory Union, MMMUSD-CESU, VT Agency of Education

School leadership in turbulent times As schools prepare to welcome students through their doors, many educators are researching how to

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A Developmental Designs approach to student-directed learning

August 25, 2017June 18, 2018 Rachel Mark 1 Comment #everydaycourage, Brattleboro Area Middle School, developmental designs

It takes a courageous village In order for student centered learning to happen, we have to invest in explicitly teaching

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Laying the groundwork for effective teaching teams

August 23, 2017August 29, 2022 Katy Farber 1 Comment #everydaycourage, Canva, co-teaching, flipgrid, Google Docs, teaming, Thinglink

Or, What to Bring to the First Staff Potluck Opening up to fellow educators can be hard. We all know

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peer PLP collaboration
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Checking in with Stowe & PAML’s peer PLP collaboration

June 29, 2017September 10, 2018 Audrey Homan 0 Comments Peoples Academy Middle Level, Stowe Middle School

When last we left the students of these two plucky Vermont middle schools, they had managed to connect students and

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Use a student leadership team for feedback on PLPs

June 26, 2017August 25, 2017 Life LeGeros 2 Comments Crossett Brook Middle School

Guiding Crossett Brook PLPs with student voice The Crossett Brook PLP student leadership group presented their recommendations on PLPs to

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4 examples of students as partners in school change

June 19, 2017April 29, 2022 Life LeGeros 0 Comments Crossett Brook Middle School, Flood Brook School, Peoples Academy Middle Level, Rumney Memorial School, Stowe Middle School

Let students help you transform your school Creating sustainable systemic change is hard work. Yet there are readily available, free, renewable

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Do you know where you are?

June 14, 2017April 13, 2022 Scott Thompson 0 Comments

Taking stock on implementing Vermont’s Act 77 “Do you know where you are?” Usually it’s a question medical professionals ask

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4 end-of-year activities for advisory

June 11, 2017June 16, 2017 Rachel Mark 0 Comments advisory, Flipboard, Google Sites, Manchester Elementary-Middle School

Acknowledge, share, recognize The end of the school year is every bit as happy and joyous as it is chaotic

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8 year-end reflection tools and activities

May 22, 2017May 22, 2017 Katy Farber 0 Comments Proctor Elementary School, reflection, student reflection, teacher reflection

Reflect, celebrate and plan Oh, the spring. Such a busy time for teachers. There are all those transition meetings, already

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4 ways of finding copyright-friendly media

April 9, 2017April 29, 2022 Audrey Homan 0 Comments copyright, Creative Commons, digital citizenship

The art of the responsible remix With the incredible popularity and ease of digital mediamaking comes great responsibility. As students unlock the power

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Looking at ways students can create VR content

March 29, 2017August 7, 2019 Audrey Homan 1 Comment 360-degree camera, augmented reality, Google Expeditions, virtual reality

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

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Student-centered filmmaking at Compass

March 22, 2017December 11, 2018 Julia Taylor 0 Comments student filmmaking, The Compass School, video in the classroom

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

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4 more ways to help middle schoolers get organized

March 18, 2017April 29, 2022 Katy Farber 0 Comments Christ the King School, Google Classroom, padlet, Wunderlist

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

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4 ways to help middle school students organize their tech

March 16, 2017March 16, 2017 Katy Farber 2 Comments Christ the King School, Harwood Union Middle School, Peoples Academy Middle Level

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

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Peer collaboration on PLPs

March 13, 2017April 29, 2022 Susan Hennessey 3 Comments Google Hangout, Peoples Academy Middle Level, personalized learning, personalized learning plan, personalized learning plans, PLP, PLPs, portfolio, portfolios, Stowe Middle 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

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How to fight fake news in the field

February 27, 2017April 29, 2022 Katy Farber 0 Comments Canva, fake news, media literacy, Newsela, social justice

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

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Why faith-based education in the 21st century?

February 16, 2017February 18, 2017 Scott Thompson 0 Comments Christ the King School, Mater Christi, St. Francis Xavier

A flexible pathway for religious choice In a time when combining 21st century skills with personalized learning is in the thoughts of

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Uncategorized 

Beyond the audience of one

February 7, 2017April 29, 2022 Julia Hewitt 0 Comments digital composition, digital storytelling, podcasting, The Cabot School

Why digital composition matters I’d like you to think back to your days as a student. What kinds of writing

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Digital access to library resources

January 18, 2017January 18, 2017 Kathleen Finn 14 Comments 1:1, St. Francis Xavier

A case study in a 1:1 school Our small school is blessed to have an unusually large library space: nearly

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5 Google Chrome apps and extensions for learner support

January 3, 2017April 14, 2022 Rachel Mark 1 Comment Announcify, Calmly Writer, Google Type with Your Voice, Grammarly, SpeakIt!

Support for visual, attention & motor control challenges Remember training Dragon Dictation to recognize your student’s voice? That technology was pretty

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Action Research Uncategorized 

Why do action research?

December 1, 2016December 7, 2018 Life LeGeros 4 Comments Lamoille Union Middle School, Mill River Union High School

5 benefits of doing action research in the classroom Teachers are constantly tinkering, creating, learning, and growing. Action research is

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3 ways to use Google Forms to streamline your workflow

November 22, 2016 Scott Thompson 0 Comments Crossett Brook Middle School, Google Forms, Winooski Middle School

For exit tickets, student support & action research Using Google Forms and Google  Sheets together can streamline your process and

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Rethinking school schedules

October 31, 2016April 13, 2022 Scott Thompson 0 Comments

It’s about time I am fascinated with master schedules! This is certainly a massive understatement. I love the challenge of

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What work-based learning in Vermont can look like

October 10, 2016October 10, 2016 Audrey Homan 2 Comments equity, Randolph Union High School

On exploring flexible pathways to learning This past August, Vermont Secretary of Education Dr Rebecca Holcombe addressed the 2016 Amplifying

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Onward and upward

October 2, 2016April 19, 2018 John Downes 0 Comments #readytolaunch

Achieving escape velocity with students as partners Congratulations for making it through the first month of school! Whether it’s your

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Power up your Advisory programs

September 29, 2016April 19, 2018 Rachel Mark 2 Comments #readytolaunch, advisory, Brattleboro Area Middle School

How 30 minutes can leave a lasting impact on the day. Advisory: the first 15 to 30 minutes of every

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8 tips for creating classroom routines and norms

September 26, 2016April 13, 2022 Katy Farber 3 Comments #readytolaunch, Hazen Union School

There is no tired like teachers at the beginning (or end) of the school year are tired. Establishing routines, procedures,

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Get #ready2launch your team this year

September 21, 2016April 12, 2022 Scott Thompson 1 Comment #readytolaunch

New ways to approach teaming Have you every showed up to in-service wondering what the new initiatives for the year

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Meet @ThisIsVTED

September 18, 2016April 19, 2018 Audrey Homan 0 Comments #readytolaunch, Hazen Union School

A twitter showcase of amazing Vermont schools Wish you could see more of the innovative ways Vermont students and educators

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(Re) Designing PLPs with students

September 14, 2016April 22, 2022 Susan Hennessey 1 Comment #readytolaunch

What Vermont students really think about personal learning plans Put 47 middle-level students together, challenge them to think differently about

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Uncategorized 

3 ways to create a student-led open house

September 12, 2016April 13, 2022 Rachel Mark 0 Comments #readytolaunch

Student leadership at a school Open House? You betcha. You’ve heard of student-led conferences, but how about a Student-Led Open

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4 ways to partner with students around Genius Hour

September 10, 2016April 19, 2018 Life LeGeros 1 Comment #readytolaunch

1% teacher inspiration & 99% student-led Genius Hour is a leap of faith in which educators set aside their most precious

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5 ways to partner with students in a makerspace

September 6, 2016April 19, 2018 Life LeGeros 0 Comments #readytolaunch

Whose makerspace is it, anyway? A makerspace can take many forms, but fundamentally it should be a locus of student engagement

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Finding ways to encourage student leadership

August 26, 2016April 29, 2022 Scott Thompson 1 Comment #readytolaunch

Student Leadership: The time is now August is usually a time crammed with planning logistics for the start of the

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Climate, Community and Voice from Day 1

August 24, 2016April 19, 2018 John Downes 0 Comments #readytolaunch, student voice

 Starting up with our students Another exciting year is upon us. It may be difficult to wrest our attention from these glorious

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twitter etiquette

August 12, 2016August 26, 2016 Audrey Homan 0 Comments digital citizenship, twitter

Modeling twitter interactions as an educator and parent With twitter’s explosive growth in popularity with educators, it can get a

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