Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
So, maybe you’ve been using protocols at faculty meetings or professional learning community sessions. Perhaps you’ve found that they make space for all voices in conversations about proficiency-based education. Or you like how they foster collaboration as you work together to structure personalized learning plans. Know what else they can do? Support us as we …
In this episode of #vted Reads, I return to my old stomping grounds at Green Mountain Union High School. I’m talking with school counselor Ally Oswald, about the realities of reaching and teaching students in poverty. Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty is also the title of a 2013 book by educator and reformer Paul …
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At Flood Brook School, middle level teachers believe in an integrated approach to curriculum delivery. Four years into implementing an integrated (science & social studies), multiage (grades 6-8) approach towards units of study, Charlie Herzog responded to student concerns with a focused inquiry cycle asking this important question: How might student attitudes towards integrated units …
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7 tips for educators Create a place where all students lives are seen and valued. Expand the idea of what is possible in your classroom or school library. Every student should be able to see aspects of their lives reflected in the books, media and resources they interact with. But they should also be exposed …
The Case of The Library Diversity Audit Whose stories are being told in your library? Whose stories are being left out? Look around your library. It is such a beautiful space. It’s filled with vibrant colors and flexible furniture, student art and encouraging signs and posters. Maybe it has a makerspace. And it’s stocked full …
Think Global Goals, make local change The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals are ambitious goals that countries, organizations, and institutions are committed to. They provide a framework that inspires students to connect local issues with global movements, to care deeply, and to make their own a plans for positive change. They include things such …
Continue reading “How to make real, sustainable change in the Northeast Kingdom”
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”
What’s the plan? Here’s a quick reminder of my focus question for this year’s Learning Lab: How can social justice be a lens for personalized, student-designed curriculum? Here’s how — at this moment anyway — I would adjust the wording of my focus question: How can students use social justice as a lens for designing …
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, …
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In this episode of #vted Reads, we talk about Troublemakers, a book by Carla Shalaby. We touch on what we’re really doing when we ask our students to code-switch, Black Lives Matter, and the trouble with classroom norms, and we pose the question: ‘How do school systems bestow unearned privilege on some, and un-earned hardship, …
Continue reading “#vted Reads: Troublemakers with Mike Martin”
Meet Grace Gilmour, and her proficiency-based classroom. “Oh yay. I was like: yay, my heart.” This was Grace Gilmour’s response to a student’s honest appraisal of her class: “I love it in here because I always feel like I know the next steps on the road to improving.” Grace teaches social studies to 7th and …
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 …
There is very little learning without reflection. John Dewey himself noted: “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” So how do we get students reflecting in a way that is creative, dynamic, has choice, and doesn’t promote groans and sighs? We move away from “Please write 7 sentences about your …
How student-adult partnerships can scaffold student leadership “Did you know that the same areas in the brain light up when a person is curious as when that person is given candy or money?” Stowe Middle School students Macey Crowder and Shelby Lizotte posed this question to Stowe’s school board during a presentation to their school …
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 …
Why do certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts? In this episode of our podcast, we kick off our fourth season with legendary librarian Jeanie Phillips. She’ll be sitting down with a series of guests from around the #vted ecosphere and …reviewing books. Not just any books, but books …
Public displays of learning are not always the end. How do you know when meaningful, relevant, personalized and authentic learning has really occurred? Is the charge and scaffolding strong enough to continue the learning after the in-school time has expired? One measure is looking at what happens after the project ends.
Students test drive tools to enhance & amplify project work When Stowe Middle Level educators met to plan for the upcoming student exhibitions of learning, they agreed on two critical ideas. One, that their learners benefit from multiple ways to tell the story of their learning. And two, students are in the best position to …
A Vermont tradition comes to the classroom Town Meeting Day is a Vermont tradition: once a year, everyone in towns across the state pack into the town hall and talk face-to-face about the issues affecting their community. But Warren Elementary School, in Warren VT, holds Town Meetings on a weekly basis, using the tradition to …
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Feedback often feels like criticism. But what if we used it as an opportunity to grow? In third grade, I had my own time-out chair in the principal’s office. My exuberant chattiness, combined with an 8-year-old’s lack of social filter frequently earned me a trip to that chair that sat in the corner facing the …
Continue reading “The #everydaycourage of staying curious in the face of negative feedback”
The #everydaycourage of being seen Take the iconic back-to-school prompt for students — what I did on my summer vacation — and give it a twist. Imagine how students might respond to the prompt What I think my teacher did on summer vacation. A lot of us wish other folks knew how hard we work during summer: the …
Continue reading “4 ways Vermont educators are sharing their practice”
Think middle schoolers are too young for a QSA? Think again At the Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont, young adolescents have carved out a space where they can be their authentic selves. While that’s critical during middle school, it’s especially crucial for LGBTQ students. As we kick off …
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The birth of a YA teacher’s book club “Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. You’ve just got to keep doing right.” –Starr’s mom, in The Hate U Give by Angela Thomas
It’s time we celebrated it in our schools. When we walk into Vermont schools, we see it. It’s there, every time, when our eyes scan the hallways, the classrooms, and the shared spaces. It’s #everydaycourage, and it lies at the heart of innovative education.
Getting up and shaking it off works for middle grades students Remember the last time you had to sit through meetings all day? You probably woke up in the morning dreading the amount of time you would have to sit and listen to others talk, while being expected to contribute to the conversation, only getting …
Personalized, proficiency-based PBL or bust During a faculty meeting in late December of 2016, educators and staff talked about the need to provide personalized learning options for students at their small, rural Vermont school. They wanted do so in a way that honored the students’ need for passion-based, independent projects, as well as the desire …
Service learning Creating teaching and learning opportunities where students identify, research, propose, and implement solutions to real needs in their school community as part of their curriculum. Ponder these other definitions. What do they have in common? Why do service learning? Read researcher Shelley Billig’s take on why service learning benefits students in many ways. …
Expanding student access to reading As a school librarian, I needed to think how I could adopt Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in my own teaching and library space, but I also needed to think about how I could support my teachers as they implemented it in their classrooms. With UDL, teachers can allow students …
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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
Cognitive outcomes vs intersectional traumas We talk with legendary awesome stats guy Mark Olofson — now Dr. Legendary Awesome Stats Guy Mark Olofson — about his research into adverse childhood events and school performance. It’s some pretty important stuff, about how the intersecting traumas that affect students have some long-reaching consequences.
Why digital composition matters I’d like you to think back to your days as a student. What kinds of writing did you do? Who read it? What made it important to you? And what made it important to the world? If you’re like most people, you’re probably drawing a blank right now. Some of today’s …
3 ways Schoology supports sustainable Proficiency-Based Learning A learning management system (LMS) can be used to manage classroom workflow, create self-paced differentiated units, and collaborate within or across classrooms and schools. As teachers in Vermont and elsewhere grapple with how to create proficiency-based learning environments, they are looking for new strategies and routines. Let’s explore …
Vermont’s new leading role online In today’s podcast, Mark Olofson talks with Joshua Rosenberg and Spencer Greenhalgh, education researchers from Michigan State University. Their research focuses on the state-level twitter conversations among educators: who is doing it, and what they’re getting out of it. And, spoiler alert, when they looked around the country, Vermont emerged …
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Start with the dramatic, unexpected & memorable Q: What do we really want from project-based learning? A: We want students to care about this subject. To really, truly care about it from their own student perspectives. To engage the active learning parts of their brains and the moral imperative for the work. Entry events are …
Outcomes, process and automaticity I worked with a group of teachers this summer to re-think goal-setting with their students. We know it’s a key component to developing Personalized Learning Plans (PLP), but students reported little engagement in following through on and reflecting about their goals. In our attempts to think differently about goal-setting and reflection, …
Continue reading “3 visualization exercises for proficiency-based learning”
“I don’t believe you can be an educator committed to student voice and not be a powerful advocate for equity.” This past August, the University of Vermont played host to an international conference focused on ways to amplify student voice and increase student partnership in the classroom. Attendees were lucky enough to hear an address …
Continue reading “VT Secretary of Education speaks on equity in Vermont”
How to get started with service learning Service learning can play a key role in middle level curriculum, yet it can seem daunting to many educators. But it’s so rewarding for students and valuable to the community, and most of all, easy to get started with. Let’s take a look.
Create open, flexible, engaging spaces for active student learning. The beginning of the school year! Desks, mailboxes, coat hooks labeled. Books organized, materials in bins. This task is often overlooked and underestimated in terms of time. How can you create a welcoming, flexible and inspired space? Here are some tips and ideas. Just get some …
Mark’s 2016 summer reading list This past academic year was one of the busiest and most invigorating year I have had in my time as a student or teacher. As my role here at the Tarrant Institute has grown and focused more deeply on the research side of things, I have also been progressing towards …
Continue reading “Education reform, more education reform and David Foster Wallace”
Set boundaries, then let students drive the conversation Negotiated curriculum is the idea that you can assemble a curriculum for your class by entering into negotiations with your students: you, as the teacher, have certain non-negotiables or standards you need students to meet, and students tell you what or how they want to learn. That’s …
How one school tackles work-based learning “Work-based learning experiences are activities that involve actual work experience or that connect classroom learning to employment and careers. Through work-based learning experiences, educational programs become more relevant, rigorous, challenging, and rewarding for students, parents, educators, and businesses. These opportunities particularly help students make the connection between academic principles …
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 …
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Care about equity in education? Start with engagement Educators care about equity. We all want to bring out excellence in our students, but the thing that keeps us up at night is our constant striving to do that for ALL of our students. There are many systemic barriers to equity. Our students and schools mirror …
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 …
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Revisiting the possibilities of student-created geographies The rate at which technology changes has reached a dizzying speed, with new tools and platforms emerging constantly. But what hasn’t changed is students’ curiosity about the world and their need to explore their own place in it. Young adolescents in particular, burn with the urge to make and …
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Lessons learned from passion-based research Passion-based research goes by many different names; 20% Time and Genius Hour are just two different terms that describe school projects that center upon personal inquiry and innovation to spark motivation in students. For the past several years, students in my 7th grade social studies classes have engaged in 20 …
Student-created virtual park tours With access to online and tablet-based tools for digital curation and content creation, students can research the history, challenges and attractions of one of our nation’s 58 (!) National Parks. Under the rubric of planning a visit to them, students can answer an essential and timeless question: What features make National Parks special …
Adapting big science for a middle school classroom One of the keys of the Project-Based Learning approach is to engage students in solving real-world problems. Ideally, students are involved in exploring relevant and authentic challenges in their community, state, nation, or world. Sometimes teachers and students have to search hard for a need or an …
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Shifting the way we manage time to personalize learning in a blended space In my former professional life, I had the pleasure and the challenge of managing a large high school library media center. An irony of the job, one that made me smile and cringe, was the volume of the bell which rang every …
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 …
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What do we mean when we talk about innovation in Vermont education? Recently, the #vted Twitter chat focused on innovation, and the conversation brought a mix of practical tips, brilliant insight, and positive sentiment. The take-home message for me was that innovation thrives in an environment with a balance of risk-taking, moral support, and professional learning.
Life’s four guidelines for goal-setting In my experience as a teacher and administrator, I noticed a pattern to goal-setting in my school and classroom. We would do some good goal-setting at the beginning of the year and then at some point during the dark depths of winter I would realize that I was too overwhelmed or …
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School approaches to filtering internet content As social media,Youtube, and gaming become more educationally relevant, how do we leverage their educational potential while keeping student data safe and teaching them digital citizenship? Lock it down! “We need to keep everyone safe.” Open it up! “It’s how the real world operates.” I’ve heard strong arguments for …
What does “quality” mean in assessing statewide digital efforts? The Foundation for Excellence in Education recently released its 2014 Digital Learning Report Card. According to this report, Vermont does not support digital learning. In fact, all of New England is a digital wasteland. But what does the data really say? How are these researchers quantifying “digital learning”? And how …
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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 …
Making the most of an original generation iPad Yes, you read that right: you can definitely still use an iPad1 in your classroom. Sure, not every app out there will work on it, and the iPad1’s lack of a camera is still fairly insurmountable, but this original version of the revolutionary edtech tablet still has legs, especially …
Comparing achievement in an economics classroom The flipped classroom is a new teaching method that reverses the traditional homework model. In the flipped classroom, students watch video as homework and then use valuable class time to complete assignments when teachers are available to provide one-on-one assistance and discuss deeper into a concept.
Making math and music at The Edge We were lucky enough to get to sit down with three groups of students at Essex Middle School’s Edge Academy just before the break and hear how their year-long project-based learning (PBL) projects are going. In the final installment of the series, we talk with three students making math …
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Here at the beginning of the year, many people make resolutions. A new year can mean new opportunities, and offer chances to implement large changes. One change that we see teachers take on is the idea of implementing the flipped classroom. Shifting direct instruction to video in order to clear up more class time for …
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Here at the Tarrant Institute, we have spent years focusing on the unique characteristics of young adolescent learners. Many of our values and practices are aligned with or adopted from the essential attributes and characteristics of effective middle grades education as outlined by the Association for Middle Level Education. Here in Vermont, we see many of …
This has been a very interesting week for me, trying to write a post for today. The task actually seemed pretty straight-forward. Audrey had passed along an app for me to take a look at: Monster Physics. A number of folks seem to be thinking about it from an education standpoint. At first blush I was …
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Shouldn’t every hour be a genius hour? Anyone paying attention to education in the US lately has seen the proliferation of the “Genius Hour.” Presumably inspired by Google’s 20% rule, through which employees of the search engine giant spend a day a week on projects of their own choosing, many schools are adopting a model …
One of the challenges in science is to help students make connections from concepts to their real world. This can be a particular challenge in the field of chemistry. We talk about atoms, molecules, chemical reactions… but how does that connect with the things we see every day? Augmented reality is one way to make …
The technology cannot thwart us, it can only make us stronger As many of you are aware, I was out at Harwood Union High School this past week for the Washington West Supervisory Union (WWSU) inservice day, armed to the teeth with iPads, apps, and tips and tricks for integrating technology into the classroom in …
Continue reading “Too much good stuff: a wealth of reading and curation resources for the classroom”