It’s up to us to market the work our schools and at-promise students are doing.

By Alex Kajitani

Recently, at the annual “Title 1 Meeting” for a low-performing school in our district, I happened to sit next to a parent who was clearly nervous.  When I inquired, she told me she was upset because she thought the meeting meant the school was being taken over.  I quickly explained that Title 1 status is determined simply by the number of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch, that this was just an informational meeting, and her children’s school is not currently at risk of being taken over. Then, she visibly relaxed.

That exchange got me thinking about how often the only news people hear about education is negative news, and how it is becoming standard to assume the worst, especially when it comes to our schools with large numbers of at-promise students.  As educator-leaders working to improve the lives and futures of at-promise students, I firmly believe it is part of our larger responsibility to communicate what is really happening in our schools, clearly and broadly, to parents and the larger community.

We ARE the Marketing Department!

By Sheryl Armstrong, RAPSA

Webquests can be valuable learning tools in your classroom to give students an opportunity to explore a subject on their own or with peers.  Most of the research is done online, and the activities can be tailored to meet students' needs and learning styles. The best webquests give specific information on how to complete the tasks and provide a rubric for grading clarity.  Students work through the tasks and synthesize the material across different metacognitive tasks. 

The files below are evaluations for three webquests that may be used in social studies or language arts classes.  They are geared for secondary age students.

Making the Most of the Critical First Five Minutes of Any Class

By Alex Kajitani

Remember the old Head & Shoulders Shampoo tagline? You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

As teachers, we actually get a chance to make a first impression every single day -- often several times per day with each class we teach.  And with today’s at-promise students, who are accustomed to the rapidly paced sound bytes and topic switches of a new media world, if we don’t grab their attention quickly, we know that they often tune us out and the rest of the class is usually shot.

That’s why the first five minutes of any class is so crucial: it is an opportunity to connect with our students, set the tone, convey our expectations, and state, in clear terms, why the class is even happening at all. 

Some Early Research Findings

By Michael Strong, Ph.D., New Teacher Center, 2006

At the New Teacher Center we have conducted two studies investigating the effects of induction support on student achievement. In one study we compared achievement gains among classes of elementary-level beginning teachers in three districts. Districts varied somewhat in size, baseline reading achievement levels, and number of students from poor or minority families, as seen in Table 1.

In all three districts, teachers received induction support from a full-time mentor with a caseload of no more than 15 teachers for their first year of teaching. In their second year, teachers in District A received support from a colleague at the same school who received no release time, mentors in District B increased their caseload to 35 teachers, reducing contact time accordingly, and teachers in District C continued to receive the same comprehensive support. When we compared studentby-teacher gain scores in reading (from the Stanford 9 reading test) among the three districts, we found that a greater percentage of classes in District C had positive gains than corresponding classes in the other two districts.