The amount of feedback and coaching teachers are receiving is way too low. If making teachers better is the absolute greatest lever in impacting student performance, then we should be striving to do it every day. We don’t give students feedback once a month or once a semester, so why should feedback for teachers be any different? Further, by examining the best-performing schools around the country, we clearly see that they share an emphasis on strong teacher development. Read on to hear how Paul recommends we increase the frequency of development!

Spending time with a great mind is time well spent. And reading Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track allows us a glimpse inside one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. The book is a collection of letters that Richard Feynman wrote throughout his career to scientists, fans, family members, students, politicians, and the public. Richard Feynman was a theoretical physicist who won the Noble Prize in 1965 and was famous for popularizing science for the masses. In this piece, we reflect on Richard’s perceptions of his own schooling and how we might help students be a little more creative in theirs.

Throughout the year, we expect our students to demonstrate growth and master the content we deliver. We use data to track their progress and provide remediation when needed. When it comes to our teachers, however, we rarely discuss the tools that help them get better. As we’ll see, live coaching is one of the best tools around. At Village Prep Woodland Hills, the school team has been working on and refining their live coaching practices over the last several years. And that’s why we decided to talk to Chris O’Brien and Ronald Brownrigg about the culture they’ve built around coaching.

Charlie Friedman is the Founder and Head of School at Nashville Classical, a charter elementary school in Nashville, TN that opened its doors in 2013. The school serves nearly 300 students in grades K-3. Charlie is focused on doubling the number of advanced, low-income elementary students in Nashville and creating the long-term plan that will achieve it. We recently chatted with him about teacher hiring and retention practices. This post covers some of the insights he provided to us on the hiring front.

Stephen Covey was an influential writer, businessman, and expert on management policy. His book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide (in fact, you probably have one of them). But in our daily effort just to survive, chances are we’ve let much of its advice fall by the wayside.

For now, let’s focus our attention on just one tool from the book – his time management matrix. As we’ll see, if we fail to schedule time for what’s truly important to the growth of our schools, we end up being overwhelmed by a seemingly limitless number of responsibilities.

In the video clip below, you’ll hear a description of a “Bring It Minute” from Darren Benedick, the athletic director at Excel Academy Charter High School in southeast Boston. Excel Academy is a network of tuition-free, public charter schools that had the best performance on the Massachusetts MCAS exams 6 years in a row. While researching this top-performing school, we were hardly surprised to find they had formalized their own spin on a brain break!

We all can agree that brain breaks are a good thing. Even more so for kids! But if you’ve struggled with how to implement such breaks at your school or in your classroom, take a few minutes to watch Darren’s presentation.

What if you had textbooks designed specifically to meet your school’s needs? What if your textbooks could be delivered in a format that allowed students to access them from anywhere? What if these textbooks were free?

Done, done, and done.

What’s the best class size?

When policymakers argue about limiting class size, one of the most-cited pieces of research they mention is the STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio) study from Tennessee, compiled some 30 years ago. In the study, both teachers and students were randomly assigned into either a small class (which on average had 15 students) or a normal class (which on average had 22 students). The reduction in class size was found to improve student achievement by about 3 months of added school.

But don’t just stop there.

We’re using this holiday break as an opportunity to reflect on school culture. This is the final post in a three-part series discussing the findings of Primed to Perform, a book that develops a framework for understanding motivation in the workplace. In this series, we will examine the book’s conclusions within the context of teacher morale.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In this piece, we will examine effective career ladders, compensation systems, and role design for educators. Needless to say, if we’re simply thinking how we can assign “tasks and work” to our teachers, we’re going to fall short of our school’s cultural potential. Further, if we fail to design systems that excite our deepest human potential, we’re going to miss the “endless immensity” of our achievement.

We’re using this holiday break as an opportunity to reflect on school culture. This post is the second in a three-part series discussing the findings of Primed to Perform, a book that develops a framework for understanding motivation in the workplace. In this series, we will examine the book’s conclusions within the context of teacher morale.

Edward Deci, director of the human motivation program at the University of Rochester, has said, “The proper question is not, ‘How can people motivate others?’ but rather, ‘How can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves?’” That’s what this post is all about!

Ahh . . . Christmas break! A time to spend with loved ones away from the cold outside world and to recover from that feeling of having been run over by a burly reindeer! And for us educators, it’s also a time to finally hit the slopes, the hot tub, or a bottle of celestially-spiked cider.

We just thought you’d like to know that while you were busily wrapping up your work for the year, we at Thriving Schools prepared a wish list for 2017 on your behalf and had it sent priority-mail to the North Pole on the wings of an enchanted ‘turtle dove.’

Immediately upon your return to school in 2017, we hope you’ll find . . .

We’re using this holiday break as an opportunity to reflect on school culture. This post is the first in a three-part series discussing the findings of Primed to Perform, a book that develops a framework for understanding motivation in the workplace. In this series, we will examine the book’s conclusions within the context of teacher morale.

What motivates your teachers? Why do some work harder than others and achieve miraculous outcomes? How can you improve school climate to foster even higher levels of enthusiasm?

If only our legislators cared more. If only the public would accept this new levy on their properties. If only we had more money. These are the familiar cries of those who believe the only way education is going to improve is through increased funding.

To kick off this blog, we’re putting our chips on the table for all to see – it ain’t gonna happen! Come on – everyone loves kids! Anybody can get behind learning! So we must consider: if funding for education isn’t increasing, there just might be a reason why. Let’s explore some of those reasons.