As you find yourself relaxing next to the fireplace this holiday season, hot cocoa in hand, we thought you’d like to know we’ve been thinking of you! Here are this month’s best articles, analyses, and stories in education from across the web! This month you’ll learn about 12 educators who are delivering big changes to their communities, how principals are building the skills to motivate their school teams, and strategies for effective discussion in the classroom. And in keeping with the holiday spirit, you’ll also get the story of how kindness can be taught to students everywhere. Enjoy our special holiday edition of Learning Links!

Today we’re speaking with Sarah Rosskamm, President and Founder of Hendy Avenue Consulting, about designing strong teacher evaluation frameworks. Sarah was responsible for the development of the Achievement First Teacher Career Pathway and has now helped countless other schools and districts create and implement their own. In this piece, Sarah explains why coaching and development need to be at the heart of an evaluation system, how schools can intelligently implement such systems, and provides several examples of strong rubrics and frameworks. If you’re looking to improve how your teachers are evaluated, this is a must-read!

Here are this month’s best articles, analyses, and stories in education from across the web! This month you’ll learn about the power of trauma-informed teaching, how cities across the country are rethinking classrooms for the 21st century, and explore the 3 styles of classroom writing. We’ll also examine the inequitable distribution of teachers and what we can do about it! Enjoy!

In this piece we chat with Tim Schwarz, expert educator and instructional leadership coach. We cover a wide range of topics on how to get crystal clear with what you want students to learn. Specifically, we discuss how you can improve your planning (by writing better key points), crafting engaging question prompts and exit tickets, and planning out a well-sequenced unit. Consider this piece a 10-minute consultation with Tim on how to become a world-class planner!

Today we’re presenting the first part of our conversation with Verta Maloney about having responsible discourse on race in schools. In this piece, you’ll hear exactly how Verta guides a school team through courageous conversations while respecting the unique experiences that everyone brings to the table. Verta’s process includes an honest assessment of school culture, sharing personal stories on race, and respecting all decisions that are agreed upon as a team. We conclude with Verta’s amazing list of resources for delving into these topics further, including her favorite podcasts, films, and organizations.

Here are this month’s best articles, analyses, and stories in education from across the web! This month you’ll learn about Republic’s use of social-emotional learning resources, how to roll out discussion procedures in class, and how you can build resilience as a teacher. You’ll also get a list of 25 words and phrases that can help you instill a growth mindset in your students. Enjoy!

Today, we’re excited to sit down and chat with Shyam Kumar, the Founder and CEO of NorthStar Education Partners and former Executive Director of Teach for America – Atlanta. In this conversation, we’ll talk about the main reasons effective teachers leave the classroom, ways to determine if your school might have a long-term retention problem, and how to increase the transparency of hiring systems. Along the way, Shyam will also explain why our appreciation efforts often come up short for teachers who pour their hearts into the classroom.

In today’s piece, we share 4 challenges to the current education system from one of Silicon Valley’s top insiders. Naval Ravikant is the outspoken CEO and co-founder of AngelList, a platform for connecting startups and investors. He’s also an active angel investor who has invested in companies like Twitter, Uber, and Stack Overflow. So why should you care about his views on education? As one of Silicon Valley’s best investors, Naval has spent countless hours with the world’s top innovators and entrepreneurs. And as a result, he’s in a unique position to tell us about the skills and mindsets that our most creative employees (think – our current students) will need in the future.

Once again, our network has scoured the internet to find you this month’s best articles, analyses, and stories in education. This month’s pieces include key insights from both the Rocketship and BASIS networks, a review of 11 research-based classroom management strategies, and how to effectively implement cold-calling to start the year. Oh, and 600 elementary kiddos in Tennessee would like to share with you an idea on how you and your students can spread kindness in your community . . .

This week, we’re focusing our energy on how to build a college-bound culture. And we’re thrilled to have Ashleigh Fritz, School Director at YES Prep Southside (in Houston, TX), along to show us how it's done. YES Prep is routinely praised for its college initiatives and results, and so we wanted to ask Ashleigh about the programs and systems that make it work. Specifically, we ask her about YES Prep’s success in sending its students to college, the commitment process that students and families participate in, and how to think about the range of post-secondary options that are available to students.

We started this series two months ago with the premise that what we focus on is what we get. So instead of accepting the media’s narrative of low test scores, broken budgets, and poor morale, Thriving Schools has decided to go in the opposite direction (and to focus on all the amazing things taking place in education). We’re excited to present our “back to school” edition of this list – stories and articles that our Thriving Schools network read and shared with us this past month! We hope you find a few nuggets of inspiration and intrigue!

Today, we’re doing something a little different . . . To celebrate the start of another school year, we’re sharing a few excerpts from the book Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected. Though the book is about bringing curiosity and wonder back into all aspects of life (relationships, responsibilities, and routines), its conclusions can be readily applied in the classroom. In fact, the book gives many examples of how its principles are used to engineer the unexpected at school. Enjoy these stories of surprise! And we wish you a strong and successful start to the new school year!