Who You Know: Relationships, Networks and Social Capital in Boosting Educational Opportunity for Young Americans

Writing for Brookings, Reeves and Deng explore the importance of social capital  for promoting educational opportunities and outcomes. The main messages of the paper are as follows: Social capital = relationships that uplift. Social capital is described, defined and measured in a wide variety of different ways. But there is a broad agreement that it Read more about Who You Know: Relationships, Networks and Social Capital in Boosting Educational Opportunity for Young Americans[…]

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Forging Youth-Centered Futures: Bringing Youth Visions to Life

How might kids remake learning for a post-pandemic future? What advice might they have for adults? What approaches and strategies might they want us to use as we build futures focused on them? We won’t know if we don’t include youth and their perspectives in our conversations and strategic planning for teaching and learning. If Read more about Forging Youth-Centered Futures: Bringing Youth Visions to Life[…]

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Putting compassion on the teacher prep syllabus

The Hechinger Report recently reported on a new, masters-level course called ‘Compassion and Dignity for Educators’ being offered at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Excerpts from the piece appear below: The ability to understand a child’s struggles — and then do or say just the right thing to help them through — is arguably the Read more about Putting compassion on the teacher prep syllabus[…]

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Family Engagement Reimagined: Innovations Strengthening Family-School Connections to Help Students Thrive

During the 2020-21 school year, schools and families learned in particularly dramatic ways that they can’t effectively support students without being in partnership with one another. Every family faced its own unique challenges navigating distance learning, and many schools had to create new family communication strategies on the fly. While school-driven efforts have been Herculean, Read more about Family Engagement Reimagined: Innovations Strengthening Family-School Connections to Help Students Thrive[…]

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The “Silent Epidemic” Finds Its Voice: Demystifying How Students View Engagement in Their Learning

McREL researchers Samantha Holquist and Marisa Crowder collaborated with members of student voice organizations in Oregon and Kentucky to provide us with a deeper level of understanding about what may be shaping students’ engagement in the school community. Their research report is comprehensive, offering many insights from the students’ perspective and proposing a framework for Read more about The “Silent Epidemic” Finds Its Voice: Demystifying How Students View Engagement in Their Learning[…]

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Understanding Well-Being Through A Whole-Child Lens: Introducing The Well-Being Index

All students have unique strengths and needs that vary over time and are expressed differently. This year, persistent disruptions to learning, systemic racial oppression and the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic have deeply affected the well-being of young people everywhere. To help educators assess student well-being directly, quickly, and frequently, both in-person and virtually, Read more about Understanding Well-Being Through A Whole-Child Lens: Introducing The Well-Being Index[…]

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What Drives Learning: Young People’s Perspectives on the Importance of Relationships, Belonging, & Agency

America’ Promise Alliance has released a new report examining young people’s perspectives on the importance of relationships, belonging and agency to their overall learning.  What Drives Learning: Young People’s Perspectives on the Importance of Relationships, Belonging, and Agency is the newest report in the How Learning Happens research series. Based on findings from a nationally Read more about What Drives Learning: Young People’s Perspectives on the Importance of Relationships, Belonging, & Agency[…]

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Do students perceive their teachers and schools more positively when more of their teachers look like them?

The Education Research Alliance for New Orleans has released a new study, based on a survey of almost 4,000 students, that finds Black students in New Orleans report more positive educational experiences, including less bullying and fairer discipline, in schools with a higher percentage of Black teachers. Ninety percent of children in New Orleans public Read more about Do students perceive their teachers and schools more positively when more of their teachers look like them?[…]

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10 Recommendations to Maintain Student Connections

The Aspen Institute has released 10 recommendations states can use to maintain student connections and relationships through the 2020-21 school year.   Healthy relationships and routines undergird the development of resilience, which is needed to engage successfully in academics and in life beyond school. These dimensions of student well-being and readiness-to-learn are under tremendous strain due Read more about 10 Recommendations to Maintain Student Connections[…]

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5 Things Educators Can Do Virtually to Support Students Experiencing Trauma

For many students, the COVID-19 pandemic is compounding traumatic experiences for diverse reasons, such as potential increased incidents of neglect, abuse, and isolation. At the same time, educators are limited in how they can support their students while schools are closed. REL Appalachia (REL AP) has been working with key stakeholders from the region in Read more about 5 Things Educators Can Do Virtually to Support Students Experiencing Trauma[…]

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All of Who I Am

Over the past several years, a growing consensus has emerged that learning is a social, emotional, and cognitive process-but how do young people perceive and experience this type of integrated learning in action? All of Who I Am, a new report from The Center for Promise at America’s Promise Alliance, features insights from a qualitative Read more about All of Who I Am[…]

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Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools

There’s mounting evidence that, for children of color especially, having one or more teachers of the same race over the course of students’ educational careers seems to make a positive difference. But to what extent, if any, do the benefits of having a same-race teacher vary by type of school? Existing “race-match” studies fail to Read more about Student-Teacher Race Match in Charter and Traditional Public Schools[…]

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Putting Relationships at the Core

Recently in the New York Times, David Brooks wrote a column about the importance of emotion in learning. Excerpts from his piece appear below: We used to have this top-down notion that reason was on a teeter-totter with emotion. If you wanted to be rational and think well, you had to suppress those primitive gremlins, Read more about Putting Relationships at the Core[…]

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