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Our online bookstore is now open, featuring books to help educators and leaders flourish, increase student achievement, and spark curiosity.
As a nonprofit, mission-directed organization, proceeds from our books sales help us deliver services to teachers and school leaders across the U.S. and around the world.
To celebrate our grand opening, we're offering a 20% discount on all our books through September 30, 2017 (code WELCOME20). Shop now and save now on your favorite McREL titles.
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New Curiosity Works™ Resource Guide! | Unleashing Curiosity with Challenging Learning Tasks
When students believe that new knowledge is attainable, yet just beyond their reach, they're motivated to learn. This new 8-page guide offers tips and tools teachers can use to create learning environments that unleash student curiosity; introduces four key elements that are integral to creating challenging learning tasks for students; and provides a rubric to reflect on your progress in cultivating self-directed, curious learners.
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Success Story | Pacific school system becomes a leader in implementing instructional leadership success strategies
McREL had been working with schools in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands for years when a new goal emerged: Strengthen internal capacity enough to ensure an ongoing supply of highly capable leaders for the country's 19 schools on 15 islands. Constructing a "principal pipeline" meant diving deeply into McREL's Balanced Leadership
® framework over several years. Ultimately the school system and McREL arrived at an entirely new program that guides the learning journey of everybody in the system, from kindergartener to commissioner, and prepares emerging school leaders for the challenges ahead.
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Blog Post | Are we thinking about what we're asking students to think about?
In his latest blog post, McREL CEO Bryan Goodwin asks, What are students really thinking about as they do [their] work? And is it the right stuff to be thinking about? While it's tempting to add new technology to the classroom to create better student engagement, it's more important, he says, to identify key concepts that directly relate to the learning goals, and focus student attention on those goals by assigning tasks that engage students with their own thinking in ways that directly support their own learning.
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Blog Post & Infographic | Demanding the best from your students, and helping them believe they can achieve it
Lisa Maxfield delves into the first of three imperatives for teaching ---- be demanding, be supportive, and be intentional ---- outlined in McREL's The 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching. In this blog post and infographic, she offers tips on how to use standards to set learning goals, how to provide structure and guidance to clarify learning for students, and how to create challenging rubrics, including student-created rubrics, that connect students with the "why" of learning.
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Blog Post & Infographic | Supporting student creativity, perseverance, and risk-taking (the good kind)
In the second of three blog posts and infographics on the three imperatives for teaching from The 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching, Lisa Maxfield describes how supportive and nurturing learning environments help students better engage with their learning. By creating an "oasis of safety and respect in the classroom," she says, students will feel more confident in stepping outside of their comfort zones to take calculated risks to meet their goals, despite any stumbles along the way. This allows teachers to interact more meaningfully with students and provide growth-oriented feedback that is specific and timely.
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Podcast | Growth-driven performance ---- in 3 simple steps
In this podcast from TalentEd by PeopleAdmin, McREL consulting director Dr. Tony Davis draws on his 28 years of experience as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and K-12 human resources administrator to offer three tips for developing growth-driven performance management processes.
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2017 PDK Poll shows support for career education
PDK Educational Foundation
The 2017 national PDK Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools reveals that Americans want more from schools than just academic learning, and back the idea that public schools should also offer student supports for both career preparation and the development of interpersonal skills.
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Scientists to schools: Social, emotional development crucial for learning
Education Week
This article summarizes the findings of a group of 28 academic researchers who study student motivation, school climate, and social-emotional learning (SEL), suggesting that in order to meet the needs of the whole child in a school setting, schools must broaden their purview beyond purely student academic work. The report grouped SEL skills into three actionable areas ---- cognitive skills, emotional competencies, and social and interpersonal skills ---- suggesting that these "soft skills" are integral to student success.
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Education at a glance 2017
OECD Indicators
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Education at a Glance 2017 reveals new trends in education, teacher pay, and education completion, focusing on their impact on labor markets around the globe. Among its findings: U.S. teachers are paid, on average, nearly 60 percent less than other professionals with similar education levels; and the workforce in the 35 countries studied has become better educated since 2000, with 46 percent of 25-to-34-year-olds in the U.S. holding a college degree.
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Rome (NY) school board uses McREL's Superintendent Evaluation framework
The superintendent of the Rome City School District in upstate New York won praise from his board recently ---- and by extension so did McREL's Superintendent Evaluation System, which is based on McREL's Balanced Leadership® Framework. The board adopted the McREL evaluation system two years earlier because it was "more comprehensive" than their previous process.
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Weeklong Chats on Twitter
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Looking to grow your professional learning network? Join us for our weeklong Twitter chats, where participants share best practices, strategies, and common (or uncommon) struggles and successes. Follow us on Twitter and use the hashtag #McRELchat to share your thoughts and ideas on each week's theme with other educators.
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Topic | Whole child needs
September 25-October 1
Topic: How do you meet the needs of the whole child?
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Topic | Personalized learning platforms
October 2-8
Topic: What platform does your school use for personalized learning: Edmodo, Google Classroom, Schoology, or another?
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October 9-15
Topic: How do you teach your students empathy?
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Topic | Digital citizenship
October 16-22
Topic: What curriculum are you using to teach digital citizenship?
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South Dakota Indian Education Summit 2017
September 24-26 |
Pierre, South Dakota
Join McREL staff at the South Dakota Indian Education Summit to access high-quality professional development and information on best practices to support Native American students and schools. Visit with McREL staff in the vendor area, and attend a breakout session with Dr. Terri Bissonette titled "Trauma-Informed Schools and Communities" to learn about research on the lasting effects of adverse childhood experiences, and promising systemic approaches and strategies to mitigate the effects of trauma.
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National Indian Education Association Annual Convention
October 4-7 |
Orlando, Florida
Join Dr. Terri Bissonette from McREL for a session on trauma-informed schools and communities. Dr. Bissonette will share research on the lasting effects of adverse childhood experiences (including multi-generational issues), and how these physical and emotional stressors influence student behavior and learning in the classroom. Dr. Bissonette will share examples of promising practices being used in school communities that have shown results in mitigating the effects of trauma. This session will be held on Thursday, October 5 at 10:15 a.m.
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October 23-25 |
Orlando, Florida
Research shows that most online learning schools today aren't improving students' outcomes. Are there online learning environments that can actually help them flourish? If so, how might these environments differ from what we're currently doing? Join McREL CEO Bryan Goodwin and co-presenter Erika Twani from Learning One to One at the iNACOL Symposium for their session titled "Let's Rethink Online Learning" to explore key practices that enable the growing online student population to succeed academically and in life. This session will be presented on Tuesday, October 24 at 11:15 a.m.
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ASCD Conference on Educational Leadership
October 27-29 |
Kissimmee, Florida
Join McREL CEO Bryan Goodwin on Friday at the ASCD Conference on Educational Leadership for a session on empowering leaders to make positive changes in their schools. Co-presented with education consultant and author Pete Hall, this session will weave together insights on instruction, teacher coaching, leadership, and school improvement into a practical model for becoming an empowering leader ---- encouraging people to change not through top-down punishments and rewards but through intrinsic motivation (not forcing them to drink but making them thirsty). Attendees will receive techniques they can use right away in their schools to inspire people to change by connecting with their mission and seeing themselves as capable of change. This session will be offered on Friday, October 27 from 10:30 a.m.-noon and repeated from 1:30-3:00 p.m.
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American Evaluation Association National Conference
November 6-11 |
Washington, D.C.
Join McREL researchers and evaluators at AEA's 31st Annual Conference to share and explore best practices in evaluation and learn how evaluation projects can help create better practices and outcomes in education. Sessions presented by McREL staff include:
Developing a classroom observation protocol when treatment and control classrooms don't look anything like each other
Presenters: Phillip Herman, Karen Bumgardner, Ashli Knotts, and Kevin Knoster
Date and time: Thursday, November 9, 3:15-4:15 p.m.
Coaching evaluative thinking: Meaningful client engagement in a small-scale quasi-experimental study
Presenters: Sheila Arens and Barbara Kruger (VocabularySpellingCity)
Date and time: Friday, November 10, 5:30-6:15 p.m.
Helping decision-makers understand problems of practice: An example from the Pacific region
Presenters: Phillip Herman and Sheila Arens
Date and time: Saturday, November 11, 11:15 a.m.-noon
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McREL: Helping educators flourish
"The three imperatives [from The 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching] are very applicable for all teachers, and we can't think of a current staff member who doesn't benefit from the pursuit of being more demanding, supportive, or intentional."
Sublette County School District #1, Wyoming
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