Digital natives and digital immigrants make up most of the world’s population. The natives speak and live technology; whereas the immigrants adopt and continue to learn as much as they can about technology but may not use it to its full potential, because they retain their accent from the past. Teachers today are beginning to [...]

Hiring The Right Leaders If you want to hire extraordinary people, you must get away from ordinary practices! Recently I worked with a school division that needed to fill some key positions. As we looked for the right people, we put our minds together and decided that if we want the right people for these [...]

While doing a Comparative Longitudinal Data Analysis of WESTEST II, West Virginia ACUITY Assessment, and Embedded Skills within West Virginia CSO’s from 2009 to 2012 for Doddridge County Elementary School, certain skills repeatedly revealed themselves as stumbling blocks across multiple content areas and grade levels. It was these repeating skills that sparked the idea that it may [...]

When I started recruiting potential teacher leaders for the school’s leadership team, I looked beyond the formal departmental titles and identified teachers who were well respected by their peers and could lead their departments in a school improvement process. Over the last two years, these teacher leaders have become a collaborative team that helps administration [...]

I have been working on Dropout Prevention with 9 schools in Fayette County, West Virginia. One of the major issues I’ve noticed has been the lack of knowledge about when the dropout risk begins developing—many people believe it begins in the high school years, but through our data tracking, it has shown that the risk [...]

CEO Dr. Steve Edwards is attending the Indiana Youth Institute’s Because Kids Count Conference, this December 4th and 5th in Indianapolis. This conference will bring together a wide range of professionals who work with the youth to collaborate and share best practices. Dr. Edwards is leading a workshop focused on a problem-based learning approach to [...]

Actively engaging students in their learning is critical if we are to create thinkers who are prepared to meet the challenges that are outlined in the Common Core State Standards.  Being able to think and problem solve is essential for students to be college and career ready. We often think about engaging students physically, but [...]

Susan was reared in a two-parent home and attended prep school, where she was on the honor role. She also found herself involved in a gang-controlled sex trafficking ring at the young age of 16. How does this sort of terrible, degrading, crime happen in one of the richest counties in America? Susan truly believes [...]

As the principal of a school put into restructuring by the state of New Hampshire I was looking for something that would be embedded in our everyday way of doing business. We started out by aligning our curriculum with the state standards and we began putting a heavy emphasis on collecting data and analyzing it [...]

Quite often, the High School years are our last chance to change or influence the academic self-image of our children. It is therefore extremely important that educators recognize the “risk and reward” variables involved with oral responses in the classroom. Unlike written responses, oral responses are available for scrutiny by teacher and peers alike. The [...]