In the past year, experts and practitioners in the field, whole child partners, and ASCD staff have shared their stories, ideas, and resources to help you ensure that each child, in each school, in each community is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged and prepared for success in higher education, employment, and civic life. These are the top 10 posts you read in 2012.
States and professional development organizations recognize that the kind of transformative professional preparation necessary to meet the challenge of teaching the new standards is not yet in place. But for those teachers and schools who want to jump start the process, psychologist and author Thom Markham believes a solution is already in place: Project-based learning.
Project-based learning can create engaging learning for all students, but that depth of learning requires careful, specific design. Part of this engagement is the element of critical thinking, writes educator and ASCD Faculty member Andrew Miller.
Right now, our culture relentlessly pursues achievement. What would happen if, instead, we relentlessly pursued learning? In this column, ASCD's Molly McCloskey emphasizes that for authentic learning to occur, students need to be fully engaged—out of their chairs, eyes wide open, saying, "that was cool."
When you break health into its distinct components—physical, mental, emotional, and social—and organize them into a hierarchy like Maslow's, you will find physical health on top, says ASCD's Sean Slade. That makes the physical component of health the tip of the well-being iceberg, but what lies beneath is larger and potentially more destructive.
It is important to communicate with kids in a way that helps them take responsibility for their choices while we continue to take responsibility for ours. ASCD author and educational consultant Bob Sullo shares student-teacher scenarios and alternative ways to handle each situation.Culture—school, community, workplace, political, and so forth—is a direct reflection of adult behaviors. ASCD's Molly McCloskey believes all children learn every day through what adults say and do (even when we think they are not looking), and she asks, "What have you taught your students today?"As educators, what is our role when dealing with students who bully other and, given our role, what do we want to achieve? ASCD author and educational consultant Bob Sullo shares suggestions for dealing with kids who bully, particularly the importance of building and maintaining positive relationships with them.Project-based learning is built on the same foundation as whole child education. Inquiry into adolescent mental health, youth development, and developmental psychology has revealed the three core conditions required for young people to develop a "drive and thrive" outlook that leads to successful adulthood. Psychologist and author Thom Markham describes the joy and excitement learning can offer when projects have the right mix of challenge, engagement, and personalized support.
Teachers now have a context for using the "notable nine" categories of teaching strategies and can apply them purposefully as they assess, teach, and mentor their students. Elizabeth Ross Hubbell, a principal consultant at McREL and coauthor of the second edition of Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement, shares one of her own teaching stories that illustrates the power of using the strategies framework to engage students in learning.How do you know if your child attends a good school? How do you know if you are actually being objective when you say that you work at a good school? In this column, ASCD's Molly McCloskey has the answer: Use our indicators of a whole child approach to education.We wish you a happy, healthy, safe, engaging, supportive, and challenging 2013!