The Liberty Leadership Blog

We connect foward-thinking educators.

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Introducing...Brinks, my flying dog

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Enjoying the sunrise on MLK Monument is the ultimate...It's such a refreshing experience. (at Washington, District of Columbia, DC, United States)

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#NoShaveNovember #BeatCancer check your health

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Thank our Vets for their service 🇺🇸

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Your organization's culture defines you: Do you get after it or do you simply try to get through it? #thegrind

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Great teachers connect students beyond standardized tests #PersonalizedPD PPD-1.eventbrite.com

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This is the result when #FutureReady .@knoxschools students #ReachHigher

[oupacademic]

By David Brody

The media have been paying a lot of attention to concussions lately. This is not a bad thing; concussions and their sometimes serious effects have been largely overlooked until recently. A good example is the coverage of the World Cup concussions, and the decision to put...

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Personalize it! Tell Your Story -Teachers want the autonomy for self-directed professional growth

Through the use of social media, any person with internet access has the ability to tell his/her personal stories. The paradigm shift occurs when teachers provide a real-time and an on-demand view of their school’s learning ecosystem. The teachers provide the facilitation of learning and the students provide the application of learning. In essence, the teachers become the digital story tellers-in-chief of classroom experience. The locus of control resides with the teacher, instead of the state’s legislative authority.

Schools have the unique opportunity to use social media as their Personalized Social Learning (PSL) platform. The use of PSL platform is a game changer for schools seeking to amplify students’ learning. A robust PSL platform can assist teachers in telling their story pertaining the active implementation of the school’s vision and mission. The PSL should focus squarely on teachers curating the following: 1. Students’ Learning Tasks 2. Professional Growth 3. Two-Way Communication and Community Engagement

Your school’s PSL platform can encourage every teacher to engage and tell their story. Empowering teachers starts with a transparent culture of sharing best practices with colleagues and community members. Through this practice, PSL’s also ramps up the levels of students’ engagement with the academic content. How does it work? 1. Create student learning tasks aligned with the state academic content standards 2.Teachers will curate real-time student learning tasks via Social Learning (digital pictures, video, audio or quote student discussions) 3. Communicate instantly with the local community.

The PSL practice we recommend is not another layered fad. This teacher-driven practice will efficiently streamlines those learning innovations which are currently occurring in isolation. The goal is to curate/capture student learning tasks through the use of a PSL platform and share students’ application of learning. Once learning is shared, the professional conversation and cross-fertilization of ideas can become a value-add among teachers. Therefore, schools can build internal capacity based on the shared best practices by the professional staff. This one-step process helps: 1. Teacher/Principal Evaluation System (Pre-Post Conference) 2. Educators earn job-embedded continuing education graduated credit for re-licensure 3. Create a professional growth reflection tool 4. Provide evidence of authentic student learning tasks 5. Enhance community engagement 6. Demonstrate evidence of the application of the academic state content standards 7. Reduce the cost of professional development for both teachers and school districts 8. Build sustainability through shared best practices and amplifying teacher voice

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#Detroit CCA high school Young Men of Excellence scholar students. http://viddy.it/l377Si

[harvardeducation]

From @DeanJimRyan’s Twitter account today - Everyone, it seems, has a favorite #JFK quote. Mine is this: “Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education.”

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Did President G.W. Bush(R), Representative John Boehner(R) and Senator Ted Kennedy’s(D) bi-partisan 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) help close the achievement gap? Nationally, schools were asked to set higher standards, create measurable action goals and individualize the student learning experience. Most importantly, the academic performance levels of student subgroups (African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Special Education, Social Economic Disadvantage) were made public by states and local schools.

Over the years there has been heated ideological debate between teachers, policy makers, researchers and parents. Reviewing the NAEP reading assessment trend data, one can formulate a data-driven response. But, was NCLB the right thing for the academic preparation of ALL students, most notably students of color?

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ACT: Majority of First-Generation College Students Unprepared For Key Courses

Most students whose parents did not attend college matriculate despite being unprepared for core courses required for their degrees.

The report, The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2013: First-Generation Students, shows that 52% of first-generation 2013 high school graduates who took the ACT college readiness assessment met none of the four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks, compared to 31% of all ACT-tested graduates who met none of the benchmarks, ACT said in a statement.

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The 10,000 hour rule.

Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, prescribes to the notion that success is not just about intellectual capacity. Success requires the individual to practice specific tasks for 10,000 hours in order to gain mastery. In education, we still have a vast majority of students and teachers attempting to prescribe 10,000 hours to the antiquated Education 1.0 model. Education 1.0 practice doesn’t make perfect; but, perfect Education 3.0 practice makes perfect. I comes down to the quality of the task, not just time on task. The key to accomplishing quality learning outcomes is dependent upon the rigor of the instructional tasks provided by the teacher.The typical 180 day school year, will provide students with 30 hours per week of formal instruction and 5,400 hours at the end of the school year. So, the 10,000 hour rule is easily attainable in two years of formal academic learning. Based on the current US academic performance data, we are still stuck in Education 1.0 and demonstrate limited signs of moving forward. Enhancing the learning conditions and practices takes transformational leadership and a commitment to retraining educators and learners; reboot the system.