Blog
20 blog posts in 2024
Speed Counts When Making Successful Changes Across Your District or School—When to Go Slow and When to Go Fast
This Blog emphasizes that the success of a district or school’s change process or initiative often rests on the speed of its implementation. We review ten variables that help determine if a change pro...
Read Full ArticleBreaking Down the Wall Between General and Special Education Teachers in Our Schools: How Organizational Missteps Create Classroom Barriers
This Blog discusses the institutionalized wall between General Education and Special Education Teachers that has existed since Students with Disabilities were fully included in our nation’s public sch...
Read Full ArticleResearch Teases Out the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences... But Many Educators Still Don’t Understand Social-Emotional Screeners, and the Limitations of ACEs-Only Assessments
Given the school-related challenges since students returned from the pandemic, this Blog discusses (a) the characteristics and concerns with social-emotional screening, and with only using an ACEs too...
Read Full ArticleHow Fad or Flawed School Programs Increase Poor Teacher Morale and Resistance to Change: When Education Keeps Adopting the Same Shaky Stuff, It Will Keep Getting Repeated Rocky Results (Part V)
Blog reviewed and integrated recent articles reporting that (a) teachers’ job satisfaction and mental health worsened last year, as did the need for student supports and interventions; and (b) distric...
Read Full ArticleStudents' Health, Mental Health, and Well-Being Worsens Over the Past 10 Years: Summary of the August 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Report (Part IV)
Blog summarizes the CDC’s national 2013-2023 Youth Risk Behavior survey results for high school students. Detailing the shaky emotional status of our students, the Blog asserts why students need multi...
Read Full ArticleWill Your School “Win the Gold” for Your Students This Year? Why the U.S. Women’s Gold Medal Olympic Gymnastics Team is a Model for All Schools (Part III)
Blog discusses the courage, characteristics, and conditioning that educators need to consider so that their schools are successful for all students—especially as a new school year approaches. This Blo...
Read Full ArticleAre Schools Really Prepared to Address Educators’ Biggest Behavioral Student Concerns Right Now? “We’ve Got Serious Problems and We Need Serious People” (Part II)
Blog discusses the significant classroom and school social, emotional, and behavioral challenges demonstrated by students this past year as identified in a recent national survey by K-12 school leader...
Read Full ArticleThe Seven Sure Solutions for Continuous Student and School Success: “If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, Any Road Will Get You There” (Part I)
Blog discusses the Seven Sure Solutions to school improvement and students success as significant numbers of students continue to academically under-perform and demonstrate social, emotional, and beha...
Read Full ArticleDoes Your School’s SEL Program Teach Social Skill Behaviors, or Just Talk About What Students “Should Do”? If We Taught Reading the Way We Teach SEL, None of Our Students Would Learn How to Read
Blog discusses the building blocks needed when teaching students—from preschool through high school—the social skills they need to be successful. Described are the specific skills, teaching steps, and...
Read Full ArticleRevisiting Title IX’s Sexual Harassment Requirements While Avoiding Secondary Victimization: A Procedural Primer. Why Do Too Many Districts Not Know (or Abdicate) their Responsibilities?
Blog provides a detailed overview of the federal Title IX Sexual Harassment law—describing definitions, required procedures, and sample district policies in specific areas relative to responding to an...
Read Full ArticleIncreasing Student Engagement: The New School Year Begins Before this “Old” Year Ends. How to Prepare and What Needs to be Done
Blog discusses the importance, need, and how to identify, analyze, and plan interventions for disengaged students before the end of the current school year so that the re-engagement interventions sele...
Read Full ArticleWhen a School’s Multi-Tiered System of Supports Needs Support: How Do You Motivate Educators and Avoid Educational Malpractice?
Blog discusses the multi-tiered systems of support process, how to best prepare for MTSS Case Study meetings using six “First Things First” activities, the implications—through a Case Study—when these...
Read Full ArticleSocial Media and the “Double-Edged” Sword of Damocles: Survival Rests on Humility, Self-Control, and the Principles of Public Relations
This Blog discusses Social Media as a “Sword of Damocles” that hangs above us with the power to enhance or destroy those who use it. We can control the power by (teaching) self-control, humility, com...
Read Full ArticleLaundromats, Lawyers, Learning Loss, and Life: An Autobiographical Day in Education
This Blog described an autobiographical day in the educational life of a school psychologist who works nationwide as a consultant. He reflects on the harsh and sometimes fixed realities he observed in...
Read Full ArticleHow Cognitive Biases Affect Student Perceptions and Educator Decisions: Making the Unconscious, Conscious and the Implicit, Explicit
This Blog defines Cognitive Bias, discusses how eight specific biases affect educators’ positive and negative perceptions of students, staff, and systems, and then address how they similarly impact ju...
Read Full ArticleHelping Schools Pick and Implement the Best Evidence-Based Programs: Avoiding Mistakes, Best Practices, and Pilot Projects (Part II)
Continuing this two-part Series, this Blog Part II discusses the evaluative criteria used by the What Works Clearinghouse and Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center to rate the validity of curricula...
Read Full ArticleWhat Super Bowl Commercials Teach Education About Media and Product Literacy: The Language and Process that Helps Schools Vet New Products and Interventions (Part I)
Metaphorically using the commercials at the Super Bowl as a guide, this Blog emphasized and outlined (applying the goals and questions within a sound middle school Media Literacy program) why educator...
Read Full ArticleMichigan Mother Found Guilty of Manslaughter in Her Son’s School Shooting: Should Schools Lean-In to Hold Parents More Accountable for their Children’s Behavior?
On February 6, 2024, Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter for allowing her son to bring a gun to school where he killed four and injured seven others. This Blo...
Read Full ArticleStrategies for Safe, Productive Classroom Conversations on Race, Religion, and National/ World Events: It’s Not If, It Should Be When
Many challenging, controversial, and emotional social issues have impacted the climate and interactions across students, staff, and schools. To ensure that discussions around these issues are safe and...
Read Full ArticleWhile Grades May Be Meaningful, It’s Still About the Skills: “Resolving” to Recognize that Report Cards are Less Meaningful than Student Mastery
This Blog reviews a major study demonstrating that high school grades across the country have been inflated from 2010 through 2022. At the same time, it emphasizes that grades are less important than...
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