The status quo is no longer an option. School leaders need to model care, courage, and open communication. Superintendent Jennifer Gallagher reflects on three important components of adaptive and effective leadership--communication, care, and courage--that she found helpful in navigating her district through the challenges of the pandemic.

An adaptive leadership lens can better equip schools to address complex challenges, writes ASCD faculty member Kwame Simmons. This research-based approach to problem-solving keeps the most challenging issues at the forefront and increases a team's confidence in being able to address them.

Douglas Reeves, school leadership expert and founder of the Equity and Excellence Institute, describes how we can use lessons from the pandemic to reshape teacher learning.

Last year educators nationwide met the challenges of hybrid teaching and intensive block scheduling and gained a deeper understanding of the extensive inequities that so many communities face. Educators and students alike were asked to completely rethink schooling as the pandemic laid bare a fundamental question: What should education look like in…

The disruption of the pandemic underscored inequities in education systems and prompted educators to think beyond traditional measures of student achievement. However, as students returned to the classroom, conventional narratives of learning loss reemerged. Learning loss implies students, not systems, need to be "fixed," which misses…

Teaching during a pandemic, with a constant need to invent or learn new ways to instruct and reach students, has been traumatic for many educators. Teachers are feeling burnout, moral injury, and compassion fatigue. School leaders can move teachers--and school systems--toward post traumatic growth by making four shifts to create organizational…

In his high school science classes, author Jonathan Bergmann employs "flipped-mastery learning," an equity-driven method that empowers students to master core material at variable paces and develop skills of self-directed learning. As schools face pandemic-related learning loss, Bergmann streamlines the logistics of an approach that…

For well over a year, school shutdowns and sputtered reopenings have tested educators' resourcefulness and resolve. As the new school year begins, many are reflecting on small triumphs and lessons learned from that experience. One practice that proved central to many schools' resolve and resilience during this crisis was teachers' collaboration on…

The pandemic has prompted many school leaders to better leverage digital learning and management. The switch to remote learning in March 2020 forced many administrators to embrace and adapt to technology. The lessons they learned and practices they adapted are continuing to influence their work today.

How can educators regain a sense of control during these tumultuous times? Author and school counselor Phyllis Fagell identifies six ways to cope and be a reassuring source of strength for students when the only constant right now is change.

Grading should be more about the feedback--and less about the score, writes assistant principal Michelle Hope. By focusing attention on the steps toward mastery, teachers can offer students a more complete picture of progress.

With the pandemic and incidents of harsh police brutality now filling the news (and many lives), how can teachers help young children make their way through a period that, if it were a movie, might be rated R for violence and harsh imagery? With examples from his own classroom, Minkel shares four ways we can be there for kids: teach them to…

In early December 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, the Individualized Education Program (IEP) team at the author's son's school met with her online about supporting her autistic son in his general education social studies class. Looking at the many faces on the screen who had gathered to support her son, the author realized how grateful she…

While schools' official vision statements--statements school leaders write telling their own deep vision for what they want their school to be--generally aren't empowering, they could be. A well-crafted vision statement is a powerful tool because it articulates the promise a leader and school staff make to students and provides focus. Drawing on…

Perhaps the greatest tragedy to come from COVID-related distance learning would be "not" learning from this experience to improve teaching when teachers and students physically return to classrooms. A robust discussion of the evidence of success during this pandemic school could be a major boost to the process of teaching and learning.…