Learning to process feedback wisely is essential to school improvement--and personal growth, writes school principal Sanée Bell. Here, Bell shares hard-won tips for soliciting authentic feedback from staff and, even more important, for organizing, acting on, and reflecting on that feedback.

School leaders often neglect a key mechanism for empowerment: The school-improvement plan. In this article, researchers Coby Meyers and Bryan VanGronigen discuss five fundamentals of improvement planning that school leaders can use to ensure their plans are useful, effective, and on-track.

Parents know their children best. When schools build relationships with the families of English learners, students benefit. In this article, learn three essential actions from which you can cultivate an engaging and welcoming school community: (1) create a supportive learning environment, (2) make resources multilingual and multimodal, and (3)…

The professional development pendulum is swinging away from traditional methods (in which teachers passively receive information from outside experts) to teacher-centered models (in which educators take charge of their own learning). In this article, Jeffrey P. Carpenter describes new modes of teacher-powered professional learning, notably Edcamps…

In his work with schools and other workplaces, psychologist Paul White has learned that many programs designed to appreciate employees fall flat because the appreciation is too generic or involves something the employees don't want (such as getting up in front of a group). Effective appreciation is (1) offered regularly, (2) valued by the…

No matter what we decide students need to learn, not much will happen until students understand what they are supposed to learn during a lesson and set their sights on learning it. Crafting learning targets for each lesson and deliberately sharing them with students is one way to give students the direction they need. Targets that tell students…

The author describes her experiences leading a family engagement program in a South African elementary school and the parallels with her work with low-income immigrant families in U.S. schools. Schools often expect little from such parents, she writes, thus missing the opportunity to benefit from their strengths. When parents are welcomed and…

Debating has been around for a long time, with some pretty spectacular results. Look at Socrates, who was put to death in 399 BCE for corrupting the youth of Athens; his accusers could not forgive him for incessantly questioning their beliefs and making "the worse appear the better cause." More recently, debating has morphed into a sport for the…

Desiring to communicate clearly, one principal found his writer's workshop a safe environment for clarifying his thoughts. Writing in reflection takes educators through professional dilemmas and helps them develop a position and a direction for their work with children. No other medium provides this growth and empowerment. (MLH)

The traditional back-to-school assembly, featuring lengthy readings of student handbook rules and restrictions, counters visions of the positive school environment featured in many mission statements. This year's Colfax (California) High School program, based on graduates' musings about the school's familial behavior toward them, offered a message…

Most reform movements do not fundamentally alter the prevailing organization, scheduling, curriculum, or structure of teaching. The time has come to view teachers as the solution to, rather than the source of, school problems. Empowerment reform raises questions and allows school practitioners to work toward their own answers. Includes 22…

As head of Brazil's literacy campaign, educator Paulo Freire discovered that overwhelming student apathy required restructuring his values toward empowering instead of controlling students. For education to be linked to progress at an individual level, curriculum must emanate partly from the learners' lives. Includes five references. (MLH)

Reliance on the "delegation model" in public education has created a fundamental gap between families and schools. The Accelerated Schools Project has helped two poverty-afflicted, minority-populated elementary schools in the San Francisco Bay Area enlist parents and mobilize community agencies to achieve shared improvement goals.…

Montana Improving Schools Through Accreditation (MISTA) is a pilot program that empowers schools to attain accreditation through their own visions of improved student learning. Termed "performance-based accreditation," this process is voluntary and represents a consensus among the regional accrediting agency, the state education agency,…

As President of the American Federation of Teachers and a member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Shanker advocates fundamental changes in the ways educators do business. Educators should deemphasize teacher lecturing, differentiate teachers' roles and functions, and conceive of students as workers requiring different…