Mary Kadera
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • How I Voted
  • Contact

improving how i (we) make decisions

8/12/2023

 
Picture
The last time I wrote, it was about how AI will change education (and in fact, when I powered up my computer today, at the top of my inbox was this Education Week article: “AI could save school districts time and money—if they use it correctly").

AI uses algorithms to make decisions, and those algorithms operate by prioritizing certain factors over others. For example, internet advertising companies use an algorithm that prioritizes ads that are topically-related to your most recent browser searches (remember how spooky it felt when this first started happening?). It could just as easily prioritize ads for purple products, or ads related to food if you happen to log on at lunchtime.

Humans use algorithms when we make decisions, too, and that’s what I want to write about today.

Let’s say you’re the owner of a toy store and you want to open a second location. But where? There are lots of factors you’ll weigh, including your budget; how much space you think you’ll need; where your competitors are located; proximity to other businesses that would attract toy-buyers; your employees’ transportation needs; and more. Depending on which of these factors you prioritize in your own algorithm, you’ll likely arrive at different conclusions.

Then there’s the question of how you decide what factors to prioritize. If I’m the sole owner of the business, I could safely argue that I get to create the algorithm all by myself. Proximity to other businesses that would attract toy-buyers is top of mind for me, followed by the cost; if it’s a little smaller than I would like, or it’s a few minutes’ walk from the nearest bus stop, I can live with that.

​Now let’s say I am a public school district and I want to open some magnet schools in order to create more diverse school communities. (Set aside for the moment the question of whether there’s robust evidence that magnet schools are an effective way to desegregate.) Now I have to figure out what type(s) of magnet programs to offer. Some of the factors I could prioritize include:
  • appealing to student interests (like  High School for Recording Arts in St. Paul)
  • preparation for in-demand careers (like  Francisco Bravo Senior High Medical Magnet in L.A.)
  • instruction that is particularly effective in addressing certain student needs (like ALLIES Elementary in Colorado Springs, which has a special focus on dyslexia)
  • flexibility for students and families who need it (like Achieve Virtual in Indianapolis)
  • leveraging unique community assets (like Normal Park Museum Magnet School in Chattanooga).
Any one of these factors would be a perfectly reasonable thing to prioritize in my algorithm—but they’ll yield different results.

In my magnet school example, who gets to decide what factors to prioritize in the algorithm? It’s not as simple as in the toy store example. Who is the “owner” of the business? Who is the “owner” of the decision about how to build the algorithm? Because it’s a public system, what special obligations does that create, if any, for community input?

District leadership, educators, school board members, parents, students, and community members all likely have ideas about what factors should be prioritized, and those ideas may not line up.

We talk a lot about “data-driven decision making” but I’m realizing that this may miss the mark. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me over time that our quarrel in decision making may not be with the data but rather with the algorithms the data are fed into.

​Sometimes if we have inaccurate or missing information we may have a data problem, but more often I think the friction is around:
  1. Clearly stating what factors we’re going to prioritize in creating our algorithms. Often we lob pieces of data at each other and say, “How can you make that decision when the data show x, y, and z?” The data may show those things and those things may not be prioritized in the algorithm—both can be true.
  2. Role clarity: Who owns that prioritization? Whose input influences it? Who needs to be informed (transparency) but doesn’t have a direct role?  Does everyone understand this at the outset?
  3. Consistency: The prioritization should be stable in subsequent, similar decisions—unless there’s a logical and clearly communicated reason for the change. When this doesn’t happen, it breeds confusion and mistrust. Sometimes this takes the form of “Hey, you moved the goal posts!” or a sense that we are using data very selectively, and differently than before, to justify an end we’re seeking this time around.
This has been on my mind a lot this summer as APS staff, the community, the school board and its advisory councils weigh important, upcoming decisions about our facilities. It’s central to other aspects of our school system, too—for example, the school board’s annual budget direction is basically an instrument designed to prioritize factors.

​Maybe these insights have been obvious to everyone else and I’m late to the party (it wouldn’t be the first time). But it feels like this will be useful for me in my job moving forward—and perhaps it will be useful to you, too, particularly as we work to engage each other in constructive and trust-building ways.

Photo courtesy StartUp Stock Photos, pexels.com

AI, ready or not

7/16/2023

 
Picture
​OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman shared this tweet at a conference earlier this year, and it's a great example of how artificial intelligence is going to change the way we teach and learn. Here's another example, in a headline from Education Week:
Picture
Khan Academy founder Sal Khan has declared, “I think we're at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen." 

I don't know if I (yet) feel the same degree of enthusiasm for AI as Khan, Brockman and others, but I do agree with them on two fundamental points. First, it's that AI is no longer a sci-fi story--it's already with us, and evolving at breathtaking speed. Second, I agree with Brockman that we're in "an historic period where we as a world are going to define a technology that will be so important for our society going forward."  

What should this mean for schooling? And can our education systems keep up? Here are some things I've been thinking about.

AI changing how we teach

As Raymond's tweet illustrates, AI can provide students with always-on, incredibly responsive tutoring. My former boss and mentor Cindy Johanson--one of the most curious people I know--recently encouraged me to keep a ChatGPT* browser tab open and experiment with its capabilities. Before I wrote my last post about DIBELS I used it to educate myself about statistical validity. The Chat GPT experience is different than reading articles on the subject because it's conversational: immediately I was able to ask follow up questions and confer about how the concept would apply to actual data sets I was working with.

Students can use AI to hone their critical thinking and debate skills. A student at the Khan World School told Sal Khan, "This is amazing to be able to fine-tune my arguments without fearing judgment. It makes me that much more confident to go into the classroom and really participate."

You likely already know through media coverage (or maybe personal experience) that ChatGPT can churn out papers for students. It can also write collaboratively with them and provide feedback on students' writing (here's ChatGPT's critique of this post, for example). Khan shares, "The student will say, "Does my evidence support my claim?" And then the AI not only is able to give feedback, but it's able to highlight certain parts of the passage and says, "On this passage, this doesn't quite support your claim," but [then] Socratically says, "Can you tell us why?”

Students can use ChatGPT to change the reading level of a passage and translate it into other languages (see examples here and here). AI can present reading passages with embedded conversational prompts that check comprehension and invite analysis: Why did the author use that word? What’s the evidence to back up that argument? What follow up questions would you ask?

If that sounds like what human teachers do, you're not wrong: there is some overlap. There are things that AI can't do (more on that below), and if we're wise in our application of AI we'll use it to free up our human teachers' time for the work they are uniquely positioned to provide. Only a really good human teacher can intuit how a student's personal circumstances are affecting her learning, particularly if the student herself isn't able to verbalize those circumstances. Only human teachers can connect what a student is learning to her values, or draw unexpected connections across months of learning and multiple subjects as that student has experienced them. 

Teachers might have more bandwidth to do this important work when they deputize AI as a teaching assistant. AI can help teachers explore how they might want to present a particular concept, either generally or to specific individuals or subgroups. AI can help teachers differentiate and personalize instruction: for example, if a teacher wants to create personalized reading passages at the correct reading levels for all 25 students in his class, he can provide the parameters to ChatGPT, refine the stories it generates as he likes, and then use the stories in class later the same day. (Try it out. Pretty cool.)

AI can augment the work of human instructional coaches by providing feedback to educators about how they teach. A teacher can record video of themselves and ask the AI for a critique. For example: Did I call on some students (or types of students) more than others? What patterns did you notice in how I moved around the room? How long did it take students to settle in after a transition? (I'll add here that while this feedback is incredibly helpful to a teacher, the AI doesn't have all the context that the teacher does: for example, why I needed to spend more time with a particular student whose grandfather just died; how IEP  accommodations may be factoring in; etc.).

AI can also help teachers interact with parents and caregivers, particularly those who don't speak English. Watch this TED Talk by tech visionary Imran Chaudri: he's wearing an AI-enabled jacket that produces real-time translation of his words in his own voice! (at 06:50)


AI changing what we teach

If I'm wearing a jacket (or an earpiece, or watch or other wearable) that can do so many things, what is it that I myself need to know and be able to do, with my own brain and body?

We're going to have to work hard(er) to discern what's true. We know that AI doesn't perform perfectly: in today's manifestations, it's sometimes beset by "hallucinations" and produces false information. In part, this is because AI is trained on "large language models" that construct knowledge as the statistical relationships among particular words. AI researcher Yejin Choi comments, "These language models do acquire a vast amount of knowledge, but they do so as a byproduct as opposed to direct learning objective. Resulting in unwanted side effects such as hallucinated effects and lack of common sense. Now, in contrast, human learning is never about predicting which word comes next, but it's really about making sense of the world and learning how the world works." 

If AI can hallucinate, you need to be able to fact check across multiple sources. But what if the source itself isn't real? If you want to be wowed and profoundly unsettled, watch this deepfake demonstration from AI pioneer Tom Graham. Graham rightly says, "We are going to have to get used to a world where we and our children will no longer be able to trust the evidence of our eyes." 

We're really going to have to understand bias. AI is already making decisions on our behalf: if you're a hiring manager, it screens resumes to determine who you should interview; if you're a doctor, it reviews lab results to flag which patients need follow up. In making these decisions, AI is using algorithms that humans created and that prioritize certain pieces of data over others. AI is trained on data sets supplied by humans that may or may not encompass everyone. For example, when tech researcher Joy Buolamwini was a grad student at MIT, she was working with facial analysis software when she discovered that the software didn't detect her face. The people who coded the software hadn't taught it to identify dark brown skin. 

We're going to have to frame good questions.  Imagine you get a lot of data in a spreadsheet and you need to make sense of it. You ask AI, "Can you make me some exploratory graphs?" and it gives you a starting point to begin engaging with the numbers. But to make it more meaningful and relevant, you're going to have to ask the right follow up questions. "What happens if we change this value?" "What would happen if we delay by two years?"

We're going to have to know and apply our human values.  Maybe you're familiar with philosopher Nick Bostrom's famous thought experiment in which AI, directed to maximize the production of paper clips, decides that humans should be killed and converted into raw material to create more paper clips. Yejin Choi comments, "Now, writing a better objective and equation that explicitly states: “Do not kill humans” will not work either because AI might go ahead and kill all the trees, thinking that's a perfectly OK thing to do. And in fact, there are endless other things that AI obviously shouldn’t do while maximizing paper clips, including: “Don’t spread the fake news,” “Don’t steal,” “Don’t lie,” which are all part of our common sense understanding about how the world works."

We're going to have to be long-range thinkers.  OK, maybe there's little danger that you'll be turned into a paper clip, but there are other long-term, significant changes we'll need to explore in an inclusive way (see bias and human values, above) and plan for.

Nita Farahany is a neurotech and AI ethicist; in her recent TED Talk, she outlined how our personal data is being used: "As companies from Meta to Microsoft, Snap and even Apple begin to embed brain sensors in our everyday devices like our earbuds, headphones, headbands, watches and even wearable tattoos, we're reaching an inflection point in brain transparency…Consumer brain wearables have already arrived, and the commodification of our brains has already begun. It's now just a question of scale." 

What could this lead to? Farahany worries about "governments developing brain biometrics to authenticate people at borders, to interrogate criminal suspects' brains and even weapons that are being crafted to disable and disorient the human brain. Brain wearables will have not only read but write capabilities, creating risks that our brains can be hacked, manipulated, and even subject to targeted attacks."

If this keeps you up at night, you're not alone. Author and researcher Gary Marcus shares, "In other times in history when we have faced uncertainty and powerful new things that may be both good and bad, that are dual use, we have made new organizations, as we have, for example, around nuclear power. We need to come together to build a global organization, something like an international agency for AI that is global, non profit and neutral." Which brings me to...

We're going to have to practice global citizenship, deploying all of the skills listed above. Long-range thinking, asking good questions, applying our human values, spotting bias, discerning what's true--all of these will be skills greatly needed in the future.

Coming back to education: we should be asking ourselves how these skills are prioritized in today's teaching and learning. Let's make sure we're teaching to the real tests--and opportunities--ahead. 


*Note: ChatGPT is only one manifestation of AI. I highlight it here because it's been in the news and because it's easily accessible for those who want a test drive.

**I am grateful to TED, my former employer, for creating opportunities to learn about AI via TED Talks. I relied heavily on the knowledge shared by TED speakers in creating this piece. I promise I did not ask ChatGPT "Hey, write an overly-long article about how AI will change education using only information in TED Talks" -- though I could have done so. :) 
​

Like. A. Boss.

6/30/2023

 
Jamestown, Randolph, Carlin Springs, and Claremont. At these four APS elementary schools, something really interesting is happening: for two years in a row, these schools have produced double-digit growth in reading.*

APS uses a tool called DIBELS to measure the development of early literacy and early reading skills at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. I got curious about this question: what percentage of K-5 students are in the DIBELS “green zone” of proficiency in September, and how many more (or fewer) are testing at that level by the end of the year?

In eight of our 25 elementary schools, the number of students at or above proficiency increased by at least 10%. And at Jamestown, Randolph, Carlin Springs and Claremont, that happened two years in a row.

These schools had quite different journeys: one of them started with just 28% of its students in the green zone in September 2021, while another was at 73%. One of them is a Spanish immersion school while another is a neighborhood school. One is part of the  International Baccalaureate program and another operates with a community school model. At one school 72% of the students are Latino, and at another they comprise only 8% of the student population.

So what do these schools have in common—is there a “secret sauce” that’s driving this growth? In APS as in other districts, school and division leaders look at a number of contributing factors, including what kinds of curricula and instructional practices teachers are using; having a highly skilled and high-performing school staff; access to resources that meet the unique needs of that school’s population; and more. It’s not always be easy to identify with absolute certainty what’s working, but it’s really important to try to do so, so that those factors can be sustained and potentially spread to other schools.

Some other things I noticed in the DIBELS reading data:

1.  We have a few schools that experienced significantly more growth in 2022-23 than they did the previous year. What changed? (These schools are Ashlawn, Drew, and Escuela Key. Nice work!)

2.  We have a few schools that showed impressive gains for students with disabilities, while at other schools the percentage of that population in the green zone stayed flat or even decreased.**  This makes me wonder three things:
  • whether there are staffing challenges at certain schools (nationwide, school districts are having trouble recruiting and retaining special education teachers)
  • how to navigate the nuance in special education reading data (for example, some students receive special education services and are also English learners. One student could have an IEP, be an English learner and be identified as gifted.) and
  • how to factor in the fact that some families can afford supplemental private services.

3.  Ten schools showed double-digit growth in the number of Latino students reading proficiently last year, led by impressive 15% growth at Drew. The year before, the growth in proficiency for Latino students at Drew was just 4%. IMO, we should be congratulating the Drew community and asking,”How did you do that?”

4.  Ditto for English learners at Drew: an impressive 16% growth in proficiency over last school year.

5.  Ditto for the 12% growth in the number of Black students proficient in reading at Drew. Oakridge was a close second with 11% growth.


Some of you will take issue with my focus on growth measures. A hypothetical example: 20% growth in a single year may mean that just 10% of students in School XYZ were reading proficiently in September, and by June only 30% are doing so. 30% is still not where we want to be.

I appreciate this concern and wholeheartedly agree that our work isn’t done until 100% of our students at every school are reading proficiently. But for a variety of reasons, some of them not directly under a school’s control, that journey is longer for some school communities than others. (Consider, for example, that at some sites about 30% of kindergarteners start school with entry-level proficiency on DIBELS, while at other schools more than 70% do so.)

This is why school- and student-level growth measures are so important. They honor the hard work that is happening in certain schools even if they’re further from the finish line. Our commitment should be to support and accelerate that growth as much as possible.



*More precisely: APS uses a research-based tool called DIBELS to measure the development of early literacy and early reading skills. DIBELS yields really important data about individual students’ skills, but it can also show us what’s happening at the school level: for example, in this dashboard showing the percentage of students performing at different levels. For simplicity’s sake, the stoplight colors are useful: green generally equates to “proficient” and “above proficient.” Yellow and red are more concerning.


**Note: I am not a statistician but I do understand the general idea of statistical validity. My nod to this concept is: I did not analyze subpopulations that comprised less than 10% of the overall school population.

“culture eats strategy for breakfast”

5/22/2023

 
I’ve been job hunting for several months (thank you, layoffs). As I’m eyeing job postings and prepping for interviews, I’ve been interested in how organizations describe their culture.

Not one of them leads with “hot mess," "toxic swamp of despair" or “dumpster fire,” though many orgs are.

Over the years and especially during my time as a consultant, I’ve seen a lot. The CEO who announced “Aaaaaaand… youshouldknowlayoffsarecoming” in the middle of a wonderful holiday party at the Birchmere. (Yassss she did. I like to think it inspired the lyric “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”) I’ve seen management so loathe to make hard, emotional decisions that the org literally ran out of money. I’ve counseled staff members who’ve given up sharing their ideas because they’re never acknowledged or adopted.

Culture does eat strategy for breakfast. I love a good strategic plan and I’ve written several, but strategy is just a bunch of words on paper without good people to bring it to life.

Strategic plans usually include “mission,” “vision” and “values.” Organizational culture should be a tangible embodiment of those values.

Companies with healthy culture develop better strategies, because employees contribute their expertise to sharpen them.

Companies with healthy culture execute on strategy more effectively, because employees feel invested in the work and have the support they need to be successful.

Where’s the best place you’ve ever worked? How would you describe its culture?

For me, it’s been those places where I have been:
  1. Recognized for my hard work
  2. Comfortable admitting what I don’t know (yet), asking for help, and getting it
  3. Invited into shared problem solving and decision making
  4. Respected as a professional with valuable knowledge and experiences to share
  5. Encouraged to keep learning and to try new things
  6. Expected to be responsible for getting core things done well, and held accountable when they’re not
  7. Seen as a whole person (with a life outside of work), known, and cared about by my colleagues
  8. Part of a community of people who genuinely enjoy each other.

School divisions, schools, and classrooms have cultures, too, just like any other organization. As APS rolls up its sleeves to start on a new strategic plan, I believe that it’s our culture, more than any particular verbiage we craft, that will propel us to a great future.

Here are some examples I really admire from other schools and districts I’ve visited.

Time to collaborate at P.S. 172, Brooklyn, NY:

At P.S. 172 staff members have regular, protected time to collaborate and make decisions about the curriculum and their own professional learning. The NYC Department of Education granted the school a waiver so that it could schedule a 90-minute block of professional learning time at the start of each school day, one day per grade level. (School leaders developed a master schedule that places students in specials while their classroom teachers are engaged in these professional learning sessions.)

Grade-level teams work with instructional coaches to identify topics and formats for their own professional learning; Rachel, one of the school’s special education teachers, shared, “There is great respect here for the amount of time teachers need to spend together. We respect each other as colleagues and are able to ask for what we need.”

Teams use separate dedicated time to co-create the school’s curriculum and revise it annually to meet student needs. “It’s a shared document that everyone is responsible for,” said Rachel. “If something isn’t working, there’s not one person who feels their work is being criticized. It was made by all of us.”

Student decision making at Parker Charter Essential School, Devens, MA:

At Parker, students are surveyed as part of mid-year and end-of-year teacher evaluations, and a student-led Community Congress has a voice in changing school policies, providing feedback on the school’s annual budget allocations, and weighing in on other administrative issues. Additionally, the student-led Justice Committee plays a key role in resolving conflicts, providing mediation, and developing restorative plans after infractions.

The corollary to shared decision making is shared responsibility and accountability. Parker principal Todd Sumner told us, “There’s an expectation that adults in school share a commitment to the entire school. When we orient new staff, we share that it means you can’t walk by stuff… if I walk by I can’t say ‘They’re not my problem because they’re not my students.’ You need to step toward the issue, not away from it. Because this piece is consistent over time, the longer the students are here, the more they own it. The juniors and seniors really are the ones doing most of the tone-setting. They will be as quick as any adult to say, ‘This doesn’t look right.’”


Valuing teacher expertise at Harvest Collegiate High School, New York, NY:

At Harvest Collegiate, teachers can get release time to pursue career development opportunities and take graduate classes towards advanced degrees. Many teachers take on hybrid roles within the school, including professional learning community leaders, health and wellness leaders and curriculum developers.

At Harvest, all teacher desks are housed together in one big workroom so that teachers can troubleshoot issues and share ideas. This workroom is often where individual teachers create new courses and solicit feedback on those course ideas from their colleagues; teachers at the school develop courses that reflect their passions and expertise as well as interests voiced by their students.

Faculty member Steve Lazar noted, “We ask teachers, ‘What's the most successful unit you've ever taught?’ and then we say, ‘Great, make that a course. Turn that into a semester class.’ Because we're building on teachers’ strengths and past experiences, that leads to teachers doing things that work for students.”

Interdisciplinary inquiry and innovation at Vancouver iTech, Vancouver, WA:

Teachers across several subject areas teamed up to try out an interdisciplinary experience for high school students at Vancouver iTech. First, the students studied The Omnivore's Dilemma as a collaborative biology, health and physical education unit. They tracked their eating and sleeping habits and interviewed their parents on the factors that influence healthy behaviors.

In their media class, students then created short films about food for a festival they planned. The inspiration for each film was a nutritional improvement each student identified for themselves. Students filled a variety of roles at the festival according to their interests.

School principal Darby Meade observed, “Our school’s guiding principles are around innovation, inspiring students to create, and really imagining what it is that we can be. We don’t necessarily know what is going to be out there in ten or fifteen years… we believe in problem solving and teaching kids to fail. The amount of information is continuing to increase--if we just cover the curriculum, we’re getting further and further behind.”


Relevant professional learning at Fall Creek Middle School, Fall Creek, WI:

Sixth grade teacher Toby Jacobson and his colleague David Ross received encouragement from Brad LaPoint, their principal, to make project-based learning the focus of their professional learning through a district-wide system that uses teachers’ individual goal-setting to drive professional learning.
Other teachers identified professional learning goals related to growth mindset, reading strategies, special education connection with families, and more; the program culminates in a “Goal Day” street fair where teachers share what they’ve learned.
Jacobson reflected, “This culture really took off in the last three years. In the first couple years, there was more focus from the staff on just getting through the process. Now it’s more like people take it on themselves, asking ‘How am I going to get better this year?’”


“How am I going to get better this year?” and its partner “How are we going to get better this year?” are the right questions to be asking. In any org, the response should begin with culture—the one we have, and the one we want to create. If we don’t get that right, it’s quite likely our strategies will amount to little more than the crumbs left on a breakfast plate.


​
  1. Management expert Peter Drucker is credited with the claim “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
  2. If you’d like additional examples of high-functioning school and district cultures, please check out the Astra Center for Innovative Education.​

hope for mental health

4/28/2023

 
If you’ve read about teen (and child) mental health these days, I’m betting the headline contained the word “crisis” or the phrase “the kids are not all right” (Google it and see).

I once thought in these terms, until I stopped to consider what message it sends to the young people we’re concerned about.

When we say things like this, we’re branding a whole generation as broken. (This is my issue with the term “learning loss,” too).

By age 40, about 50% of us will have or have had a mental health issue. I’ve had them, and it never once helped me to feel like I was branded, broken, or exceptional. It helped me to know: Lots of other people feel this way sometime in their lives. You are still you, with all the qualities and talents that make you wonderful. This won’t last forever. There are ways to get help. Matthew Biel, Chief of Adolescent and Child Psychiatry at Georgetown Hospital, says, “Talk about it as part of the human condition, in every place humans spend time.”

It’s true that by many measures, there are more young people reporting mental health issues today than in years past. The pandemic undoubtedly took its toll on mental health, but there were signs of something going on even before 2020. There’s been a lot of research and discussion about the effects of social media; changes in diet, sleep and exercise; and the advent of new drugs that are more addictive than ever before.

While we untangle the answers to the “What’s going on?” question, in parallel we need to make good on the assurance “This won’t last forever. There are ways to get help.”

Part of the “crisis” is our ability to respond to those who need help. In Arlington, as in other communities, supply of treatment isn’t keeping up with demand. We don’t have enough clinicians who work with children and teens, and families are on waiting lists for public and private providers. There aren’t enough inpatient beds in public and private hospitals and treatment centers for young people who are truly in crisis.

It’s easy to feel paralyzed by problems that are hard to solve. As a nation (world?) we’ve never invested in mental health the way we should. I can’t wave a wand to conjure a new army of mental health providers. But there are smaller, more local steps we can take.

​I’ve been doing a lot of listening, reading and studying to understand what’s already in place in our community and what more might be possible. I compiled what I learned here, including twelve steps I think we could consider for Arlington. I’ll share a few of them below.
You Are Not Alone
In Arlington, 14% of students in grades 4-5 and 23% in grades 6-12 feel not at all connected or only slightly connected to other students at school. 1 in 3 of our students in grades 4-12 say they do not have a trusted adult outside of school they can talk to when they need help.

Some of the steps we could take to create more connection and belonging—an incredible protective factor for mental health—could include:

  • Creating smaller communities (school size, class size) and intentional relationship mapping: ensuring that every student has a trusted adult mentor within the school. Some schools will map peer relationships, too, and offer social skills groups or other ways to help students feel more included.
  • Community mentors: I love this article by teacher Renee Moore describing how mentoring worked at her school in Mississippi. And with a nod to Arlington Public Library’s Human Library Event tomorrow—what if we could create a human library of local citizens who are willing to share their talents and experiences with young people and their families?
  • Parent-to-parent mentors: In DC, the Early Childhood Intervention Network is training parents to become Family Leads and help other parents and caregivers with similar lived experiences. Family Leads go through a nine-month training and two-month apprenticeship. 100% of applicants have completed the training program, 100% are people of color, and Family Leads gain income and marketable skills by participating.
  • Teen Centers: Many communities are experimenting with models of care that combine recreational spaces where youth can spend time with peers in addition to attending appointments for mental health, tutoring, and college and career counseling. They’re located in storefronts, shopping centers and community centers, and accessible via public transportation including bus routes from schools. UpStreet in Pittsburgh is a great example. (Or, if you want to go abroad, check out Jigsaw at multiple locations throughout Ireland).
Easy Access on the School Campus
Many communities are making the decision to place critically needed services like medical, behavioral, dental, and vision care directly in schools so that all young people have easy access. Here’s what that looks like in communities close to ours:
  • At 31 schools in Montgomery County, the Department of Health and Human Services along with other local public and private nonprofit agencies offer counseling, psychiatric care, support groups and more. At 12 school-based health centers youth and families can get physicals, immunizations and prescriptions.
  • In DC Public Schools, the Department of Behavioral Services and community-based organizations offer family functional therapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy, parent-child interaction therapy, substance abuse services and more—even if students also have an outside provider.
  • At Alexandria’s two high school campuses, any resident aged 12-19 can visit the Teen Wellness Center tp receive free, confidential care including mental health and substance abuse counseling and reproductive health services. Non-confidential services include vaccines and treatment for minor illnesses.
One final point I’ll make: if we really want our young people to feel capable, resourceful and valuable, we have to treat them that way. And that means using a human-centered design approach that centers their ideas and involves them in creating any programs or solutions we develop for their benefit. We also know that having a sense of purpose protects our mental health—which means the young person who co-creates the solution may happily never need it.

“The needs keep coming"

3/12/2023

 
In July 2021, I found myself unexpectedly flying cross-country to my sister in San Francisco. Kathleen is an ICU nurse and COVID critical care had taken its toll: she was traumatized and had been approved for medical leave. My job was to bring her back east to be with the rest of our family while she waited for a spot to open up for her own treatment.

Kathleen’s breaking point underscored for me that no one is “too strong” or “too skilled” to be laid low by stress, trauma, and emotional exhaustion. She is an award-winning critical care nurse; she’s been published in peer-reviewed medical journals; she completed a Zen Buddhist chaplaincy program in order to minister to her colleagues at the hospital. A month prior, she’d been featured in The Atlantic’s coverage of COVID on the front lines.

Health care workers around the world, in my family and maybe in yours too have experienced not just trauma but moral injury. 

Moral injury was first described in the 1990s by Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who worked with Vietnam veterans. Since then, we’ve recognized moral injury in other settings, too, like health care. Moral injury arises when you take part in, witness, or fail to prevent an act that deeply violates your conscience or threatens your core values.

It can be individual in nature (e.g., I made an error in judgment; I did nothing as a bystander) or stem from systemic factors (e.g., I had to choose who to help because there weren’t enough supplies; I was told to adhere to policies that hurt someone).  In some cases, leadership piles on ever-increasing demands requiring workers to harm themselves (by pushing past their own human limits), their families (by being emotionally and physically unavailable), and those they serve (by turning away those in need of help). Outgrowths of moral injury can include depression, addiction, burnout and self-harm.
Picture
One moment among many for Kathleen was turning away a woman who was trying to visit her dying mother on Mother’s Day. She knew it was wrong, but it was what she was tasked with doing and she did it. Moral injury also comes about through being betrayed by those in positions of power - those in a position to do the right thing who choose otherwise. Kathleen talked about feeling “disposable” in those days before the vaccines. Nurses were at the bedsides doing the tasks of every other worker in order to minimize exposure to the virus. If something happened to her, she could be replaced. As an individual, she didn’t matter. 

Increasingly, I’m becoming concerned that there are a  significant number of educators in this country (and locally) who may be living with moral injury. 

Consider our school-based counselors, social workers and psychologists. The
CDC, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups have recognized a significant increase in youth mental health issues and reported cases of trauma. Here’s how that looks through the eyes of a school psychologist—what she describes is above and beyond her regular duties and caseload.
[My calendar] does not reflect the 3 students who barreled into my office on Monday screaming and crying, the students who were waiting at my door when I was providing counseling to other students on Tuesday, the cursing student who came into my office as another student exited, the student who had a panic attack on Wednesday and needed to be seen again, the parent who showed up on Monday without an appointment who I have still not had time to call back, the parent who I had to call today because I’ve seen their teen 3 times this week, the student who I had to turn away because I had too many students in my office already, the teachers asking me to provide counseling, and the student who entered my office this afternoon just before the bell rang for dismissal and reported decades of trauma. The problem is this has become typical. 

I have parents calling because there are no appointments available [outside of school] and there are six-month waitlists for services at a minimum…. I have teachers crying and get calls to go to the classroom and meet with them. I write reports after school hours and on weekends. My counseling notes have not been updated in months.


I am exhausted. We are all exhausted… The needs keep coming. And we’re not able to meet them. We are drowning as we try to save the world."

​Here’s what a social worker had to say:
This year has been even harder than last year. I’m spending more time in classrooms, intervening with students, providing counseling support to students (and really their parents too), trying to problem solve, being a listening ear for teachers, and sitting in on more Special Education meetings than I ever have.  This is on top of all of the new initiatives and programming that are getting added to our work loads, including a more active role in threat assessments and prevention.

I want my students to feel like I did everything I could so that they feel supported in their educational journey. That their school is a safe place. I love my job and I love the kids that I get to work with. These students have never once made me question if working in schools was the profession for me. But I am tired.”

And from a school counselor: ​
We desperately need intervention teachers to support kids. I’ve watched teachers in tears this week asking for support to meet students’ learning/behavioral needs. Teachers don’t need coaches or specialists to tell them what to do, they need people in the building to help them do it.” ​
And finally, from a teacher: ​
Today was another difficult day… we received an email [from central administration]. More training. My English team teacher read the email, closed her Macbook, and wept. She said she cannot do one more thing. Her family life is falling apart because of the constant demands [at work].

At our staff meeting, I sat next to one of the most amazing teachers I have ever met. Her eyes were red and welled with tears… She said she has seven and a half years left; she doesn’t know how she is going to make it. We are trying to prop each other up."
Like my sister, these are veteran professionals with advanced degrees and certifications. As with my sister, their work is a calling. 

​
What they are describing is not “too busy” or “too stressed” or “going through a rough patch”—it feels to me like moral injury. Education shares with nursing an ethics of care and a history of innovation. Let’s be bold in seeking to build a public education system in which all can flourish.

when graduates can't read

3/7/2023

 
It was late spring and [the new principal] was just getting settled into his office, when in walked a father and his son who had graduated the week before. The father took a newspaper off the desk and gave it to his son, asking him to read it. After a few minutes of silence, the young man looked up with his tears in his eyes. “Dad, you know I don’t know how to read.”

The reality for many of our graduates is that they soon find out they didn’t get what they needed. Some of the kids fall into deep despair when they realize they have been betrayed. They were told that they are ready, but they’re not.
- Lindsay Unified School District Superintendent Tom Rooney

In America, nearly one in five graduating seniors (19%) leave school with only marginal reading ability. Despite decades of investment in reading research, curricula and teacher education catalyzed by the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, we haven’t made much progress.

​Here’s what test data from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) show:
Picture
In Arlington, there are two ways we measure high school reading ability. First, juniors take a state-required Reading SOL test at the end of 11th grade. Second, APS just began using the  HMH Growth Measure, which students in grades 3-12 will take three times each year.

In APS, 97% of white students passed the 11th grade Reading SOL test last year. The pass rate for Black and Hispanic students was 20% lower, and nearly 30 percentage points lower for students with disabilities (69% pass rate). Less than half of our English learners (45%) passed this test.

​The HMH Growth Measure categorizes performance as Far Below Level, Below Level, Approaching Level, On Level and Above Level. Looking just at “Far Below Level” and “Below Level,” here’s what the most recent testing reveals:
Picture

What does research tell us about the problem?

I spent some time earlier this year reading the research and talking with two local experts: Dr. Olivia Williams, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland and adjunct professor with the Goucher Prison Education Partnership Program; and Dr. Carrie Simkin, a UVA professor and the director of AdLit.org. Here’s what I’m learning from my reading and my conversations:

1. There’s not a lot of research on high school students who struggle with reading.

In the decades since the National Reading Panel released its report, researchers have published thousands of studies on reading. Yet when I looked online, I could find very few that looked specifically at students in grades 9-12.

I found only one literature review focused on high school reading. Olivia Williams, the author of the review, searched for studies that a) examined interventions conducted on or after 2002; b) measured reading performance both before and after the intervention; and c) studied native English-speaking, general education high school struggling readers. Only 26 studies met her criteria.

Williams notes that even this small group of studies lacked consistent terminology. What does “comprehension” mean? How are we defining “struggling reader”? In the studies she reviewed, “struggling reader” meant everything from being at least one grade level behind to failing an 8th grade state assessment to being at least five years below grade level. “There’s a difference between kids who are significantly behind and those who are just a couple of years behind,” comments Carrie Simkin. “The approaches have to be different.”


2. There’s a disconnect around phonics.
It’s commonly believed that students have mastered phonics by the time they get to high school unless they have specific diagnosed learning disabilities. There’s some research, however, that suggests this might not be true.

As Williams recounts in her review, a 2015 study of reading comprehension among 9th grade struggling readers showed no effect until the researchers looked separately at students with high- and low-level decoding skills. Doing so revealed that the students with higher-level decoding abilities did in fact make statistically significant gains in comprehension (Solis et al., 2015). This is complicated, however: Williams comments that because publishers usually design phonics materials for younger students, their use with teens can be “stigmatizing.”

I asked Carrie Simkin whether high school struggling readers are really students with learning disabilities that have gone undiagnosed. Simkin concedes this is a reasonable explanation for some students, but not all. “Maybe,” she counters, “they have an instructional disability. Our first impulse is always to look at the student, when maybe that student just didn’t get great instruction.”


3. Sustained support may be needed.
Some research suggests that short-term interventions may not be particularly effective. For example, in one study, researchers evaluated the effects of two different reading programs during an intervention year and the year that followed. There were gains in GPAs, grades and performance on state exams during the intervention year—but the benefits disappeared the year following (Somers et al., 2010). Olivia Williams notes that we can’t be sure whether this points to flaws in the interventions themselves, or whether it says something about the need to work with struggling readers over multiple years; more research is needed.


4. Executive functioning plays a role.

Recent research (not specific to high school students) demonstrates how executive functioning skills contribute to success in reading. These skills include cognitive flexibility (shifting), maintaining attention, using working memory, planning ahead, controlling impulses, and more (for a recent literature review, see Duke & Cartwright, 2021).

In one study, researchers looked at students who had poor reading comprehension despite adequate word recognition ability. The study revealed that a third of the students (36.8%) showed weaknesses in executive function but not in their component reading skills, like receptive vocabulary. In other words: for a third of the students in the study, weaknesses in executive functioning appeared to be the primary cause for their reading difficulty (Cutting & Scarborough, 2012).  

This suggests that what some students may need are interventions focused on executive functioning and the root causes of executive functioning delays or impairment, which include things like trauma, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD and depression.


5. Identity is important.

Only one of the 26 studies Olivia Williams examined factored in the social and emotional needs of high school students who struggle with reading (Frankel et al., 2015).  Williams writes: “The repeated experience of failure [by the time students reach high school] takes an emotional toll… Noncognitive aspects of academic development are important at all ages, but especially so in high school, where students with a history of “failure” may struggle with self-efficacy, motivation and engagement.”

What’s more, only one study among the 26 presented findings within the context of race, gender and class (Vaughn et al., 2015).  Williams writes: “Since we know that struggling readers are disproportionately minority, male and poor, it is worth exploring whether different reading interventions are more or less effective with these groups and whether the origins of their struggles demand different remedial attention.”

This is not just about the need to develop culturally-responsive curricula and interventions: it’s about the student’s overall experience of school. Students who are on the receiving end of any kind of “ism” in their school environment (racism, ableism, misogyny, homophobia, religious intolerance, and/or others) are less likely to be comfortable taking risks academically and more likely to be focused on shielding themselves from bias and aggression.



What can we do?

Based on my understanding of the research, here are some of my takeaways:

1. Avoid “one-size-fits-all” fixes. Carrie Simkin counsels, “Struggling readers shouldn’t be lumped together in a single, catch-all remedial class. Instead, through assessment, we can discern what kinds of support students need and, to the extent possible, treat them as individuals.” This might involve a combination of approaches, including special reading classes, tutoring services, virtual programs that students could take advantage of at home or in advisory periods, after school programs and more. Olivia Williams adds, “You have to know what’s available and have the time to plan and differentiate across reading levels.”


2. Look for authentic opportunities in core content classes. With proper support, every high school teacher can help strengthen students’ reading skills. This is particularly true when we think about “disciplinary literacy” and “academic literacy.” Disciplinary literacy involves developing the ways of thinking and communicating that are specific to a particular discipline. Academic literacy involves acquiring the skills needed to read, comprehend and learn from texts dealing with particular subjects (e.g., medical information; financial analyses).

Beyond academic and disciplinary literacy, core content teachers can help strengthen students’ general reading skills, but it has to be done with care. Carrie Simkin shares that we need to focus on “authentic opportunities” to do this—for example, decoding unfamiliar words in a biology class and understanding them by breaking them down into component parts (e.g., omnivore, ectotherm). Simkin suggests, “A literacy coach in a school can help a math or science teacher do this.”

In core classes, we can also apply universal design principles, normalizing audio access to content (and required subject-area assessments) for all students. This accommodation would ensure that students who are struggling readers can access the core content they need to know in an age-appropriate way while they are working in other settings to build their reading proficiency.


3. Build a bigger library. In reading intervention classes, teachers should use a wide range of texts that reflect student interests: it’s “literally anything they care about,” says Olivia Williams. Carrie Simkin adds, “Trust teachers’ professional judgment to curate resources. Give them time to know students and make personal connections.”

This speaks to the essential ingredient of student motivation. Hailey Love, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says, “Often when children are perceived as being behind, they’re subject to practices that are actually found to decrease motivation.”


4. Set goals with students. In reading classes, teachers should establish daily purposes for instruction that connect to week-long, month-long and year-long goals created collaboratively with students. Carrie Simkin advises, “We have to ask kids, ‘What’s your goal?’ You have to give a purpose to everything, and kids have to buy into that.”


5. Let students lead. Add in opportunities for peer-mediated group discussions of texts, invite students to generate their own questions, and create other opportunities for students to play meaningful roles in classroom activities. Research supports the positive impact these practices can have (Vaughn et al., 2015; Balfanz et al., 2004; Frey & Fisher, 2014).


6. Recruit and retain exceptional reading teachers. In one study, comprehension gains from the same intervention were twice as high in classes taught by the most effective teachers (Balfanz et al., 2004). Olivia Williams writes, “The success of a reading intervention may not lie exclusively in the strength of the intervention materials or process alone, but may also depend upon a number of outside, less-tangible factors like a teacher’s ability to maintain engagement.”


7. Design special programs that offer struggling readers unique opportunities.  “If placement in remedial reading classes is a tangible reminder of the label of deficiency and serves as an affront to identity,” Olivia Williams observes, “then students may understandably choose to disengage with remedial strategies.”

When we spoke, Williams described with enthusiasm one program in which ninth grade struggling readers tutored second- and third-grade readers who were experiencing their own reading challenges. The ninth graders, who initially reacted with “anger and outrage at being categories as remedial,” grew to view the experience as a privilege. They practiced with the children’s books they used in the program—thus bolstering their own reading skills—so that they would be prepared to work well with their tutorees. The ninth graders scored an average of two grade levels higher on the program post-test and reported higher levels of motivation and attachment to reading (Paterson & Elliott, 2006).

This example reminded me of my own million-years-ago time as a high school English teacher, working with one class of students who were reading below grade level (in some cases, far below grade level). At the time, I wondered what experience I could create for them that would really engage them and reinforce their sense of themselves as worthy and capable. I ended up asking them if they’d like to create an online magazine full of their own writing and artwork—something no other students in the school were doing. They wrote, read each other’s work, peer reviewed, rewrote, created companion artwork, and then hand coded HTML to create the magazine’s website pages. We invited friends and family members to an after school launch party (because it was 1998 and not many of them had computers and internet access at home). The experience was painful for me as a teacher (dial-up modems, only sporadic access to the school’s computer lab…) but highly motivating for my reluctant readers and writers.
Fast-forward 25 years and I’m now a school board member in Arlington. I wonder what we could design, today, that would feel like a privilege and not a punishment for our high school students who are struggling readers.

For example, could we pair reading instruction with corporate/community job shadowing and paid internship experiences? Students would be incentivized to improve their general, academic and disciplinary literacy if they had the opportunity to spend part of their time in “real world” settings where the relevance of their reading skills was immediately evident. Are there summer learning experiences we could offer that look radically different from traditional summer school, combining environmental study (involving reading) with outdoor activities? How could we engage students in the social justice work that so many of them care about and layer in reading instruction?

I’m interested in this subject because it’s creative work—but also because it’s a moral imperative. In one of the articles I read, former NPR reporter Claudio Sanchez recalled visiting a public high school in Tennessee. There, a vice principal told him, “Having a high school diploma does not mean that you can read and write.”

​The United Nations, together with most of the humans on the planet, considers literacy to be a fundamental human right. It’s the very heart of public education. We must do more—and do better.


Real inclusion (part two)

2/13/2023

 
Last week, I shared some things I’m learning about inclusion. I’m continuing with the promised “Part Two” of that piece below—but I’m also mindful of the difficult time we’re going through as a community and a school system.

Mental illness, substance abuse and threatened or actual acts of harm to oneself or others require swift, effective intervention and treatment. We should always be asking, “Are we doing enough things? Are we doing the right things?” and vigilantly working to improve.

Additionally, we have work to do to make sure all our students and staff members are safe, seen, known and loved. Research confirms that “school belonging” is a preventative and protective factor against various forms of abuse, alienation, aggression, absenteeism and dropping out, to name a few.
​

Inclusive practices fuel a sense of belonging. Thus, I think of what I’m writing below as one piece of a larger, sustained effort to respond to our current challenges and head them off in the future.

When we left off in Part One, Shelley Moore’s student had just pointed out that this illustration doesn’t really represent inclusion.  Can you see why?
Picture
Shelley’s student pointed out that this illustration is really about assimilation, not inclusion. It subtly suggests that green is the majority and the norm to which we should aspire.

Wouldn’t a more realistic rendering look something like this?
Picture

​Another student then chimed in: doesn’t each of us have multiple identities that we’d like to see welcomed and valued in our schools?
Picture
​The challenge for us, in operating any kind of community we want to be inclusive—as public education surely must be—is this:
Picture
I have many thoughts about how we show that we value all colors, what Shelley calls “teaching to identity”—too many thoughts to list here. There are educators inside APS and in other school divisions who are doing this exceptionally well, and they are my teachers.

Our APS superintendent talks about knowing every student “by name, strength and need.” We have an obligation to identify and address the needs, to be sure. But we’d be doing our students a great injustice if we don’t also help them name and build on their individual strengths and identities, and assure them that our school communities are better because of their presence.

Think you know how to be inclusive? I thought I did, too.

1/31/2023

 
Last Saturday I went to Baltimore to attend an education conference and hear a talk by Shelley Moore, a Canadian educator, researcher and storyteller.

Shelley asked us to define for ourselves each of these terms:
  • Exclusion
  • Segregation
  • Inclusion
  • Integration

​Next, she showed us this slide:
​
Picture
What do you think? Which one of A, B, C or D represents inclusion? Which one shows integration? How about exclusion and segregation?

(You think about it for a minute while I eat a quick snack. :) Then scroll down a little for the Big Reveal.)

Picture
What’s the difference between “exclusion” and “segregation”? According to Shelley, exclusion is when the people inside the circle decide that individuals can’t be part of their community. Segregation happens when the people inside the circle decide that a particular group (or groups) don’t belong.

Shelley distinguishes between “integration” and “inclusion” in this way: integration happens when someone decides that it’s a good idea for those outside the circle to be brought in—but it’s often not by their own choice. She says it’s like a mandatory all-staff meeting: you know you have to attend, but when you get to the meeting you’ll likely sit next to your closest co-workers and you may not be all that interested in the updates from other teams or departments (particularly if you’re thinking, “This meeting could have been an email!”)

FYI, this tendency to prefer the company of your own group is perfectly natural, and at times necessary and comforting: Shelley calls it “congregation” when we are birds of a feather flocking together. (As a side question, Shelley asks: do our schools offer spaces and opportunities for congregation?)

Inclusion is different from integration because instead of thinking “I have to,” we think “I want to.”  That’s why the community in Shelley’s top circle looks different from the one on the lower right.


Except… after she’d shared this slide dozens if not hundreds of times, one of Shelley’s graduate students told her, “Shelley, I don’t think that this diagram [the top circle] is inclusion either.” And once her student pointed out a few things, Shelley realized the student was absolutely right.

Can you figure out why? There’s more than one change Shelley made; I’ll share them in Part Two next week.

Learning in Place: 9 inspiring school sites + programs

1/9/2023

 
 Good teachers and school leaders routinely work to connect the curriculum to their students' local community. "Place-based education" leverages local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences to make learning more relevant and engaging.

Often this takes the form of interdisciplinary projects involving field work or culminating in field trips. For older students, it might be service learning or internships.

But there's a more radical form of place-based learning, one that dissolves the traditional distinctions between "school" and "community." Teaching and learning are happening in spaces shared by local businesses, cultural institutions and other organizations--to everyone's benefit. 

​Here are nine examples from across the country:
(if you are looking at this on a phone, I apologize that the captions are covering up the pictures...)
​
Examples like these inspire me. I think about the incredible assets and opportunities we have here in Arlington and I wonder: what kinds of programs and partnerships could we create in the future?

For instance, (and purely hypothetically), what about a high school program with a focus on  international relations, offered in partnership with the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, USAID (Crystal City office), IDS International, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and/or GMU's Schar School of Policy and Government?

While we're dreaming, how about a healthcare-focused high school program, where students are learning at INOVA, Virginia Hospital Center, and/or one of the many national associations headquartered in the county (the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the National Council on Aging, the National Diabetes Association, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation, and more)?

Students interested in the environment could enroll in a program that places them at the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the EPA (Crystal City office), the Student Conservation Association, or Trout Unlimited.

In the area of aerospace, engineering and national defense we have in Arlington Raytheon, BAE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, CNA and the Office of Naval Research. 

Performing arts: Signature Theater, Synetic Theater, Avant Bard, the Museum of Contemporary Art and more.

Education: Council for Exceptional Children, National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, Communities in Schools, National Science Teachers Association, Organization for Autism Research, National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies and more.

Media: PBS, WETA, Politico, Axios, WJLA, and Arlington Independent Media. 

This is by no means a complete list--but you get the idea. 

Local governments are grappling with rising commercial vacancy rates. Companies are feeling their way forward in the new world of hybrid and remote work. School districts are looking for ways to reimagine teaching and learning so that students are engaged and ready to thrive in their lives after graduation.

I think there's an opportunity here. If schools co-locate with organizations that can contribute real-world, place-based learning experiences, could we use our urban spaces more effectively and imaginatively? Would companies feel a different and deeper sense of commitment to our community, and less tempted to relocate? 

​I'm intrigued by the possibilities, and I'd be curious to learn what you think, too.

<<Previous

    Author

    Mary Kadera is a school board member in Arlington, VA. Opinions expressed here are entirely her own and do not represent the position of any other individual or organization.

    Categories

    All
    Achievement
    Assessment
    Communication
    Community
    Elections
    Family Engagement
    Future Of Education
    Governance
    Mental Health
    Relationships
    Safety
    Summer Learning
    Teachers

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • How I Voted
  • Contact