On this episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, we speak with two leaders at Distinctive Schools in Chicago: Mike McCarthy, Executive Director of Student Services, and Stephanie Cardella, Executive Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment. They share with us how Distinctive developed a community of care, nimble practices, and targeted instructional strategies to support students in balancing their learning and well-being through a year of uncertainty as schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On this episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, we speak with three school leaders from Meriden Public Schools in Connecticut: Mark Benigni, Superintendent of Schools; Barbara Haeffner, Director for Teaching and Innovation; and Susan Moore, Supervisor of Blended Learning Director for Teaching and Learning. These three leaders shared with us how they worked to establish partnerships with community organizations and local educational institutions, to reimagine learning spaces, and to leverage technology to support students and create engaging learning opportunities.

Diana Laufenberg is the Executive Director at Inquiry Schools, a nonprofit working to create and support student-centered learning environments that are inquiry-driven, project-based and utilize modern technology. For 16 years, Diana was a secondary social studies teacher in Wisconsin, Kansas, Arizona and Pennsylvania. She most recently taught at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia, […]

This post was originally published on the ASCD Blog on August 15, 2021. As educators and students prepare to reenter school buildings, there will be inevitable challenges—not only around shifting back to yet another setting (even a previously familiar one!), but also around supporting teacher and student mindsets. Teachers may have one vision of what […]

This blog was originally published on Next Generation Learning Challenges. A recent ASCD article confronted an uncomfortable reality: the COVID-19 pandemic is likely not the only major interruption to K–12 schooling in our lifetimes. Contemplating an uncertain future, the article explores several key shifts—from investment in universal broadband to the adoption of competency-based pedagogy—that if […]

On this episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, we speak with Dr. Keri Randolph, Executive Officer of Strategic Federal, State and Philanthropic Investments at Metro Nashville Public Schools in Tennessee about how the district created innovative initiatives to build relationships with students, reach out to families, and offer virtual support during school closures and remote learning, seeking to tackle the challenges posed by physical separation between teachers, students, and families.

On this episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, we chat with David Quinn, the Director of Technology Innovation at Mendon-Upton Regional School District in Massachusetts about how, in spite of the challenges posed by the pandemic, the district was able to leverage opportunities that remote learning had to offer to design innovative practices, facilitate flexible learning for educators, integrate strategic scheduling, and offer career-oriented learning for students.

Dr. Jilliam Joe is the Vice President of Learning Insights at LEAP Innovations. Jilliam has dedicated her career as an educational researcher to measuring effective teaching practices. At LEAP, she provides research and evaluation leadership for LEAP’s programs and leads their personalized-learning educator competency framework development. As part of our Hop, Skip, Leapfrog interviews with […]

Malika Ali is a Managing Partner at the Highlander Institute and is responsible for the Institute’s evolving and iterative pedagogical approach to change, as well as program implementation across all classrooms, schools and districts. She is passionate about working to develop educators to be change agents of instructional and systemic equity and to nurture students’ […]

On this episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, Dr. Suzanne Newell of Austin Independent School District in Texas details how the district focused on supporting students and teachers by providing instructional blueprints with prioritized standards to help guide instructional time, as well as how they emphasized professional collaboration to address "learning loss" (also referred to as unfinished learning) and maximized time for valuable remote professional development.