education

What Can School Leaders Do to Support a Struggling Teacher? [Shultz]

On 10/16/2026, in education, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, strategy, student-related, teachers, United States, by Daniel Christian

What Can School Leaders Do to Support a Struggling Teacher? — from edutopia.org by Alex Shultz
Teachers often feel alone facing an issue in the classroom, and maintaining lots of points of contact can help them open the door to offers of support.

All educators encounter struggles, no matter how far along they are in their careers. They might have difficulty communicating with families or clearing their inboxes. They might be disorganized. They might have a persistent classroom issue that they struggle to manage. Or they might be dealing with distracting personal-life complications. The tough part is getting teachers to acknowledge that they’re struggling, which requires strong relationships and sufficient face time with school leaders before issues arise. The alternative is having teachers who aren’t comfortable admitting they need assistance.

Recently, I spoke with four school leaders—two principals and two assistant principals—about how they forge institutional trust, keep an eye out for teachers in need of a hand, and deliver advice and action steps without isolating or aggravating anyone.

New tests show that AI can design like an expert Instructional Designer: so what next? [Hardman]

On 10/16/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, education, education technology, emerging technologies, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, Open AI, tools, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Here is Phillipa’s posting on LinkedIn.

New: Essential Resources for Special Education [edutopia.org]

On 10/13/2026, in assistive technologies, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), education, engagement / engaging students, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, parents/guardians, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, student-related, teachers, tools, United States, vendors, youth, by Daniel Christian

New: Essential Resources for Special Education — from edutopia.org

We’ve gathered advice for teachers on managing student accommodations, navigating IEPs, and much more, as well as ideas for administrators on how to support teachers in this work.

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AI Is Changing Career Guidance. It May Be Missing the Hardest Part. [Tavenner & Dulin Salisbury]

On 10/08/2026, in career development, education, education reform, emerging technologies, K-12 related, more voice more choice more control, motivation, parents/guardians, passions, reinvent, skills, student-related, youth, by Daniel Christian

AI Is Changing Career Guidance. It May Be Missing the Hardest Part. (Diane Tavenner, Futre – Part 2) — from humanistxyz.substack.com by Allison Dulin Salisbury and Diane Tavenner
“AI is getting very good at telling young people what they could do. The harder question is who they want to become.”

Diane’s view is that you cannot shortcut the work of figuring out who you want to become. Young people need to form hypotheses about the lives they might want, go out into the world and test them, reflect on what they learn, and change their minds. Parents, teachers, mentors, and other caring adults matter enormously, but their job is to help a young person make sense of the evidence, not supply the answer.

I find this framing particularly important right now. The world of work is changing quickly, and AI will keep getting better at showing young people their options.

But having more options, or better information about them, doesn’t necessarily make it easier to choose a life.

Several teaching-related articles and ideas from edutopia.org

On 10/08/2026, in art, creativity, culture, education, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, library / librarians, metacognition / metacognitive skills, pedagogy, reading, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

How Book Cover Keychains Boosted Our School’s Culture of Reading — from edutopia.org by Carsyn Smothers
This clever idea, which came from a librarian’s TikTok, is easy to carry out and encourages lively conversations about books.

Last year, I came across a TikTok that instantly caught my attention. School librarian Lauren Mobley explained how she managed to insert specially designed book covers into keychains, which students could attach to their backpacks and show off to their friends. Mobley created the book cover designs in Canva, she said, and then purchased a batch of keychains.

I loved the idea. I also wondered whether the keychains could be more than a fun craft or a decoration. Could they additionally serve as a reader advisory tool?

How Good Teachers Get Even Better — from edutopia.org by Youki Terada
Like elite athletes and musicians, even outstanding teachers have room to grow. Here are 6 research-based ways to keep sharpening your skills.

Effective teaching, then, is less about executing a set of prescribed strategies and more about developing the “informed judgment” necessary to “engage in complex decision-making and practice,” the researchers note. For example, watching how a master teacher delivers a lesson or handles difficult moments in the classroom, and then rehearsing those moves while getting feedback from coaches, allows for authentic “feedback in the moment” along with quick hints on “how to elevate instruction.”

That kind of expertise doesn’t happen automatically; it develops when teachers take the long view and engage, over many years, in a disciplined course of deliberate practice, identifying a set of skills they want to improve and then making the time to reflect on and practice them.

Arts-Integrated Outdoor Lessons for Elementary Students — from edutopia.org by Charlene Lutz
A pumpkin can become an entire unit if you let it: These engaging fall activities encourage students to slow down and learn from what’s around them.

October is one of my favorite times to take learning outside.

There is so much already happening in the environment that we really do not need to create an elaborate setup. Leaves are changing, seed pods are drying out, sticks and pine cones are everywhere, and pumpkins are suddenly easy to find. I have found that these ordinary seasonal materials can lead to some of the richest learning experiences because students are able to observe, move, touch, collect, build, draw, measure, and ask questions all within the same lesson.

Here are three October investigations I have found especially easy to adapt across K–5.

A 4-Step Plan for Promoting Metacognition in Middle School — from edutopia.org by Kasey Short
Thinking about how they think helps students develop an essential skill that supports their academic success and independence.

In middle school, as students gain independence and are given increased responsibility, it’s an essential time to explicitly teach metacognitive skills. Middle school is often the first opportunity for students to move from one class to another and interact each period with a new teacher who has their own style and set of expectations. Students also move from concrete to abstract thinking while managing long-term assignments, preparing for assessments, revising writing, and solving increasingly complex problems. When students are instructed to study, revise, prepare, and more, they need tools to make effective decisions about those tasks and useful strategies to manage their additional responsibilities.

Metacognition is an essential part of providing students with the tools and strategies they need to be successful in middle school. Work with metacognition is best used as a regular classroom practice that can be implemented by naming it, modeling, providing students with language to discuss their thinking, and creating consistent opportunities for students to engage with this skill and see its impact on their learning.

Measuring the Microschool Experience: A National Analysis [microschoolingcenter.org]

On 09/19/2026, in assessment, education, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, parents/guardians, student-related, by Daniel Christian

Measuring the Microschool Experience: A National Analysis — from microschoolingcenter.org

Findings:

Student assessments. Microschool students in this analysis exhibited average academic growth that was generally consistent with expected trajectories, but overall student performance was somewhat stronger in ELA than in mathematics. Although this study’s assessment data suggest that microschool students largely perform no better or worse than expected on standardized tests in ELA and math, both students and parent/caregivers report extraordinarily positive experiences in microschools across a range of non-academic and academic indicators.

Parent/Caregiver Survey. Families report choosing microschools primarily because of their small class sizes, individualized attention, levels of safety, and positive school culture, with individualized attention being the most important factor for parent/caregivers. Parent/caregivers also hold strong positive perceptions of their child’s microschool across academic, social-emotional, and life skills domains. In the survey, a striking 97% of respondents say that they are satisfied/very satisfied with their child’s microschool overall. When families compare their child’s current microschool to their child’s previous public school, parent/caregivers report stronger relationships, increased home-school communication, and enhanced safety in their child’s current microschools.

Student Survey. More than 90% of microschool students report strong relationships with teachers across a range of measures while 95% say that they feel safe at school. Ninety-three percent say that they participate in class most of the time. Additionally, students who are new to their current microschool are more likely to report that their current school experience was better than the previous year and that they are currently learning more. Among students who completed both fall and spring surveys, they report enhanced perceptions of their problem-solving ability, communication skills, and respect for others improved from fall to spring.

More than 95% of students report being treated with respect by their teachers, and 97% indicate that their teachers care about them, want what is best for them, and care about their learning.

Sample characteristics. The schools in this study served substantial numbers of students with unique learning needs. Approximately 40% to 47% of students across the study samples had an identified disability, special learning need, or chronic medical condition, and roughly one in five participating schools explicitly focused on serving students with disabilities.

How to Reduce Cognitive Load in Digital Lessons — from educationtechnologysolutions.com by etsmagazine

A digital lesson can be beautifully designed and still make learning unnecessarily hard.

Students may be asked to watch a video, remember an instruction, find a link, switch tabs, interpret unfamiliar icons and submit a response—all before they have dealt with the idea the lesson was meant to teach.

That friction is often mistaken for rigour. It is not. Productive difficulty comes from thinking about the content. Avoidable difficulty comes from navigating the lesson.

The goal is not to make learning effortless. It is to spend students’ limited attention on the knowledge and skill that matter.

The above article links to:

Managing cognitive load optimises learning — from edresearch.edu.au
Implications for policymakers

The Case for Prioritizing Play in Kindergarten [Swartz]

On 09/14/2026, in education, education reform, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, play, relationships, student-related, teachers, Uncategorized, United States, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

The Case for Prioritizing Play in Kindergarten — from the74million.org by Mark Swartz
Laura Bornfreund on how schools, families and policymakers can transform kindergarten to better support young children.

In order for these years to lay a sturdy foundation for everything that follows, the kindergarten experience should prioritize play and relationship-building, including connections with peers and teachers. Over the years, however, kindergarten has become increasingly “schoolified,” according to Bornfreund…

The book laments the state of kindergarten today, where classroom experiences are overly scripted and funding is insufficient in many communities. At the same time, Bornfreund finds teachers who are providing meaningful experiences for young learners against the odds. In the conversation below, she shares her perspective on what a strong kindergarten experience looks like and offers insights on how schools, families and policymakers can reshape kindergarten to help children thrive.

College Is an Expensive Career Exploration Tool. Here’s an Alternative. [O’Donnell & Dulin Salisbury]

On 09/01/2026, in career development, colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, education, education reform, higher education, ideas, K-12 related, Learning Experience Design, morals/values, more voice more choice more control, passions, student-related, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

College Is an Expensive Career Exploration Tool. Here’s an Alternative. — from humanistxyz.substack.com by Patrick O’Donnell and Allison Dulin Salisbury
“Young people know that sitting in a classroom for twelve years isn’t going to show them how to find a job, let alone a career they love.”

This interview is part of a series on AI, high school, and the Experience Gap. Our report, Closing the Experience Gap, makes the case for a high-school model in which at least 50 percent of formal learning is experience-based.

College is an expensive career exploration tool. It is also poorly designed for the job.

Patrick O’Donnell tells the story of a student who entered a four-year nursing program certain she wanted to become a nurse. Once enrolled, she discovered that the work was a poor fit. Earlier immersion in healthcare, she told him, would have moved that discovery forward by several years. Now she needed to transfer to a community college and remap her plans.

Her predicament is familiar. We ask teenagers to choose a college and course of study with little direct knowledge of the work on the other side. Many spend their first years of college trying to answer a question high school gave them few opportunities to explore: What kind of work fits me?

From DSC:
College is an expensive career exploration tool. It is also poorly designed for the job.

This assertion resonated with me instantly — and I agree with it 100%. As a bit of background as to why I say this…I thought that I was going to be a doctor all through K-12 and even in my first year at college. But then I got to about halfway through my fall semester in my sophomore year, and I dropped out of pre-med. It was the best decision of my life.

But then what?

I had very little idea of what I wanted to do in the future or what my skills, interests, passions, and abilities were. K-12 and college offered next to nothing in terms of career preparation back in that period of time. It wasn’t until my late 20’s that I even began to get a clue on what’s all out there. What were my choices and what was a good fit for me? What did I enjoy doing and what did I not enjoy doing?

So I agree completely…college is an expensive career exploration tool/setting. But I’m glad to see more and better options these days within K-12. Colleges could do much better.

Links:

Tips for teachers from edutopia.org

On 08/25/2026, in education, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, reading, research, science, skills, student-related, teachers, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

Exceptional Videos of Authors Reading Their Books Aloud for Young Students — from edutopia.org by Kristin Rydholm
These 14 books can help teachers celebrate student writing by weaving literacy and social and emotional learning into the school day.

This classroom scenario is an example of how finishing a piece of writing is a dual celebration—an ending and a beginning. A published piece of writing means crossing a finish line as the culminating event within the writing process, but it is also a starting line, where a story begins a journey of its own—being read, seen, heard, and shared by others.

Who better to assist with modeling these transitional and celebratory moments than 14 professional authors of picture books?

Where to start
Featured below are links to exceptional authors and author/illustrators reading their picture books. Watching these videos, a child can see and hear the diverse faces and voices of authors who have prioritized stories about kids like them.

4 Ways to Encourage Great Questions in the Science Classroom — from edutopia.org by Katie Budrow
Here’s how a middle school teacher guides students to proactively ask and answer questions like ‘why does that happen?’

Narrow, prescribed tasks are known as convergent tasks. Define the parts of a cell has a specific answer. Sometimes, convergent tasks make the most sense. But whenever possible, I prefer to use broader divergent tasks, which allow for multiple ways to approach the learning. Describe the different ways that cell parts can work together to form a system is an example of a divergent task.

Divergent tasks inherently drive more student questions, since the answers aren’t just one-and-done. Divergence promotes “deep thinking, requiring students to analyze and evaluate concepts,” according to a study on the subject. Students are not just trying to find the “best” answer—they’re working toward a more complex concept.

A First-Week Routine That Gets Middle School Students Thinking Like Scientists — from edutopia.org by Bexaida Buzzie
Here’s a day-by-day plan for guiding your students to start the year by asking questions. Just resist the urge to answer them.

I realized I was spending so much of my time going over my classroom rules that I forgot that the students were there to learn how to learn.

Once I took the pressure off myself, everything changed. Instead of focusing on perfection, I started to focus on curiosity and fun. Instead of cramming information and reaping frustration, I slowed down.

Here’s what my first five days look like, and how they build a foundation for scientific thinking.

15 Effective Ways to Manage Dysregulated Students — from edutopia.org by Andrew Boryga
Teachers are seeing more big emotions and disruptive behavior in early elementary classrooms. These practical strategies can help youngsters reflect, reset, and repair.

While many experts cite the pandemic’s role in creating skill deficiencies, it’s only a part of the story. Educators also point to major changes in the culture around child rearing, pointing to issues like rising screen time, less play, and fewer opportunities for face-to-face interaction—“developmental needs that no digital program, however sophisticated, can fully replicate,” writes elementary school teacher Cara Zelas.

Serious behavioral issues and developmental concerns require broad support from administrators, specialists, and families. But for everyday moments that derail lessons—a child melting down, refusing directions, or struggling to rejoin the group—many teachers find that simple practices, consistently applied, can help turn big feelings into moments of growth instead of lost instructional time.

“Using AI to create the practice opportunities online students need” [Miller Perkins] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 08/19/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, business, career development, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, Emotion, engineering, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning spaces, liberal arts, mathematics, online learning, personalized/customized learning, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, UK, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Using AI to create the practice opportunities online students need— from timeshighereducation.com by Kathy Miller Perkins
For disciplines that depend on interpersonal skills such as communication, leadership, negotiation and mediation, AI can provide elusive experiential learning, particularly in asynchronous environments

What if AI’s greatest educational value lies not in generating answers but in generating experiences?

The result surprised me. Students did not simply interact with the AI, they meaningfully engaged with it. Many reported that the experience felt valuable precisely because the simulated conversation partner pushed back. Unlike classmates who sometimes hesitate to challenge one another, the AI consistently maintained its position. Students had to work harder, listen more carefully and apply the communication strategies they had spent weeks learning. And, importantly, they practised.

Here’s how to show students what responsible AI use looks like — from timeshighereducation.com by Andrew Firr and Alex Fenton
Well-designed assessments can highlight generative AI’s limitations, where it can provide support and what responsible practice looks like. Andrew Firr and Alex Fenton offer strategies

We have been exploring ways to offer this in our Level 7 module for MSc engineering management students, many of whom come from the Global South. Assessment is built around a practical design problem: students examine how a real campus process operates, where delays occur, evidence they observe and how a feasible redesign might improve the system – in a 3,000-word essay.

They can use AI for planning and providing clarity, but not for generating the evidence on which the analysis rests. Invented observations, measurements, screenshots or unverifiable citations are prohibited. The assessment design reinforces this through a case study, diagram, fact-checking exercise and a short AI use statement.

Requiring an AI use statement encourages students to reflect on their processes. We ask which tool they used, how they used it, how they checked the output and which parts of the work depended on their own evidence and judgement. It reminds them that evidence must be theirs and that citations must be manually verified.

Slow math: Kids may learn more when AI makes them review mistakes — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay and Kristin Fasiang
A randomized experiment involved more than 6,000 Tennessee middle school students learning fractions

In an experiment involving more than 6,000 middle schoolers in Tennessee, students learned slightly more math when an AI tutor walked them through their mistakes and then required them to demonstrate the same skill correctly three times in a row before moving on.
…
The winning combination wasn’t the addition of AI tutoring alone, but AI tutoring plus repetition, with the idea that students needed to stick with the skill to demonstrate some level of mastery. The students who practiced math with this AI-enhanced “mastery learning” approach scored about 3 percentage points higher than students receiving conventional computerized instruction. The advantage was small.

I Built a Team of AI Bots That Write Feedback Better than Me. Here’s How. — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Aka, how to make learners love AI-assisted feedback, rather than loathe it.

This wasn’t hidden from the cohort. For reasons I’ll come to below, I always tell my cohorts at the very start that an AI assistant will be helping me draft their feedback. The aim wasn’t to remove me from the process, but to find out whether AI could help me to deliver feedback at a volume and quality that I simply couldn’t maintain without AI.

Spoiler: the experiment worked — but not for the reason I expected. In this post, I’ll share exactly what I built, tell you how to build a version for your course and reveal the three conditions that decide whether learners trust AI-assisted feedback or quietly stop reading it.

TL;DR: the spec for my feedback assistant is long not because the model needs persuading, but because it’s where my judgement lives. Every rule in it is a decision AI would otherwise make by itself, with limited expertise. A spec doesn’t make the model smarter — it makes expertise and judgement legible enough for the model to follow.

Of the five stages of AI grief, some managers are stuck in denial— from timeshighereducation.com by Shadi Mohamed
Acceptance is not surrender. It is about getting beyond a policing obsession and rethinking what assessment aims to measure, says Shadi Mohamed

In that moment of institutional blindness, it struck me: universities are not merely struggling with a technological adoption curve. They are grieving the demise of the modern university’s economic and institutional logic.

To understand the scale of this threat posed by AI, consider what the internet did to journalism. Newspapers thrived by bundling together classified advertising with quick news hits, sports scores and opinion columns, using that reliable revenue to fund the expensive social necessity of investigative reporting. The rise of internet advertising did not kill journalism outright but it shattered the bundle, leaving the expensive core product without its historical financial engine.

Universities operate on a similar logic, bundling content delivery, assessment, credentialling, research and professional formation. But generative AI is now commodifying the most visible parts of that package. When AI can deliver personalised explanations instantly and generate the essays and reports we use to measure student capability, the traditional degree loses its role in the labour market as a proxy for understanding. If the bundle breaks, the economic model that funds our deeper purposes is in peril.

As fewer young people choose college, this district wants to ensure they have career options — from hechingerreport.org by Ariel Gilreath
In Niagara Falls, New York, a town with shrinking job options, students are encouraged to consider their careers in ninth grade

At Niagara Falls High School, students are encouraged to consider their careers upon arrival in ninth grade. By 11th grade, every student at the school must pick from one of five pathways, ranging from business and finance to design and engineering. The shift toward career education comes as about one-third of seniors at Niagara Falls High are rejecting college and instead choosing to enter the workforce after graduation, compared with roughly a quarter a decade ago, said Superintendent Mark Laurrie, who retired in June. In a town that’s struggled with population declines, where now-shuttered manufacturing plants once dominated the local labor market, there’s an urgency to prepare high school students for careers.

“It’s important to give them hope for the future with a career pathway — a career, not a job — to have something to aspire to and, hopefully, keep them in the city and in the state,” Laurrie said.

Bring playfulness into teaching for collaboration and creativity — from timeshighereducation.com by Isabel Taurel
In learning, playfulness is often overlooked. Yet it could be key to embedding the soft, ‘human’ skills students will need for the future. Isabel Taurel shows how

The same is true in higher education. Students who are able to rediscover a playful mindset leave the classroom with something far more valuable than a good grade. They develop confidence, are more willing to contribute unusual ideas and learn how to adapt when the unexpected happens. These are precisely the qualities employers increasingly tell us they need.

Yet the creative and cultural industries demonstrate their growing value. Success increasingly depends on collaboration, adaptability and creative confidence, all qualities that are fostered through arts-based learning and increasingly sought in every kind of workplace.

Playfulness isn’t a distraction from serious learning. It’s one of the most powerful ways we have of preparing students for a future in which the most valuable skills may be the most deeply human ones: listening, presence, responsiveness, imagination and a capacity to create meaning together.

Learning Ecosystems

Bring playfulness into teaching for collaboration and creativity [Taurel]

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