Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

How to reimagine teacher leadership

Key points:

  • Teacher-leaders are an integral–but under-utilized–part of a school
  • School leaders can secure teacher buy-in around new initiatives through teacher-leaders

The typical leadership structure in a school is quite rigid, with administrators and teachers filling their roles separately. In this model, teacher skills are only utilized inside of the classroom, leaving teacher leadership potential on the table.

Because this is true in almost any school building, it is time for administrators to reimagine teacher leader roles and leverage teacher leadership, specifically at the grade level or in content teams. Many schools have positions such as “Lead Teacher” or “Content Team Leader,” which is a great starting point. The next step is transforming these established positions, or creating similar models, and implementing them across your school. This should lead to actionable steps taken by these teacher-leaders, and the loosening of the reins by administrators.…Read More

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Georgia’s Glynn County Schools Renews Multiyear Partnership Supporting Science Instruction in K-5 Classrooms

Charlotte, NC — Georgia’s Glynn County Schools (GCS) today announced the renewal of its multiyear partnership with Discovery Education supporting the district’s youngest learners. The renewal of this partnership ensures students and teachers in the district’s K-5 classrooms will continue to use the company’s award-winning Mystery Science service to explore the natural world and more deeply engage in science instruction. Discovery Education is the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform supports instruction wherever it takes place. 

Located in Southeastern Georgia, Glynn County Schools’ dedicated staff of more than 3,600 professionals serves more than 12,000 students in 21 schools. Driven by their vision to create 21st century learning environments that offer opportunities for all students to pursue higher education and develop skills that meet workforce needs while producing informed, conscientious, and productive citizens who give back to their community, GCSS fosters a culture of continuous assessment and improvement.  

This year, following a careful review of the district’s usage and success with the Mystery Science service, school administrators elected to renew the partnership with Discovery Education that brings Mystery Science to GCSS’s K-5 students. By doing so, the district will continue to create hands-on instructional experiences that engage students and build their capacity for success for both the remainder of their career at GCSS and beyond. …Read More

4 ways to use ChatGPT for learning and creativity

Key points:

  • Educators are worried about AI tools enabling plagiarism and cheating
  • Banning ChatGPT prevents students and educators from using AI in new ways

With the rising popularity of ChatGPT, many educators and administrators have trepidation toward the new technology, seeing it as a threat both to students and schools. Many teachers and educational institutions have even gone as far as to ban ChatGPT due to concerns of cheating and academic integrity. But the reality is that AI is here to stay, and its abilities will only increase with time. Rather than banning the tool, it’s important that educators work to understand and embrace this new technology for all it has to offer.

While there are legitimate concerns about ChatGPT and cheating, let’s not forget that educators had similar worries about the use of the internet in classrooms just 20 years ago. And now, doing a Google search is just a basic tool for students to put together an essay. Still, many are quick to point out that AI’s capabilities are different and, in many ways, that is true. …Read More

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Are educators using ChatGPT to write lesson plans?

A whopping 97 percent of respondents in a recent survey say they ‘frequently’ or ‘sometimes’ use ChatGPT to write lesson plans. Likewise, 93 percent of teachers say they use the AI platform to grade and provide feedback for students, 91 percent say to write emails, and 89 percent say to write letters of recommendation.

A survey of 1,000 high school, undergraduate, and graduate educators who are aware of ChatGPT, from online degree ranking and higher-ed planning site Intelligent.com, examines the prevalence of ChatGPT usage among both students and educators.

Among the top reasons for using the tool, 42 percent of teachers say it saves them time, 41 percent say it provides good suggestions, and 17 percent say it helps them understand ChatGPT’s capabilities.…Read More

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Swing Education Surpasses One Million Hours of Classroom Substitute Teaching

SAN MATEO, Calif.– Substitute teachers sourced via  Swing Education, a tech-enabled staffing marketplace that matches schools with qualified substitute teachers,  have filled more than one million hours of classroom instruction in the 2022-23 school year. 

Though Swing has been helping schools fill classroom vacancies since 2015, this is the first time the company has crossed the one million instructional hour mark in a single school year. 

“We never had an explicit goal to reach a million teaching hours, but knew we were going to get there and it kind of snuck up on us, to be honest,” said Mike Teng, CEO of Swing Education. “Reaching this number is significant and it feels extraordinary, especially as it lands during teacher appreciation week, which is this week. It also validates the real service we’re providing to schools and students since having a stable pool of substitutes is critical for maintaining instructional consistency and quality.”…Read More

3 ways ChatGPT can reduce teachers’ workloads

Everybody’s talking about ChatGPT and how it’s going to impact K-12–and generally not in positive terms!

Granted, ChatGPT might make writing that 11th-grade essay on symbolism in “The Great Gatsby” a whole lot easier (which, to be fair, does make grading a whole lot harder). Aside from that, there are real positives to our new AI pal, and overworked teachers can embrace it as the gift that it is: a free personal teaching aide. The one who sketches out the lesson plans and assessments, finds source materials, and just generally carries out the grunt work.

In other words, ChatGPT can save teachers a whole lot of time.…Read More

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4 simple strategies to help students ace standardized tests

Standardized tests can be hard on students. Many of us still remember the frustration and anxiety we experienced when we were younger and sat down for our first round of testing. To make matters worse, it’s fairly common for students who are doing well academically to find themselves stymied by a single bad testing experience.

This “Know-Show Gap” can prevent teachers and schools from being able to represent the good work they do for the public. Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be the case–so long as both teachers and students plan accordingly.

By helping students prepare for tests mentally and physically, teachers can help them overcome even the trickiest of obstacles. These following strategies have been proven to help minimize the Know-Show Gap so students can prove what they really can do: …Read More

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Pay isn’t the only reason for the teacher shortage–it’s time to rethink the classroom

As dust from the pandemic settles, students across America are facing another disruption to quality education. This crisis, however, shouldn’t be a surprise. It is two centuries in the making.

The most recent legislation introduced in Congress, which would see a minimum salary base of $60,000 for public school teachers, is certainly a welcome step in the right direction. However, it still misdiagnoses the problem; burnout will still occur, regardless of the paycheck. That’s why we need to fundamentally reimagine the role of a teacher in the modern classroom.

The teacher job description crafted in the 1800s by the Common School Movement led by Horace Mann served a one-adult-room-full-of-kids model with the goal of civilizing American children. Hopefully, in the year 2023, we can aspire beyond assimilation as the goal of education and aim for creating learning spaces that value diversity and support every student in reaching their full, authentic potential.…Read More

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