Many math educators are grappling with ways to make their instruction more culturally responsive to improve their students' feelings of belonging, perceptions of relevance, and academic learning outcomes. To learn more about how to facilitate the application of innovative and promising practices in math classrooms, a continuous improvement…

Every student deserves to be seen, included, understood, and celebrated. For that to happen, teachers need to be culturally competent. Cultural competence is best built through reflecting on and discussing real-world experiences. Classroom vignettes support this difficult but important work. This article shares three fictional classroom vignettes…

Continuous improvement is at the heart of all teaching and learning. Just as we strive to nurture their students' growth and improvement, educators should be continually growing and improving. As a result, Michelle Pledger and Mari Jones designed the Deeper Learning Hub Fellowship. The aim of the fellowship was to increase K-12 teachers'…

A historically responsive literacy framework examines teaching strategies and structures that honor the histories, identities, and literary practices of all youth from diverse cultures, and especially those who have been traditionally underserved in schools. The framework builds on other work on culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies and…

Curriculum is a critical force through which students receive the tacit message of their value in society. They learn which groups of people are valued and whose stories are worth learning. For too long, some students' and communities' stories have been deemed unworthy. Students need opportunities to see themselves and others portrayed in texts in…

Today, as our country reckons with racial injustice amidst an ongoing pandemic, there are educators at all levels -- in classrooms, principal's offices, and central district offices -- asking questions like: Am I being bold enough? Or am I too cautious? Am I putting my job at risk by doing what I believe is right and necessary? What approach is…

Schools committed to equity are experimenting with creative and powerful ways for teachers to ensure all students receive what they need to learn in the classroom. Many of these efforts focus professional learning on strengthening the instructional core -- teachers' knowledge of and relationships with students, teachers' deep and critical…

Building a culture of equity requires ensuring that leaders and school staff have a shared vision for what educational equity means, what it looks like, and how to get there. It also necessitates a willingness to hold people accountable to the vision and the work needed to make it a reality. This takes a clear road map for achieving the consistent…

The events of 2020 highlighted many longstanding truths about teaching and learning. One such truth is that culture matters for learning, especially for transfer of learning from abstract knowledge into practical application. Because this holds for adults' learning as well as students', it can and should have an impact on professional learning.…

At the Center for Black Educator Development, the organization Sharif El-Mekki founded and leads, they believe that to teach Black children "superbly" is a revolutionary act. In service of that goal, they prepare educators to instill in Black children a positive sense of their own racial identity and, in so doing, equip them with the…

States and local communities are increasing access to preschool, but there is a significant divide when it comes to the quality of these early learning programs. Education and training requirements for preschool educators vary based on setting and state regulations, and while districts and nonprofits may offer professional learning, effective…

Within weeks of school building closings in spring 2020, it became clear to many educators that the fear and isolation experienced by students and educators would force changes to schooling in ways that will reverberate for a long time to come. Many educators were particularly concerned about students and communities of color that were already…

Over the last several years, the West Fargo Public Schools district (North Dakota) came to realize its English language arts resources needed an overhaul. The books students were reading in class and the discussions classes were having were not reflective of the student body. What is the purpose for requiring all students to read a specific text?…

"School is not a rehearsal for life. School is life," says Mirko Chardin, founding principal of Putnam Avenue Upper School, a public middle school serving a diverse group of 6th-8th graders in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When the school was founded in 2012 as part of a districtwide middle school reorganization, its leaders and staff were…

While a good amount is known in education research about approaches to individualized learning (e.g. differentiated instruction, personalized learning plans), little is known about the scope and scale of efforts to individualize learning in the Bush Foundation's region of focus. To support its learning and future investments, the Bush Foundation…