31. Short Film: "Reflections"
Ready to Blend
This podcast includes the audio from Patience Nyanway's short film: "Student and Parent Reflections from this School Year." You'll hear Patience interviewing several families. Patience's production gives voice to her community and reminds us of the real children affected by school closures. To see the video version of the film, subscribe to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/readytoblend01.
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30. Online and Blended Learning Fundamentals: Learning from the Pioneers
Ready to Blend
In this class, you’ll look backward at how online and blended learning emerged over the past 20 years in K-12 education. With that context, you’ll look forward to imagine the online and blended solutions for the future. You’ll consider your personal openness to trying new strategies. You’ll analyze your learning design to check for the quality of engagement. And you’ll prioritize how to optimize the teacher’s use of time.
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29. Helping Children Feel Safe to Share
Ready to Blend
In this class, Heather teaches three ways to build bridges that help learners connect across any divide they might be experiencing so that they feel safe enough to speak up and express themselves, whether at school or home.
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28. Using Games to Support Children Socially and Emotionally
Ready to Blend
I've restructured this podcast as a class, so that each episode going forward will teach a skill to help you blend online learning into school and home.
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27. Where Do We Go from Here? with Atomi's Simon Hennessy
Ready to Blend
We are alive right at the moment when there's an opening of opportunity to retool the classroom for the end user. We have the will plus the disruptive innovations to do it.
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26. Developing Student-centered Teachers
Ready to Blend
What's the best way for school leaders to equip teachers with the skills they need to transform their instructional model? In this show, Heather Clayton Staker shares her latest research from the Christensen Institute that proposes a way forward for the PD solution that schools urgently need.
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25. Hacks for Solving Esteem Gaps
Ready to Blend
Inequities grow worse for each day that children lack “flex” environments that are blended (online and face-to-face) and that help them make progress, whether they are in in-person or remote setups.
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24. Hacks for Solving Social Belonging Gaps
Ready to Blend
Feeling lonely, depressed? Small wonder . . . the world is locked in social distancing, and humans brains are wired to suffer as a result. We can’t fully solve for social isolation right now. But we can avoid pitfalls that make loneliness worse.
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23. Hacks for Solving Safety Gaps
Ready to Blend
The shifting pandemic and school closures are opening safety gaps for many families and children, including personal, financial, and emotional insecurities.
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22. Hacks for Solving Physiological Gaps
Ready to Blend
School closures and lockdowns are causing major physiological gaps for some children in the form of food, exercise, and sleep shortages, while other children are benefiting physiologically. Caregivers and educators want to help solve for physiological gaps, but it's not obvious how to do that.
info_outlineDo you know how to get good grades? Did you know that it's possible to get good grades even if you don't feel smart in some of your classes?
This podcast episode is talking to students—to high school, middle school and even elementary school students who might be worried about how to get good grades. We'll talk about four basic strategies that will set you up for success, and then five power behaviors that will help you take your grades to the next level.
One of the challenges that might be affecting you is the invention of "data dashboards" that give your parents a website where they can constantly see your grades. Help them understand that they can reduce the anxiety and tension, and increase the support, by setting a climate of unconditional positive regard when talking to you about your grades. From there, invite them to use the four basic strategies and five power behaviors to ask you Socratic questions, such as:
- Which of the four basics is the biggest challenge for you? Which do you find the easiest? Why?
- What could you do to turn the basics into habits?
- Which of the five power behaviors would help you most in each class or subject? Why?
- What can I do to support you better?
Those honest and open conversations, in a climate of unconditional positive regard, will help you vent anxious emotions and convert them into successful action steps for improving your grades. It really is possible to become a great student! And it's not too late.
School leaders, while students, parents, and teachers are working to improve grades, you can lead the way toward a better system overall by replacing the traditional grading system with one in which each student truly masters the content, even if they do so at varying paces. The old system is premised on sorting students into As, Bs, and Cs. A newer, better system would focus on each student reaching A-level mastery and then designing each lever in the system to support that ideal.