A Deeper Look at the Whole School Approach to Behavior

Tottenville, on Staten Island, will get oyster-friendly breakwaters and a dune system as part of post-Sandy rebuilding efforts. The oysters will help revive the ecosystem and sustain the long-term fishing economy.

Across the country, an improving economy has pulled teachers and potential teachers away from the profession, creating a growing national shortage. Leaders at Elmhurst Community Prep managed not only to completely staff the school by early June, but to avoid taking on anyone who was not fully certified.

For-profit companies are making good private schools available even to Africa’s poor. They can do it – and can do it on an enormous scale – by hiring neighborhood residents to teach, and scripting out every word of every lesson on an e-reader.

Can we improve the methods we use to teach math in schools — so that everyone develops proficiency? A grade-school math program is changing how children learn based on the assumption that all children can achieve a high level of understanding.

A school in Brooklyn uses a lottery-based acceptance system to ensure a diverse class. And instead of sorting the struggling kids from the gifted, they embedded an honors program which kids can opt into without changing classrooms.

The Bay Area has the seventh-highest-ranking income disparity between rich and poor in the United States, and food is one of the most poignant indicators of the division. But a new collaboration between the design firm Ideo and the San Francisco Unified School District is trying to close that Grand Canyon-size chasm with an innovative approach to student nutrition.

Suspending students often has a damning effect - kids isolate themselves and are put on the path to a life of being punished. But at Audubon Middle School, instead of simply penalizing misbehavior, the strategy involves talking through the reasons why a child is acting out - prioritizing resolution over retribution, it’s all about keeping kids in school while maintaining the best learning environment.

With arts funding on the cutting board across the country, students can lack motivation to go to school and the creative resources for critical thinking skills. In Brooklyn, Ascend Learning is an inner-city network of public charter schools that offer a rich arts environment to teach Common Core and the student academic performance has surpassed other schools in the neighborhood.

School MS 53 in Queens experienced extremely poor student attendance, a high rate of student suspensions, and an increase of staff and teacher resignations—all causing the city’s department of education to give the school and “F”. New principal Shawn Rux incentivizes students by creating “Rux Bux,” a currency system that can help students win prizes the more often they attend school. The school went from an “F” to a “C” and daily attendance has increased to around 90%.

PowerMyLearning, a program that any student, parent, or teacher can use for free, helps students take ownership of their own learning. When most attention is being placed on teacher effectiveness, this program redirects those efforts toward students.