ASU hopes new team model of teaching offsets teacher shortage in Arizona

Although many students in New Mexico enter kindergarten speaking two languages, a lack of bilingual and dual language classrooms means students often have trouble maintaining their Spanish or that English Language Learners don't receive appropriate instruction. New Mexico State University and Las Cruces Public Schools are working to break this cycle and recruit and train more bilingual teachers by offering degree programs and incentives and extra resources to teachers who choose this path.

Rates of problem behaviors and emotional issues among students are high - over 3 million elementary and secondary school students are suspended a year. To remedy the problem, a new program for educators delivers lessons on how to help students navigate their emotional lives.

Building on an early-childhood initiative, the Monadnock district was able to quickly respond and provide childcare services for employees of the Monadnock district by partnering with the YMCA. The response was an effort to prevent employees from missing work during the pandemic due to lack of childcare. 32 children enrolled in the program. “I think of Impact Monadnock as a real beacon of the way a community can come together around early childhood [education].”

School districts in Pennsylvania are overhauling traditional reading curricula in favor of new neuroscience research that shows how the human brain processes sounds and symbols. The program is time-intensive, requiring teachers to learn a new way of teaching literacy, but has shown early promising results.

For a decade, only a little more than half of the students from Washoe Country District graduated. So, school leaders launched a Social Emotional Learning program. That’s because research shows that kids that don’t form emotional connections at school are at a higher risk of dropping out. The “district’s three signature SEL classroom practices [include]: welcome rituals and routines, more engaging or interactive teaching methods, and end-of-class reflections.” In the five years since implementing the program, graduation rates increased by 18 percent.

Suspensions are a common method to address behavioral problems at schools, but they can discourage academic progress and success. An alternative practice called "restorative justice" focuses on building relationships, empathy, and communication. The practice requires educator training and mindset shifts but has proven effective.

Children Rising is providing high-dosage reading and math tutoring to elementary students at schools in Oakland, California, to make up for lost learning during the pandemic. This type of tutoring includes one-on-one instruction multiple times a week during the school day.

This T.V. segment showcases multiple solutions used by school districts and nonprofits across the nation, from creating cell phone towers so students have access to reliable wifi, to curbside meals, to learning pods. Overall, the hosts emphasize that the solutions highlighted in this segment involve a process that begins before a student even enters the virtual classroom and often involves many people working together.

In New York City, “regional enrichment centers,” or schools for the children of essential workers, popped up. The centers provided a place where workers, who couldn’t take care of their kids when schools shut down during the pandemic, could send their children to. Nurses, administrators, and officials quickly created a network of these centers. “It was people who were willing to put themselves at risk in order to serve the city. They were just, like, ‘People need us, so we’re here.’” Fourteen thousand families registered to send their children to one of the 93 centers.

To help retain elementary school teachers, an Arizona school district teamed up with the University of Arizona. The program covers the cost of tuition for a student's teaching degree and pays students a monthly stipend.