Tag: Learning

  • Strengthening family engagement to support the science of reading

    Strengthening family engagement to support the science of reading

    Key points:

    While most teachers are eager to implement the science of reading, many lack the time and tools to connect these practices to home-based support, according to a new national survey from Lexia, a Cambium Learning Group brand.

    The 2025 Back-to-School Teacher Survey, with input from more than 1,500 K–12 educators nationwide, points to an opportunity for district leaders to work in concert with teachers to provide families with the science of reading-based literacy resources they need to support student reading success.

    Key insights from the survey include:

    • 60 percent of teachers are either fully trained or interested in learning more about the science of reading
    • Only 15 percent currently provide parents with structured, evidence-based literacy activities
    • 79 percent of teachers cite time constraints and parents’ work schedules as top barriers to family engagement
    • Just 10 percent report that their schools offer comprehensive family literacy programs
    • Teachers overwhelmingly want in-person workshops and video tutorials to help parents support reading at home

    “Teachers know that parental involvement can accelerate literacy and they’re eager for ways to strengthen those connections,” said Lexia President Nick Gaehde. “This data highlights how districts can continue to build on momentum in this new school year by offering scalable, multilingual, and flexible family engagement strategies that align with the science of reading.”

    Teachers also called for:

    • Better technology tools for consistent school-to-home communication
    • Greater multilingual support to serve diverse communities
    • Professional learning that includes family engagement training

    Gaehde concluded, “Lexia’s survey reflects the continued national emphasis on Structured Literacy and shows that equipping families is essential to driving lasting student outcomes. At Lexia we’re committed to partnering with districts and teachers to strengthen the school-to-home connection. By giving educators practical tools and data-driven insights, we help teachers and families work together–ensuring every child has the literacy support they need to thrive.”

    The complete findings are available in a new report, From Classroom to Living Room: Exploring Parental Involvement in K–12 Literacy. District leaders can also download the accompanying infographic, “What District Leaders Need To Know: 5 Key Findings About Family Engagement and Literacy,” which highlights the most pressing data points and strategic opportunities for improving school-to-home literacy connections.

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  • Unlock High-Impact Machine Learning Projects with Source Code for MBA Project

    Unlock High-Impact Machine Learning Projects with Source Code for MBA Project

    Machine learning is the new trend which is transforming how the business world makes decisions. For MBA students, who are integrating the machine learning projects with source code into final year project work would be adding a real value and to differentiate their profile in placements or higher studies.

    Why MBA Students Should Explore Machine Learning Projects?

    Unlike computer science students, MBA students mainly focus on solving business problems. Still, machine learning opens doors to:

    • Marketing – Customer churn prediction, recommendation engines
    • Finance – Fraud detection, risk scoring, stock price forecasting
    • HR – Employee attrition prediction, talent acquisition analytics
    • Operations – Demand forecasting, supply chain optimization

    Working on machine learning projects for final year, MBA students would be bridging their gap between management and technology.

    Where to Find Machine Learning Projects with Source Code?

    1. Machine Learning Projects Kaggle

    Kaggle offers real-world datasets and pre-built models. For MBA projects, students can explore:

    • Sales forecasting
    • Retail Customer churn
    • Social media analysis and Brand sentiment.

    2. Machine Learning Projects GitHub

    GitHub repositories contain ready-to-use machine learning projects with source code. Mba Final year students can download them, customize datasets, and align them with their final year project theme.

    Best Machine Learning Project Ideas for MBA Final Year

    Marketing Analytics

    • Customer segmentation using K-Means on Fitness Centre
    • Customer Churn on local restaurant
    • Sentiment analysis of customer churn prediction in Banks

    Finance Analytics

    • Comparative study of Loan approval prediction using machine learning Methods.
    • Machine learning prediction on Stock price trend forecasting.

    HR & Operations

    • Comparative study of employee attrition prediction of an organization
    • Utilization of Machine learning in Demand and inventory forecasting.
    • Get more machine leaning titles in this link.Click here

    How MBA Students Can Use These Projects

    1. Students should choose the relevant topics (Marketing, Finance, HR, or operations).
    2. They have to Download machine learning projects with source code from Kaggle or GitHub.
    3. Modifying the datasetsas per the project context.

    Should be focussing on business insights and not just algorithms.

    Check out this video for more indepth knowledge on Machine Learning

    Conclusion

    For MBA students, machine learning projects with source code are not about becoming data scientists—it’s about using data intelligently to make right business decisions.

    By leveraging Kaggle and GitHub, students can transform their final year project into a powerful showcase of management plus analytics skills.

    The main intent of the blog is to help students understand how to find the right mentor who can guide mba students to provide hands-on experience with ml code base.

    This content will help gain more knowledge for capstone projects,thesis work or mba project by applying customer analytics, finance strategy to complement theoretical business knowledge in machine learning and build portfolio for job interviews or internships.

    Download machine learning projects for final year pdf

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  • University of Arkansas Creates Faculty Learning Community

    University of Arkansas Creates Faculty Learning Community

    Effective teaching and learning are key elements of a student’s academic success, but ensuring professors have access to training, support and resources to employ best practices in the classroom can be a challenge for institutions.

    At the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, Lynn Meade created the Faculty Learning Community to tackle this issue, uniting professors across disciplines to improve student learning and achievement.

    The Faculty Learning Community, which launched this summer, strives to unite staff and faculty across campus to work toward the shared goal of student success, Meade said.

    The background: Meade has worked as a communications professor at the University of Arkansas for two decades, but in 2023, she realized there were entire student support teams and departments that she didn’t know about. The university hosted an event on high-impact practices to invite stakeholders to share and learn from one another.

    “I sat down at a table with a whole lot of student success people, and I was amazed at all the things that they were doing and how I could be on our campus for so long and [have] no idea the things that were going on behind the scenes, things students could take advantage of that they hadn’t yet,” Meade said.

    This experience prompted her to get more involved with support staff and orchestrate opportunities for other professors to learn from one another across campus. “We need to find a way to integrate faculty and student success initiatives,” Meade said. “They need to know what one another are doing, they need to shake hands, make friends, have coffee, talk—the things that really make things happen, because our students, their success depends on us cooperating.”

    Students are more likely to talk to a faculty member they trust than seek out a support office on campus, Meade said. “I think informing them not only how to teach their class well, but also how to integrate those resources, is really important.”

    The result was the Fulbright Faculty Learning Community, a community of practice and faculty development program, which Meade now leads as director.

    How it works: The program launched with four offerings for faculty: a course-building workshop, a reboot class to help with updating content, forums for sharing innovative teaching ideas and introductions to student success teams.

    One of Meade’s goals is to avoid replicating existing efforts on campus but provide a one-stop shop to unify and amplify the great work taking place. “There’s so many cool resources on our campus, but there’s no one place they all exist,” she said.

    The Fulbright Learning Community had its kickoff event this summer, engaging 14 faculty members in a three-hour workshop on course building.

    The workshop invited faculty to consider students, rather than content, at the center of their syllabus, using a communications principle of audience and purpose. “I think if our audience is students and our purpose is to teach them, maybe we shouldn’t say, ‘I’m going to cover my material,’ but, ‘I’m going to think of ways that they can learn the material,’” Meade said.

    Survey Says

    A 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found that 40 percent of respondents believe their academic success would improve if professors connected in-classroom learning to issues outside the classroom or students’ career goals.

    Some professors who are straight out of grad school may have only received teacher education or used material given to them by other faculty, Meade said. Others who have taught abroad but never in the U.S. may need some help adapting their materials for American students.

    The learning community also invited career center professionals to showcase ways to embed career competencies in the syllabus and attach resources to their learning management system to help address career development for students. A future session will invite professors to share how they’re using and teaching generative AI tools.

    “Faculty success equals student success,” Meade said. “The teachers are their first line [of support]; a lot of that success is what’s happening with the teacher. When we all work together on the same side, how we communicate with each other is going to make a big impact on the student retention.”

    If your student success program has a unique feature or twist, we’d like to know about it. Click here to submit.

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  • Supporting the Student Researcher: Effective Teaching, Learning, and Engagement Strategies – Faculty Focus

    Supporting the Student Researcher: Effective Teaching, Learning, and Engagement Strategies – Faculty Focus

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  • Strategies for Personalized Learning in AI Age (opinion)

    Strategies for Personalized Learning in AI Age (opinion)

    How do we teach effectively—and humanly—in this age of AI?

    New advances in artificial intelligence break news at such a rapid pace that many of us have difficulties keeping up. Dinuka Gunaratne gave a detailed summary of many different AI tools in his “Carpe Careers” article published in July; yet more tools will likely appear in the next months and years in an exponential explosion. How do we, as educators (new and established Ph.D.s) design curriculum and classes with these new AI tools being released every few weeks? How do we design effective assignments that teach critical analysis and logical thought while knowing that our students, too, have access to these tools?

    Many existing AI tools can be used to assist with course design. However, I will provide some insight on methods of pedagogy that emphasize personalized learning regardless of what new technology becomes available.

    Some questions educators are now thinking about include:

    1. How do I design an assignment so the student cannot just prompt an AI tool to complete it?
    2. How do I design the course so that the student can choose whether or not to use AI tools—and how do I assess these two groups of students?

    Below, I outline some wise teaching practices with an eye toward helping students develop core skills including critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, creativity and—the most essential skill of all—curiosity.

    Making the Most Out of Class Time

    An effective course utilizes a combination of teaching strategies. I outline three here.

    1. Make sure that your class is generative so that when you give an assignment, it reaches as far back as day one. A generative learning model is one in which each week is built upon the previous one, and in which a student is assessed on the knowledge they have cumulatively accrued.
    1. Hold interactive in-person activities in each class, building upon the previous assignments and content.
    2. Flip the classroom so that class time is used for discussion and not a monologue presentation from you. If you can assign videos or reading assignments for students to view or read prior to class, then you can use class time to discuss the content or reinforce the learning with group activities.

    Here is an example of combining these tools in the buildup to a presentation from one of my classes.

    • Week 1: Each student writes and brings a one-page summary of their research so that peers can provide feedback. I provide feedback training in class before the peer readings take place.
    • Week 2: Using the peer feedback of the summary, each student creates one slide summarizing their research for a three-minute thesis (3MT) and brings the slide to class to receive peer feedback.
    • Week 3: Students practice presentation skills through an activity called “slide karaoke,” in which a student has one minute to present a simple slide they have never seen before. They are then given feedback by peers and the instructor on general presentation skills. I provide peer feedback training before the presentations.
    • Week 4: Students implement the general feedback from slide karaoke and give practice 3MT presentations to receive specific peer and mentor feedback on the content. These mentors are usually students from the year before who revisit the class.
    • Week 5: Students give the final 3MT in front of judges and peers for evaluation.
    • Week 6: Students write a summary of what was learned from the entire generative experience.

    This sequence of assignments is personalized so that the final report can only be about the student’s individual experience. While students might want to use AI tools to edit or organize their ideas, ChatGPT or other AI tools cannot possibly know what happened in the classroom—only the student can write about it.

    For larger classes in which a presentation from each student may not be possible, here is another example.

    • Week 1: A video or reading assigned to students to view/read before class discusses the basics of DNA and inheritance. An in-class assignment involves a group discussion on Mendelian inheritance problem sets.
    • Week 2: Before class, students read an article on how DNA is packaged; the in-class discussion focuses on the molecules involved in chromatin structure.
    • The next classes all have either prereads or videos, which students discuss in class, and the content builds up to a more complex genetic mechanism, such as elucidating the gene for a disease. The final report could be “summarize how one could find a gene responsible for a certain disease using the discussion points we had in class.” In this scenario as well, the student is taking the personalized class experience and incorporating the ideas into the final report, something that cannot be wholly outsourced to any AI tool.

    If you decide to embrace AI tools in the classroom, you can still teach critical thinking and creativity by asking the students to use AI to write a report on a topic discussed in class—and then in part two of the assignment, ask them to assess the AI-generated report, cite the proper references and correct any mistakes, content or grammar-wise.

    I sometimes show an example of this in class to demonstrate to students that AI makes mistakes, rather than giving it as an assignment. But it is something you might want to try making an optional method for an assignment. Students can declare whether they used AI or not on their submission. As an instructor, you will need to design two rubrics for these different groups. Group one will have a rubric based on content, grammar, references, logical thought and organization, and clarity. Group two (those who use AI) will have a rubric consisting of the same components in addition to an evaluation of how well the student found the AI mistakes.

    Applying for Teaching Positions

    If you are applying for a teaching position, you should address AI in your teaching dossier and how you may or may not incorporate it—but at the very least, discuss its effects on higher education. Many articles and books on this topic exist, including Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson (Johns Hopkins Press, 2024); Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Joseph E. Aoun (MIT Press, 2017); and Generative AI in Higher Education, by Cecilia Ka Yuk Chan and Tom Colloton (Routledge, 2024).

    Yet even as we consider how to integrate AI in our teaching, we must not forget the human experience at work in all that we do. We can emphasize things like 1) encouraging students to meet with us in person or even for a walk as opposed to a virtual meeting and 2) assessing what emotions students bring to the meeting or class and how that may affect the dynamics. We as educators should harness the human side of teaching, including the classroom experience and the in-class group work, so that the “final” assessments build directly out of these personalized learnings.

    For those venturing into a career that involves teaching or mentoring, develop teaching strategies and tools that center the human experience and include them in your teaching dossier. Your application will shine.

    Nana Lee is the director of professional development and mentorship, special adviser to the dean of medicine for graduate education, and associate professor, teaching stream, at the University of Toronto. She is also a member and regional director of the Graduate Career Consortium—an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.

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  • Supporting neurodiverse learners requires more than accommodation: It demands systemic change

    Supporting neurodiverse learners requires more than accommodation: It demands systemic change

    Key points:

    Approximately 1 in 5 children in the United States are estimated to be neurodivergent, representing a spectrum of learning and thinking differences such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. These children experience the world in unique and valuable ways, but too often, our education systems fail to recognize or nurture their potential. In an already challenging educational landscape, where studies show a growing lack of school readiness nationwide, it is more important than ever to ensure that neurodivergent young learners receive the resources and support they need to succeed.

    Early support and intervention

    As President and CEO of Collaborative for Children, I have personally seen the impact that high-quality early childhood education can have on a child’s trajectory. Birth to age five is the most critical window for brain development, laying the foundation for lifelong learning, behavior, and health. However, many children are entering their academic years without the basic skills needed to flourish. For neurodivergent children, who often need tailored approaches to learning, the gap is even wider.

    Research indicates that early intervention, initiated within the first three years of life, can significantly enhance outcomes for neurodivergent children. Children who receive individualized support are more likely to develop stronger language, problem-solving, and social skills. These gains not only help in the classroom but can also lead to higher self-confidence, better relationships and improved well-being into adulthood.

    The Collaborative for Children difference

    Collaborative for Children in Houston focuses on early childhood education and is committed to creating inclusive environments where all children can thrive. In Houston, we have established 125 Centers of Excellence within our early childhood learning network. The Centers of Excellence program helps child care providers deliver high-quality early education that prepares children for kindergarten and beyond. Unlike drop-in daycare, our certified early childhood education model focuses on long-term development, combining research-backed curriculum, business support and family engagement.

    This year, we are expanding our efforts by providing enhanced training to center staff and classroom teachers, equipping them with effective strategies to support neurodivergent learners. These efforts will focus on implementing practical, evidence-based approaches that make a real difference.

    Actionable strategies

    As educators and leaders, we need to reimagine how learning environments are designed and delivered. Among the most effective actionable strategies are:

    • Creating sensory-friendly classrooms that reduce environmental stressors like noise, lighting, and clutter to help children stay calm and focused.
    • Offering flexible learning formats to meet a range of communication, motor, and cognitive styles, including visual aids, movement-based activities, and assistive technology.
    • Training teachers to recognize and respond to diverse behaviors with empathy and without stigma, so that what is often misinterpreted as “disruption” is instead seen as a signal of unmet needs.
    • Partnering with families to create support plans tailored to each child’s strengths and challenges to ensure continuity between home and classroom.
    • Incorporating play-based learning that promotes executive functioning, creativity, and social-emotional development, especially for children who struggle in more traditional formats.

    Benefits of inclusive early education

    Investing in inclusive, high-quality early education has meaningful benefits not only for neurodivergent children, but for other students, educators, families and the broader community. Research indicates that neurotypical students who learn alongside neurodivergent peers develop critical social-emotional skills such as patience, compassion and acceptance. Training in inclusive practices can help educators gain the confidence and tools needed to effectively support a wide range of learning styles and behaviors as well as foster a more responsive learning environment.

    Prioritizing inclusive early education can also create strong bonds between families and schools. These partnerships empower caregivers to play an active role in their child’s development, helping them navigate challenges and access critical resources early on. Having this type of support can be transformative for families by reducing feelings of isolation and reinforcing that their child is seen, valued, and supported.

    The benefits of inclusive early education extend far beyond the classroom. When neurodivergent children receive the support they need early in life, it lays the groundwork for increased workforce readiness. Long-term economic gains can include higher employment rates and greater earning potential for individuals. 

    Early childhood education must evolve to meet the needs of neurodivergent learners. We cannot afford to overlook the importance of early intervention and tailored learning environments. If we are serious about improving outcomes for all children, we must act now and commit to inclusivity as a core pillar of our approach. When we support all children early, everyone benefits.

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  • Teaching and Learning Can’t Happen Under These Circumstances

    Teaching and Learning Can’t Happen Under These Circumstances

    I’m hoping everyone working in higher education is aware of the recent events at Texas A&M, where a student recording of an exchange with an instructor ultimately led to the dismissal of the instructor and the demotion of both the department chair and college dean that had backed the instructor’s classroom autonomy.

    I looked at the big-picture academic freedom implications in a newsletter for the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, where I note that one of the people who initially defended the instructor’s autonomy was Texas A&M president Mark Welsh, who told the student complainant that firing the instructor was “not happening,” only to reverse course after a storm of right-wing outrage and political pressure rained down.

    The instructor was a model of professionalism—watch the video yourself if you don’t believe me—and yet this student set out with a plan deliberately engineered to get the instructor fired, and it worked.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about this student, about what has to happen for a young person to enter college seeing something like this—personally targeting and destroying another human being who is just doing their job—as what they want to spend their college years doing.

    It is an act of great cruelty, and yet I must imagine this person does not see themselves as cruel. I’m sure they somehow have justified this cruelty, but there is simply no justification for it. If they are not cruel, what is left? It becomes an act of madness.

    One of my favorite things about teaching college-age students is that they are ready for the whole deal, adults who have volunteered themselves for a potentially transformative experience. Look, I’m not naïve about the more transactional mindsets that students bring to college, but it always seemed to me that at least the potential for something more meaningful, more lasting, was always present.

    I loved teaching because I knew that this was the goal, even as I only had vague notions of how it could be achieved. And when it was achieved for a particular student, it was clear that this was not necessarily replicable on a mass scale using the same approach. That difficulty is fascinating. The tension in not knowing if it can be pulled off, but trying anyway, was energizing, sometimes even intoxicating. This is very hard, but it is also very worth doing.

    At least I think so.

    Sometimes, when things were going well during a class, I would step outside myself for a moment and think, Look at all these people! Each one of them was a person, and together we were collectively being human, at least for a moment. What could be better?

    Here we are. I honestly don’t know how anyone can teach and learn under the present circumstances. For the bulk of my career, I worked in places where my political and religious views were out of sync with those of most my students, but I could not imagine being afraid of them exacting punishment or revenge on me for the mere fact of these views. My students were fundamentally open and curious, not without convictions by any means, but also essentially trusting that everyone involved in the educational enterprise had their best interests at heart unless proven otherwise.

    Now, it seems prudent to assume someone is out to get you, because it only takes one person of bad faith armed with a smart phone and ill intent to destroy your career. There is an essential fragility, a brittleness to this student who took down their instructor that makes them impossible to work alongside. There is no potential for community. Even if they are only one in a thousand, the whole deal is spoiled.

    In my course policies, I would often share a quote from Cornel West regarding the project I hoped the students and I were embarking on together.

    “I want to be able to engage in the grand calling of a Socratic teacher, which is not to persuade and convince students, but to unsettle and unnerve and maybe even unhouse a few students, so that they experience that wonderful vertigo and dizziness in recognizing at least for a moment that their world view rests on pudding, but then see that they have something to fall back on. It’s the shaping and forming of critical sensibility. That, for me, is what the high calling of pedagogy really is.”

    There are places today where it seems like even articulating such a philosophy, let alone attempting to put it into practice, would disqualify me from the classroom.

    As I was first working on drafting this column, I saw the news of the violent death of another young person who got his start as an antagonist to college professors and became quite wealthy and powerful primarily by calling down harassment on others—harassment that caused them to fear for their jobs and even sometimes their lives.

    He had a wife and two children under 4 years old. More madness.

    I honestly don’t know what to make of any of this. I am in a moment of Dr. West’s “pudding.”

    Maybe tomorrow more helpful thoughts will come.

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  • New research highlights the importance and challenges of K-12 student engagement

    New research highlights the importance and challenges of K-12 student engagement

    This press release originally appeared online.

    Key points:

    While there is wide agreement that student engagement plays a vital role in learning, educators continue to face uncertainty about what engagement looks like, how best to measure it, and how to sustain it, according to a new study from Discovery Education. 

    Education Insights 2025–2026: Fueling Learning Through Engagement captures prevailing attitudes and beliefs on the topic of engagement from 1,398 superintendents, teachers, parents, and students from across the United States. Survey data was collected in May 2025 by Hanover Research on behalf of Discovery Education. 

    “Discovery Education conducted the Education Insights report to gain a deeper understanding of how engagement is defined, observed, and nurtured in K-12 classrooms nationwide, and we are thankful to the participants who shared their perspectives and insights with us,” said Brian Shaw, Discovery Education’s Chief Executive Officer. “One of the most important findings of this report is that engagement is seen as essential to learning, but is inconsistently defined, observed, and supported in K-12 classrooms. I believe this highlights the need for a more standardized approach to measuring student engagement and connecting it to academic achievement. Discovery Education has embarked on an effort to address those challenges, and we look forward to sharing more as our work progresses.” 

    Key findings of the Education Insights 2025–2026: Fueling Learning Through Engagement report include: 

    Engagement is broadly recognized as a key driver of learning and success. Ninety-three percent of educators surveyed agreed that student engagement is a critical metric for understanding overall achievement, and 99 percent of superintendents polled believe student engagement is one of the top predictors of success at school. Finally, 92 percent of students said that engaging lessons make school more enjoyable. 

    But educators disagree on the top indicators of engagement. Seventy-two percent of teachers rated asking thoughtful questions as the strongest indicator of student engagement. However, 54 percent of superintendents identified performing well on assessments as a top engagement indicator. This is nearly twice as high as teachers, who rank assessments among the lowest indicators of engagement. 

    School leaders and teachers disagree on if their schools have systems for measuring engagement. While 99 percent of superintendents and 88 percent of principals said their district has an intentional approach for measuring engagement, only 60 percent of teachers agreed. Further, nearly one-third of teachers said that a lack of clear, shared definitions of student engagement is a top challenge to measuring engagement effectively. 

    Educators and students differ on their perceptions of engagement levels. While 63 percent of students agreed with the statement “Students are highly engaged in school,” only 45 percent of teachers and 51 percent of principals surveyed agreed with the same statement.  

    Students rate their own engagement much higher than their peers. Seventy percent of elementary students perceived themselves as engaged, but only 42 percent perceived their peers as engaged. Fifty-nine percent of middle school students perceived themselves engaged in learning, but only 36 percent perceived their peers as engaged. Finally, 61 percent of high school students perceived themselves as engaged, but only 39 percent described their peers as engaged. 

    Proximity to learning changes impressions of AI. Two-thirds of students believe AI could help them learn faster, yet fewer than half of teachers report using AI themselves to complete tasks. Only 57 percent of teachers agreed with the statement “I frequently learn about positive ways students are using AI,” while 87 percent of principals and 98 percent of superintendents agree. Likewise, only 53 percent of teachers agreed with the statement “I am excited about the potential for AI to support teaching and learning,” while 83 percent of principals and 94 percent of superintendents agreed. 

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  • Prioritizing behavior as essential learning

    Prioritizing behavior as essential learning

    Key points:

    In classrooms across the country, students are mastering their ABCs, solving equations, and diving into science. But one essential life skill–behavior–is not in the lesson plan. For too long, educators have assumed that children arrive at school knowing how to regulate emotions, resolve conflict, and interact respectfully. The reality: Behavior–like math or reading–must be taught, practiced, and supported.

    Today’s students face a mounting crisis. Many are still grappling with anxiety, disconnection, and emotional strain following the isolation and disruption of the COVID pandemic. And it’s growing more serious.

    Teachers aren’t immune. They, too, are managing stress and emotional overload–while shouldering scripted curricula, rising expectations, and fewer opportunities for meaningful engagement and critical thinking. As these forces collide, disruptive behavior is now the leading cause of job-related stress and a top reason why 78 percent of teachers have considered leaving the profession.

    Further complicating matters is social media and device usage. Students and adults alike have become deeply reliant on screens. Social media and online socialization–where interactions are often anonymous and less accountable–have contributed to a breakdown in conflict resolution, empathy, and recognition of nonverbal cues. Widespread attachment to cell phones has significantly disrupted students’ ability to regulate emotions and engage in healthy, face-to-face interactions. Teachers, too, are frequently on their phones, modeling device-dependent behaviors that can shape classroom dynamics.

    It’s clear: students can’t be expected to know what they haven’t been taught. And teachers can’t teach behavior without real tools and support. While districts have taken well-intentioned steps to help teachers address behavior, many initiatives rely on one-off training without cohesive, long-term strategies. Real progress demands more–a districtwide commitment to consistent, caring practices that unify educators, students, and families.

    A holistic framework: School, student, family

    Lasting change requires a whole-child, whole-school, whole-family approach. When everyone in the community is aligned, behavior shifts from a discipline issue to a core component of learning, transforming classrooms into safe, supportive environments where students thrive and teachers rediscover joy in their work. And when these practices are reinforced at home, the impact multiplies.

    To help students learn appropriate behavior, teachers need practical tools rather than abstract theories. Professional development, tiered supports, targeted interventions, and strategies to build student confidence are critical. So is measuring impact to ensure efforts evolve and endure.

    Some districts are leading the way, embracing data-driven practices, evidence-based strategies, and accessible digital resources. And the results speak for themselves. Here are two examples of successful implementations.

    Evidence-based behavior training and mentorship yields 24 percent drop in infractions within weeks

    With more than 19,000 racially diverse students across 24 schools east of Atlanta, Newton County Schools prioritized embedded practices and collaborative coaching over rigid compliance. Newly hired teachers received stipends to complete curated, interactive behavior training before the school year began. They then expanded on these lessons during orientation with district staff, deepening their understanding.

    Once the school year started, each new teacher was partnered with a mentor who provided behavior and academic guidance, along with regular classroom feedback. District climate specialists also offered further support to all teachers to build robust professional learning communities.

    The impact was almost immediate. Within the first two weeks of school, disciplinary infractions fell by 24 percent compared to the previous year–evidence that providing the right tools, complemented by layered support and practical coaching, can yield swift, sustainable results.

    Pairing shoulder coaching with real-time data to strengthen teacher readiness

    With more than 300,000 students in over 5,300 schools spanning urban to rural communities, Clark County School District in Las Vegas is one of the largest and most diverse in the nation.

    Recognizing that many day-to-day challenges faced by new teachers aren’t fully addressed in college training, the district introduced “shoulder coaching.” This mentorship model pairs incoming teachers with seasoned colleagues for real-time guidance on implementing successful strategies from day one.

    This hands-on approach incorporates videos, structured learning sessions, and continuous data collection, creating a dynamic feedback loop that helps teachers navigate classroom challenges proactively. Rather than relying solely on reactive discipline, educators are equipped with adaptable strategies that reflect lived classroom realities. The district also uses real-time data and teacher input to evolve its behavior support model, ensuring educators are not only trained, but truly prepared.

    By aligning lessons with the school performance plan, Clark County School District was able to decrease suspensions by 11 percent and discretionary exclusions by 17 percent.  

    Starting a new chapter in the classroom

    Behavior isn’t a side lesson–it’s foundational to learning. When we move beyond discipline and make behavior a part of daily instruction, the ripple effects are profound. Classrooms become more conducive to learning. Students and families develop life-long tools. And teachers are happier in their jobs, reducing the churn that has grown post-pandemic.

    The evidence is clear. School districts that invest in proactive, strategic behavior supports are building the kind of environments where students flourish and educators choose to stay. The next chapter in education depends on making behavior essential. Let’s teach it with the same care and intentionality we bring to every other subject–and give every learner the chance to succeed.

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  • More Than a Name: How Assignment Labels Influence Student Learning and Performance – Faculty Focus

    More Than a Name: How Assignment Labels Influence Student Learning and Performance – Faculty Focus

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