These tools provide best practices, resources and tips to help you with your goals for mentoring and to establish collaborative relationships with your mentees
In this teacher induction toolkit you will find examples of formative assessment tools to support new teacher growth and development
On page 11 of this resource, you will find links to several sample high leverage tools: observation, post observation, conferencing and feedback resources.
Pages 4-7 of this resource, highlight a collaborative assessment log that will help mentors assess beginning teachers’ practice more easily to focus their support and expertise in response to teachers’ specified needs.
This resource is part of the Mentoring and Induction Toolkit from the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders. This tool helps school or district teams plan for comprehensive systems of beginning teacher support that emphasize standards-based instructional practices.
This resource provides a cyclical practice-based coaching cycle for supporting teachers’ use of effective teaching practices that lead to positive outcomes for students. The coaching cycle components are:
1. Planning goals and action steps
2. Engaging in focused observation
3. Reflecting on and sharing feedback about teaching practices
In this resource, you will find a mentor-teacher, goal-setting template and leadership resources to prioritize the school leader's focus on teacher induction.
This resource provides a coaching-cycle framework to support professional goals and action plans.
Teaching Channel has assembled the 1st Five: Early Career Action Pack to support educators in their first years of teaching and extend and make actionable the resources in our New Teacher Survival Guide. The pack can efficiently and effectively help coaches and mentors support new teachers as they acclimate to the profession, the school, students, and the community at large.
Teachers and coaches can use the goal-setting process as one strategy to improve teacher practice. This resource provides a sample goal-setting tool and highlights how teacher goals should be complimented by continuous feedback, open and honest dialogue, and additional opportunities for teachers to learn and grow through large and small group professional development. All of these pieces work together in order to help teachers develop and grow.
This brief highlights how mentors and program leaders work in partnership to ensure successful induction practices related to formative assessment.
On this resource, you will find information about the role of the site administrator in Induction, and concrete ideas for how to work with mentors and create the kind of positive school climate and relationships that are more likely to retain and grow new teachers.
This resource is part of the Mentoring and Induction Toolkit from the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders. This tool helps school or district teams reflect on specific actions principals, district leaders, and state leaders can take to support effective principal leadership for mentoring and induction programs.
Full text of Framework for an Optimal Learning Environment
The CASEL mission is to help make evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) an integral part of education from preschool through high school.
Focus on every student feeling as though they belong in their classroom
The Mindset Kit is a free set of online lessons and practices designed to help teach and foster adaptive beliefs about learning.
Resources designed to help educators act on what is known today about social-emotional learning and whole-child development. Included are tools and resources that can help teachers and school systems improve outcomes for all students.
Students with a sense of belonging in school feel socially connected, supported, and respected. They trust their teachers and their peers, and they feel like they fit in at school. This is the premise of an optimal learning environment.
Summary of the research around mindfulness to support resilience for teachers and students
Student Achievement Partners, an organization founded by authors of the Common Core State Standards, launched a website to share free, open-source resources to support Common Core implementation at all levels.
This collection of classroom videos and associated lesson materials was developed to support K-12 educators implementing the Common Core State Standards.
A comprehensive and well-organized website that answers questions and provides supports to teachers.
Strategies, plans, materials, and research to support scaffolds in ELA and Math
Meeting students' needs through scaffolding
Protocol to guide teachers’ analysis of student writing. By organizing student work along a progression of learning that includes both reading comprehension and writing skills, teachers can identify trends and devise targeted instructional strategies to give students the support they need to be successful.
Analyzing student work data protocol
Knowing Students Across Multiple Dimensions to support mentors and their teachers to identify strengths and diverse learning needs; engage in reflective conversations that deeply analyze student strengths and needs regarding knowledge, skills, prior experiences, and personal histories; understand how students' strengths and needs impact learning; and plan lessons that address these strengths and needs
An article that highlights strategies with videos to support student goal-setting.
Seven key practices to help students meet college and career ready standards
Using current brain research, this article focuses on meeting the needs of diverse learners
See how the UDL framework - multiple pathways - guides the design of instructional goals, assessments, methods, and materials that can be customized and adjusted to meet individual needs.
Edging into the conversation in an optimal learning environment is the term “learner variability.” It is a recognition that all students differ, and learning sciences research shows that these differences matter for learning. This article delves further into the variability in today's classrooms.
In this video, David Rose discusses the importance of providing learning supports and structures that are tailored to students’ individual needs and abilities. He shares his vision for “de-standardizing” education to help students discover their strengths and become expert learners.
This article is focused on why we actually personalize learning for students.
The Learner Variability Project (LVP) works at the intersection of educators, researchers, and edtech developers to help design and develop supports for a more equitable education for each learner. Learning sciences research is translated into easily accessible factors and strategies that can inform classroom practice.
The VLP is a free web-based app that helps teachers and students explore values, identify those that are most important, and consider how these values show up in our actions.
This document and resources provide the structure related to the implementation of UDL. When UDL provides a basis for instruction and curriculum design, the core beliefs in this document should holistically provide the foundation of UDL.
There’s an increasing awareness and recognition of the limitations of traditional parent-teacher conferences and volunteer opportunities, particularly for traditionally marginalized student populations. Digital tools for more meaningful parent engagement are highlighted in this resource.
Resources on academic and school related topics
Draw on collective expertise and energy through collaborative teaching and planning, collegial support, and team development in this Edutopia resource
Parent Teacher Conference Resources
Foundational understanding of the issues: baseline definitions, the case for why diversity matters, and an introduction to DEI resources
Being around people that are different than us makes us more creative, more diligent, and harder working.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. The IAT may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about.
Free toolkit for facilitated conversations about race, bias and prejudice to listen, lead discussions around equity
At Wolf Point High School in rural Montana, Native American students face the same neglect Native students across the U.S. do as they navigate a school system that has failed American Indians
A new study, The Long-Term Impacts of Same-Race Teachers, says that assigning black students from low-income black families to at least one black teacher in the third, fourth or fifth grades reduces the probability that they drop out of high school by 29 percent.
Paper shows students of all races - white, black, Latino, and Asian - have more positive perceptions of their black and Latino teachers than they do of their white teachers.
Round up of resources to further learning and inspire teachers and leaders to challenge racism in themselves and others
Connect with latest publications around social emotional learning and equity related topics, resources and tools by clicking the links on this resource site
From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan—texts, student tasks and teaching strategies—our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom—all for free.
Culture is central to learning. It plays a role not only in communicating and receiving information, but also in shaping the thinking process of groups and individuals. Based on research from Gloria Ladson Billings there are resources in this article for six of the culturally responsive principles that offer full, equitable access to education for students from all cultures.
In this resource, ASCD has developed a comprehensive model of culturally responsive teaching: a pedagogy that crosses disciplines and cultures to engage learners while respecting their cultural integrity. It accommodates the dynamic mix of race, ethnicity, class, gender, region, religion, and family that contributes to every student's cultural identity. The foundation for this approach lies in theories of intrinsic motivation.
This article highlights culturally responsive pedagogy as a student-centered approach to teaching in which the students’ unique cultural strengths are identified and nurtured to promote student achievement and a sense of well-being about the student’s cultural place in the world. The article delves into three functional dimensions: the institutional dimension, the personal dimension, and the instructional dimension of culturally responsive pedagogy.
Teacher resources to explore strategies to engage students by connecting to and honoring their cultures, experiences, and backgrounds.
For free, Understood for Educators empowers teachers in their goal to ensure that all students thrive. Equity is at the core evidence-based resources, classroom videos, and downloadable tools designed to help educators feel more confident in supporting students with learning and attention issues.
This resource provides research along with practice information and strategies on understanding children with learning and attention issues, identifying struggling students, and supporting academic success.
When used together, high-leverage practices (HLPs) and evidence-based practices (EBPs) can become powerful tools for improving student outcomes. This resource is designed to show the promise of these practices in advancing educator preparation and practice and, subsequently, outcomes for students with disabilities and those who struggle. The site includes articles and videos.
Learn about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities
Reading Rockets provides numerous articles and resources for special educators.
Intervention Central provides teachers, schools and districts with free resources to help struggling learners and implement Response to Intervention and attain the Common Core State Standards.
Resources and guides for educators in the effective implementation of Response to Intervention (RTI).