The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed by President Obama on December 10, 2015. This bill replaces the current No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which has been in effect since 2002. According to the US Department of Education, “This bipartisan measure reauthorizes the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the nation’s national education law and longstanding commitment to equal opportunity for all students.”

Education Week provides a good overview of this new law. The Every Student Succeeds Act takes full effect in the 2017-18 school year. Education Week outlined the key elements of the law; here is an brief look:

• Accountability Plans - States are still accountable to the DOE and have to begin submitting plans beginning in 2017-2018.
• Accountability Goals - States can pick their own goals, but these must focus on testing proficiency, ELL, and graduation rates.
• Accountability Systems - Elementary and middle schools need to incorporate 3 academic indicators (such as state test results, ELL proficiency) and one, other such as school safety or student engagement. High schools are the same, but also include graduation rates.
• Low-Performing Schools - States have to identify and intervene in the bottom 5 percent of performers. These schools have to be identified at least once every three years.
• School Interventions -  For schools performing in the bottom 5 percent and high schools with high dropout rates, districts will intervene and states will monitor the turnaround effort.
• Testing - Testing is sticking around. States will still be required to test students in grades 3-8 in reading and math. ESSA maintains the federal requirement for 95 percent participation in tests.
• Standards - Common Core is not required, but is an option. States must adopt "challenging" academic standards.
• Transition from NCLB - States will still continue to support low-performing schools, but NCLB waivers will no longer be valid beginning Aug. 1, 2016.
• English Language Learners - Accountability for ELL students moves to Title 1. The idea is to make accountability for those students a priority.
• Students in Special Education - Only 1 percent of students overall can be given alternative tests. (That’s about 10 percent of students in special education.)
• Programs - There is a new block grant program which combines many existing programs, including some involving physical education, Advanced Placement, school counseling, and education technology. Other programs are also under development.
• Weighted Student Funding - A pilot program will let 50 districts try out a weighted student-funding formula, combining state, local, and federal funds to better serve low-income students and those with special needs.
• Teachers - NCLB’s “highly qualified” teacher status is now under state control. States will have the ability to determine teacher competency on whether teachers meet “highly qualified” requirements or on student test scores. ESSA puts the states in control of teacher quality.

You can learn more about ESSA by reading the full Education Week report, which also includes highlight videos on key topics. You can also visit the U.S. Department of Education’s ESSA page, to learn more about the law and how it differs from No Child Left Behind.

As always, your Pepper team is here to provide support and professional development for all your teaching and learning needs - for today and for the future.

More About OER

Last week we introduced the topic of OER, Open Education Resources, based on Education Week’s report, Extending the Digital Reach. The online education resource, Edutopia provides an “OER Resource Roundup” to help us navigate through this maze of technological information. OER is part of a global movement to make content - teaching, learning, and research resources - available under open licenses. This means the content would be free for people to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. This allows educators to legally harness the full power the Internet has to offer for our students and classrooms.

Watch this short video that explains “Why Open Education Matters”.

OER, and the open sharing of these resources, has great potential to give teachers support, encouragement, enable collaboration, and promote best practices.

OER Commons, is a nonprofit designed to support and build a knowledge base for teachers as they use Open Education Resources. The OER Commons website offers resources for curriculum alignment, quality evaluation, social bookmarking, tagging, rating, and reviewing.

What are some example of OER?

• Full university courses.
• Interactive mini-lessons and simulations.
• Adaptations of existing open work.
• Electronic textbooks.
• Elementary school and high school (K-12) lesson plans, worksheets, and activities.

Edutopia’s Resource Roundup also provides a great “jumping off” point for teachers to begin looking for OER materials. This site provides a variety of links categorized for easy searching. And, of course, don’t forget to check out the resources located in your Pepper Resource Library. If you are looking for OER, or just interested in finding out more, chances are other Pepper teachers are too. Reach out to your Pepper Learning Community to find out how other educators are using OER.

American Education Week: TEACH

As we continue to celebrate American Education Week, today we get to our next letter in “TEACH”:

E = Educate

I had several “E” words in mind as I thought about what to write today: endurance, encourage, engage. But really, when it comes right down to it, there was only one that was the best choice. As teachers we are called to educate children. I love that educate is a verb because there’s definite action in all that a teacher does. I looked up synonyms for educate and here is what I found:

cultivate	develop	enlighten	improve
nurture	instruct	train	coach
edify	foster	mature	inform

As William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

From your Pepper Team, thank you teachers for all of these ways that you actively strive to educate children - to light that fire!

And, another “E” word...enroll. Be sure to enroll in Pepper courses to keep up your own education.

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Teacher Portfolios

Creating a Professional Teaching Portfolio can be an asset whether you a searching for a new position or reflecting on your current one. The use of a portfolio can show your growth as an educator over time as well as highlight your successes. In an article on Scholastic online, Dr. Kenneth Wolf, of the University of Colorado write, "Portfolios have much to offer the teaching profession. When teachers carefully examine their own practices, those practices are likely to improve. The examples of accomplished practice that portfolios provide also can be studied and adapted for use in other classrooms."

According to Dr. Wolf, there are some key elements to include when creating your portfolio. He has split these elements into 3 categories:

Background Information

• resume
• background information on teacher and teaching context
• educational philosophy and teaching goals

Teaching Artifacts and Reflections Documenting an Extended Teaching Activity

• overview of unit goals and instructional plan
• list of resources used in unit
• two consecutive lesson plans
• videotape of teaching
• student work examples
• evaluation of student work
• reflective commentary by the teacher
• additional units/lessons/student work as appropriate

Professional Information

• list of professional activities
• letters of recommendation
• formal evaluations

For ultimate effectiveness, Dr. Wolf recommends annotating the artifacts within the portfolio to give understanding and clarity to the items included.

Teacher portfolios have become increasingly valuable for teachers as they apply both for new positions and for license renewal. In fact, many undergraduate programs require their students to begin assembling portfolios as part of their senior project or exit requirement. Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching provides extensive information for building a professional teaching portfolio - for both new and experienced teachers.

Pepper offers a type of portfolios within their coursework that varies from a traditional portfolio. Participating in Pepper courses allows teachers to submit their reflection/journal entries, tasks, and assignments to a their Pepper Portfolio. As this is done a course specific portfolio of key work to share with others is created. This personal portfolio will be a powerful tool for the organization of all a participant's coursework for future reference and allows the user to select portfolio elements that can made available for others to view for feedback and collaboration.

I’ll be talking more about creating and using Pepper Portfolios next time - how they differ from a traditional portfolio and how to use them. In the meantime be sure to keep learning and growing professionally by completing Pepper courses.

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Overwhelmed and It's Only September: Managing Teacher Stress

I was working in a school, with teachers, last week and they were tired. It’s only September. We were having teacher training after school on a Tuesday; they’d had Open House on Monday and were at school until 8:30 or 9:00 PM; they had a faculty meeting after school on Wednesday to look forward to. Most teachers I work with LOVE teaching. It’s everything else that overwhelms them - after hours professional development, faculty meetings, parent conferences, grade level/content team meetings...the list goes on and on. And, for many teachers, these “extra” tasks/responsibilities follow them home in the evening. So, how does a teacher who’s a month into the school year make it until Winter Break, let alone May?

An 80-question survey sent out to more than 30,000 respondents by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) found that “seven out of every 10 respondents said they “often” felt their work is stressful and nearly eight out of 10 indicated they recently felt physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the work day. Three out of four survey participants said they spend at least two hours on school work either before or after school. Most said the typical work day did not leave them any time to pursue hobbies or leisure activities.”

Elena Aguilar, a Transformational Leadership Coach from Oakland, CA, has written two recent blogs on building resilience and managing stress for teachers. In “Ways to Cultivate Your Emotional Resilience this Year”, Aguilar gives 3 tips to teachers:

1. Build Community - "Feeling connected to your colleagues, your students, their families, and the community in which you work is an essential element in building emotional resilience. We need each other." Pepper's online learning community provides a vast network of teachers and educators from across the county. Teachers are encouraged to network and interact with nationwide peers, learn and share from experiences, and promote and support successes and ideas.  Pepper Professional Development Courses provide opportunities for teacher collaboration through peer discussions and sharing course portfolios.
2. Know Yourself - Identify your purpose and mission as an educator. Set personal goals too. “With self-knowledge comes ability to make choices and decisions that will help build resilience.”
3. Create a Plan for Self-Care - Prioritize sleep, exercise, and nutritious eating.

Her follow-up article, “How Educators Can Manage Stress and Build Resilience”, encourages teachers to look for the positive points in their day to inspire hope and inspiration. Aguilar recommends that teachers keep a journal of these observations to keep them focused on the true reasons they chose teaching.
Teaching is a very challenging and rewarding career. We, at Pepper, are thankful for all that you do and the time that you give. Our goal is to provide meaningful professional development that can be done at a time, place, and pace of a teacher's own choosing. Pepper courses are online, self-paced, available 24/7 to accommodate every teacher's unique schedule. Pepper's course content is immediately applicable to the classroom which, hopefully, will cut down on some stress. As you choose professional development, be sure to visit all of our Pepper course offerings on our website for great options with a blended training approach.

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OnTrack Greenville: One Community's Initiative to Impact At-Risk Middle School Students

Greenville County Schools, a PCG client, is initiating a community-wide project that strives to keep middle school students in Upstate South Carolina engaged in school and “on track” for graduation. A federal Social Innovation Fund grant has provided $3 million to jump start a partnership between the United Way of Greenville County, the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy, the Riley Institute at Furman University, various nonprofit groups and Greenville County Schools to revolutionize one community's ability to help middle school students stay "on track" to graduate and help them build a successful future. One partner, BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life) is aiming to create change by helping schools and communities find innovative ways to expand learning time beyond the traditional school day and school year. Online learning is a great way for students and teachers to have learning opportunities outside the classroom.

“Middle school is a time for students to explore their strengths and start to think about their future,” said Greenville County Schools Superintendent Burke Royster. “But, it is also a time when too many students start to disengage with school and take the first steps on the path towards dropping out of high school, putting their futures at risk.”

According to the United Way of Greenville's website, OnTrack Greenville is focused on implementing an Early Warning and Response System. Piloted effectively in other communities around the country, OnTrack Greenville’s Early Warning and Response System will utilize real-time data to identify students beginning to disengage from school as indicated by attendance, behavior, and course performance. Once a student is identified, a coordinated team of educators and community experts develop a customized plan to match the student with the right response interventions and then monitor his/her progress over time. To see an early warning and response system in action, watch the PBS Frontline special, Middle School Moment.

Pepper has a range of English/Language Arts and Math courses specifically for Middle School. These courses will help you engage your students with meaningful learning activities. You can check out all our courses at Pepperpd.com.

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