Author: Derek Neal

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Posts by Derek Neal

Post-Pandemic Preparation: Reimagining Middle School Partnerships

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COVID-19 created unprecedented challenges but also served as a catalyst to rethink important aspects of our schools. One area where I see a big opportunity is to reimage middle school culture. AMLE’s landmark position paper The Successful Middle School: This We Believe highlights the importance of engaging families as valued partners and collaborating with community

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12 Questions to Ask When Designing Culturally and Historically Responsive Curriculum

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Let’s engage students with learning pursuits, rather than standards Culturally and historically responsive education is both a theory and model to respond to students’ histories, identities, literacies and liberation in pedagogy. In addition, this approach is a collaborative model where youth voices are at the center and caregivers and community members are our partners in

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How to help students regain their academic mojo after a year of stress

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In the winter of seventh grade, my math teacher handed me a graded test that had a big “45%” at the top circled in red. “Your counselor is expecting you,” she said to me in a low voice. “You need to go right now. Take your stuff.” My stomach twisted into knots as I made

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Re-Learning and Re-Assessing: Practical Tips

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Not everyone is comfortable with re-do’s and re-takes, which are more appropriately recognized as re-learning (or learning properly) and re-assessing. Some of us experience pushback when suggesting these practices to colleagues, then succumb to those pressures thereby denying their use in our classes. As a result, our students don’t learn the required content and skills.

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What We Have Gained

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So much discussion has focused on what students have gained, or lost, during this time of interrupted learning. But what have we, the educators, gained? Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, while most school buildings were closed and our society pivoted suddenly to learning and working from home, we heard a nearly universal outpouring of gratitude

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