If you’ve ever coached a sport’s team, you may have noticed how the process of coaching baseball players and teachers is so much alike. Contemplate the chorus in John Fogerty’s 1985 song, Centerfield: Oh, put me in coach, I’m ready to play today. Put me in coach, [...]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 1 in 59 children in the United States have autism. Autism is not a predictable or uniform disability – it presents differently in every child – so there’s no “one size fits all” approach to autism education. To show special education students [...]

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to the change the world.”—Nelson Mandela As educators, we must work to meet the needs of all learners in our classrooms. To do this, we must participate in continuous professional learning and self-reflection. We are obliged to study [...]

By Janelle Paul, M.S., CCC-SLP, Supervisor of Specialized Services, Catapult Learning Earlier in the month, I wrote about caring for your teacher voice in Part I of my blog highlighting National Better Hearing & Speech Month. But it wouldn’t be Better Hearing and Speech Month without some tips about hearing [...]

By Janelle Paul, M.S., CCC-SLP, Supervisor of Specialized Services, Catapult Learning I am excited to inform you that May is National Better Hearing and Speech Month! As a speech-language pathologist (SLP), I often use this month as an opportunity to provide knowledge and tips about good vocal hygiene and good listening [...]

STEM certainly is a hot topic in education right now, and for good reason. A strong STEM curriculum does more than just focus on skill instruction; it provides learners with an integrated approach that brings together their knowledge from different core areas and allows them opportunities for tangible problem-solving that [...]

During a visit to our school’s eucalyptus grove this year, I was amazed to watch a group of our kindergartners demonstrating the student agency inherent to this age group. Watching these young people interact in natural surroundings was witnessing student agency at its finest. Without prompting or instruction, [...]

Many educators are intrigued with the idea of using educational technology in their classrooms and with their students. And they want to move past the productivity stage to the point of truly enhancing their own teaching and their students’ learning through educational tools. However, there are so many [...]

Two years ago, I wrote my first blog for Catapult’s EduBlog, titled “Back to the Future of Special Education.” That blog post explored the question, “What is special about special education?” from the perspective of the importance in taking a diagnostic and prescriptive approach to special education. Two [...]

"Education is all a matter of building bridges.” —Ralph Ellison One of my favorite television shows is Modern Family, and a favorite character on the show is Cam, the self-proclaimed farm boy from “Missoura” who often refers to his upbringing with tales that often include hog raising and [...]

In my years in education, no single statement from a teacher ever shook me more than from a struggling individual who—in a stressful moment—proclaimed to me, “I don’t know what’s going wrong! I’m up there teaching, they’re just not learning!” Awful as that is, it was a good [...]

Can you imagine a classroom where all students think and learn at high levels and demonstrate clear depth of understanding? The classroom described above does exist beyond the limits of our imagination and can become a reality when teachers use instructional strategies that engage students and both encourage [...]

Ask any builder and they will tell you the most essential part of creating a home that will stand the test of time and endure the elements is a strong foundation. A focus on 21st Century Learning and Innovation Skills has prompted schools to identify opportunities for students [...]

Let me start out by saying that I appreciate the attention to “best practices” that goes into the creation of the professional development (PD) sessions that consultants like myself deliver to teachers. The work of a consultant is challenging, time consuming, and sometimes grueling. To do what we [...]

“Show respect even to people who don’t deserve it; not as a reflection of their character, but as a reflection of yours.” —Dave Willis “Who cares?” is a question sometimes posed by apathetic students in the classroom, but it’s not a question that I expect to hear from [...]

This blog is the second of a two-part series on Learner Voice. In my last blog post, I discussed how teachers can use the Spectrum of Student Voice Oriented Activity to reflect on how they can start moving their classroom activities from being teacher-directed to more student-directed. In [...]

Think about the many PowerPoint presentations you have sat through. Add the PowerPoint presentations that you yourself have given. I am pretty sure the total is quite high. Now try and remember the most recent presentation you attended—and the key concepts that were presented. In most cases, you [...]

Research has shown that developing learner voice may be the most powerful lever available to improve student learning in schools. Students learn better when they are engaged partners throughout the educational process.1 When students plan educational activities, their investment, ownership, and consequent learning is greatly increased.2 At Catapult [...]

Navigating the autism community and differentiating between what may be “the buzz” and what is an evidenced-based strategy is often difficult for teachers and parents alike. Further compounding this navigation is that the media often covers only fads, or “quick fixes,” rather than those strategies that have been [...]

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” —Peter Drucker, author and founder of Drucker Business Institute A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview a superintendent and a school board member for a graduate school assignment on [...]

Leadership Development: Start with the mission and a vision for your organization Excellent schools need excellent leaders whose principles and practices align with the school’s educational mission and vision. They are inspired and motivated by the vision of excellence and possess the desire and skills necessary for making [...]

Over the course of 40+ years in Special Education, my enduring passion has been dedicated to individuals with significant reading disabilities (Dyslexia). Historically, professionals working with this population have largely targeted individuals of average or above average intellectual ability who had an unexpected difficulty learning to read relative [...]

The partnership for 21st Century Learning, or “P21,” was founded in 2002, intending to bring together the business community, education leaders, and policy makers in order to, “position 21st century readiness at the center of US K-12 education and to kick-start a national conversation on the importance of [...]

As an educator married to an entomologist–a scientist who studies insects–I think it is safe to say I know far more about the six-legged creatures that inhabit this earth than the average person. After sitting in multiple study sessions with graduate students and doing field work for my [...]

Maybe you are wondering why I stated that ALL students should learn to code. Well, besides the fact that coding, also called programming, is a skill set that students could use for a future career in a world that has a shortage of skilled coders and programmers, coding [...]

As educators, we know that environment influences learning, and in particular, that classroom environments influence literacy development. We also know this to be true for grades Pre-K−12.While the start of school is still a week away for some of us, I wanted to write about a topic that [...]

In The Special Education Teacher Identity Crisis: Prescriptive or Pragmatic? Part I, I discussed the special education teacher “identity crisis” as it relates to taking a more diagnostic/prescriptive role to planning instruction versus a more pragmatic role. I also described my observations of two special education teachers at [...]

As we look back at the blogs posted by our EduExperts over the last eleven months,  we notice several topics popular with our blogs readers throughout the 2015−16 school year. These topics range from the Every Student Succeeds Acts (ESSA) to differentiated instruction to special education and more. Following is a list of [...]

Preparing students for the real world is central to current education pedagogy. To do this, educators create problem- and project-based learning assignments, encourage students to work collaboratively, develop engaging lessons, and produce a myriad of learning opportunities and assessments.  Whether we are talking about project-based learning, inquiry learning, [...]

Ahh . . . summer is here and for most students that means vacation, free time, swimming, and no more school work. For parents and teachers, though, there are concerns that students, while enjoying their summer freedom, will lose some of the academic gains made during the school [...]

Hard to believe, but yet another school year has come and gone and now it’s time to chart a course for maximizing your summer break. What a tremendous chance to decompress, devour a few good books, and engage in a little personal learning. If you’re like me, you [...]

“Between the idea and the reality . . . falls the shadow.”      —T.S. Eliot A new report from our friends at the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” provides data on student performance in reading and mathematics across multiple [...]

It is true, no two learners are alike. Some learn better through reading; others through listening or doing. For students with developmental disabilities, who have difficulty communicating with others and especially difficulty understanding what people in their environment are communicating to them, it is important to present information [...]

Students with special needs have unique strengths, motivators, preferences, and interests in a learning environment. By identifying and addressing these elements, educators can encourage a higher level of engagement. In experience-based learning, facilitators take a step-back approach—allowing for natural discovery of consequences and problem-solving-based learning The result of [...]

As I looked at the calendar and considered what I wanted to write about in this blog, I started to reflect on my last few months of work-related travel and my conversations with school leaders throughout the country. I also thought about the countless conversations about education that [...]

Over the course of my many classroom visits and teacher observations throughout my career, I am truly in awe of the master teacher. These teachers live and breathe all aspects of the teaching and learning process, from expert planning to delivery of engaging, differentiated lessons. They exude confidence [...]

Educators can readily identify the student who seems to lack motivation. While he or she is generally not a behavior problem in the classroom, the unmotivated student can cause a teacher many sleepless nights. There are a variety of labels used to describe a student who just doesn’t [...]

Believe it or not, Twitter joined the digital world approximately ten years ago. A decade is ancient when it comes to technology, and for many teachers, Twitter has not been a friend. How many times have you had to tell your students to get off Twitter over the [...]

“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”       —Annie Dillard The South by Southwest (SXSW) Education conference just wrapped up, and I thought I’d take a moment to share some notes and thoughts for [...]

Women’s History Month began last week. In 1980, President Carter signed documents proclaiming March 2−8 to be Women’s History Week; by 1987, Congress passed a proclamation establishing March as Women’s History Month. This year’s theme is “Working to Form a More Perfect Union: Honoring Women in Public Service [...]

Downey, et al. (2009) described the persistent and chronic nature of achievement gaps in our educational system as “the most complex and compelling educational dilemma facing schools in the 21st century.” Since the passage of NCLB in 2001—a law at its very essence designed to erase decades of [...]

Outside the classroom, the word “intervention” has pretty clear associations. Think of the literal meaning of the word—a coming between—and how it manifests itself in our culture. We all know of instances where people have had to place themselves in someone else’s pathway and make them travel in [...]

“Evidence shows that effective teachers are the most important in-school contributors to student learning.” —from “Best Practices for Evaluating Teacher Ed. Programs” How do we prepare effective teachers? What are the components of an effective teacher preparation program? To begin researching the answer, I wrote the blog “Teacher [...]

As we celebrate the start of a new year, we simultaneously approach the midway point of the school year. This is a great opportunity to reflect on what has been accomplished academically for our students and take stock of what might require a “reset” based on current trends. [...]

“Action expresses priorities.”   —Gandhi “Action is the foundational key to all success.”   —Pablo Picasso A new year has begun, and along with it come the resolutions–to eat better, exercise more, read more, stay in touch with friends, travel; the list goes on. The beginning of a new year [...]