Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

My two oldest sons Brady (age 9) and Cameron (age 7) are addicted to the video game Minecraft . If my wife Erica and I didn’t heavily limit their time using it, it is quite possible they would spend days on end building new worlds in this interactive game. Last weekend, they built a model of the Manchester New Hampshire airport, complete with a baggage claim area and several aircraft parked at gates and getting ready for take-off. Like many parents, Erica and I embrace the use of this game because we see so many learning opportunities for our boys. Recently The Atlantic ’s Rey Junco reported out on the educational benefits of games like Minecraft in the article Beyond ‘Screen Time:’ What Minecraft Teaches Kids . Junco encouraged teachers to incorporate the game into their classrooms, with suggestions that included: Letting kids share what they are building in the game and having them describe how they are interacting with their peers; setting up Minecraft hackathons where st...

Teachers, make this your year to make better use of rubrics and a rubric scale for your assignments and your courses. If you do so, according to Edudemic blogger Katie Lepi , you will show improvement in instruction, assessment, performance, expectations, directions, assignment quality, self-evaluation, grading quality, and feedback. She noted this in her recent article 18 Ways to Use Rubrics in Education .   Veteran English teacher and educational blogger and speaker Tom Whitby talks about his adoption of rubrics in his recent blog article My Limited Understanding of Rubrics . He recounts his early career as an English teacher in the 1970’s and how he could never quite get over the subjectivity of grading until he was introduced to rubrics. In his own words, he wrote: “I found the process in developing these Rubrics eye-opening. For the first time, I had a clear understanding of what it was I was looking for with specific guidelines and values. It was no longer a gut ...

Sanborn Regional High School held its annual Academic Awards Ceremony on September 15, 2014 to recognize honored students from the school year 2013-2014.   Congratulations to all our honored students.   PRESIDENT’S EDUCATION AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE:   Megan Alix, Felicia Bailey, Austin Clough, Haley Corning, Brooke Fenderson, Jameela Francis, Meagan French, Sarah Hart, Megan Howell, Sara Hunt, Ethan Johnson, Sofia Kruger, Taela Leek, Shelby Lennon, Amanda Moulaison, Nicole Nault, Kaleigh Santos, Francesca Sciacca, and Kayla Troy. STUDENTS OF THE YEAR IN THE AREA OF UNIFIED ARTS AND SCIENCES:   John Henry LeGault, Daniel Bartley, Taylor Szot STUDENTS OF THE YEAR IN THE AREA OF THE HUMANITIES:   Michelle LeGault,   Victoria LeBlanc, Amanda Moulaison STUDENTS OF THE YEAR IN THE AREA OF MATH AND SCIENCE:   Andrew Hunt, Prudence Ross, Amanda Moulaison DARTMOUTH COLLEGE BOOK AWARD: Taela Leek HARVARD COLLEGE BO...

Mr. Stack writes occasionally for the blog www.competencyworks.org , which is read by teachers and administrators all over the country. Below is an article that was submitted for publication this week: One of the keys to the early success of our competency education model at Sanborn Regional High School has been the inclusion of a flexible grouping period that is built into our daily bell schedule. For the past four years, our Freshman Learning Community teachers have benefited from having this flexible time to personalize instruction and provide students with support for intervention, extension, and as needed throughout the school year. Three years ago we added this flexible time to our Sophomore Learning Community structure. Now as we enter the 2014-2015 school year, this flexible time model has been expanded to include all four grade levels in our high school. Our flexible grouping period is known as the Focused Learning Period at Sanborn Regional High School, and i...