Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

As schools across America embark on a new school year this month, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of students will be playing the often difficult and complex role of “the new kid” this fall where they will have to quickly make new friends, adapt to a new school and a new learning environment, and look for opportunities to bridge the gaps from one school experience to another. It reminds me of my own experience in that role when I made a move from one state to another between sixth and seventh grade. Although schools see a higher than normal number of new students at the start of the school year, the reality is that new students can move into the system at any point during the year. Student mobility, also referred to as churn or transience, happens anytime a student makes a voluntary or involuntary move from one school to another. According to this 2015 report from the National Education Policy Center , “Student mobility is a widespread and often unheralded problem f...

This summer, my ten-year old son Brady and I decided to build a deck around our above ground pool after he convinced me that we could learn how to do it simply by watching this fifteen minute video on You Tube posted by Erie Pennsylvania builder Craig Heffernan His video walks viewers through the entire process of building a deck from start to finish and has been viewed more than 3.8 million times since it was first posted to YouTube in the summer of 2012. Building a deck seemed like a lofty idea to someone like me who had never built something of that magnitude before, but Brady convinced me that we could do it. “If we get stuck, Dad, we can watch another YouTube video. You can learn anything by watching a video on YouTube.” I decide to give my ten year old the benefit of the doubt, and we got to work. After a week in the hot son, amidst a lot of father-son bonding and just a few minor set-backs that required us to watch some follow up videos, we completed our deck project. A...

For the last decade or more, educational technology continues to be one of the hottest trends in American education. With the constant introduction of new tools, devices, and applications, schools continue to look at technology as a way to increase student engagement and lead to deeper learning. A little over a year ago, the New Media Consortium released this report , a detailed look at what technology in the schools will look like over the next five years. To arrive at their findings the group pulled together both research and advice from 56 experts from 22 countries. They concluded that over the next year, schools would see a rise in BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and Makerspaces. Over the next two years, the focus would be on 3D printing and adaptive learning technologies. In the final two years, the trend would be with badges/microcredits and wearable technology. In presenting their report to the world, they opened their presentation with a quote from science-fiction author W...