Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Happy New Year! As we close out 2019 and look forward to what the new year will bring, let’s take a look back at what our profession learned in the last year. From the over twenty-five articles that I wrote for MultiBriefs in 2019, the topics that seemed to have the highest reach with educators focused on topics such as competency-based / personalized learning, mental health and social emotional learning (SEL), and school safety. In this July MultiBriefs Exclusive on the rise of competency-based education (CBE) models, I reported that forty-nine out of fifty states have policies in place to support the model, and in this October MultiBriefs Exclusive I shared an updated definition for CBE developed by the Aurora Institute . Mental health and SEL continued to trend in 2019 as teachers continued to look for ways to meet the needs of their students. Of all the articles I wrote on this topic, this March MultiBriefs E...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Secondary schools have historically relied on tracking as a way to sort students into ability-groups for the expressed purposes of providing appropriate instruction at a “just right” level. Last week I visited a high school with no fewer than five different tracking levels for their 1,500 student population. When talking with teachers in the school, I had to ask the seemingly obvious question -- what is the difference between a level 3 and a level 4 student? Not surprisingly, the responses I received from the teachers in this school had little to do with academic ability and more to do with work study skills. I couldn’t get a clear answer from the group, with each teacher putting their own spin on what the distinction between the levels meant for them and their approach to their classes. Here in lies one of the fundamental flaws with this broken system. It is a system filled with inequity, bias, and at the very lea...

This article was written originally for MultiBriefs Education . Imagine arriving home from work each day and being confronted with tasks to complete as soon as you walk through the door. As adults we typically have a little bit of time to “decompress” after a long day. On our commute home from work we may turn on some calming music or turn off all music and enjoy a few minutes of silence.   Upon arriving home we take a few minutes to get the mail, change our clothes,   and take a few deep breaths before starting dinner or taking our own kids where they need to go.   Now more than ever, in a society where we are expected to be executing one task while simultaneously thinking of the next one we as adults need time to be mindful. Children are rarely afforded these mindful opportunities, and that needs to change. They sit on an often loud bus, enter their classroom, and are expected to get right to their morning work. Time is a precious commodity, especially in a ...