The Long Run Listen
Top Education Policy Podcasts for the Week of November 8
I have two very silly running stories from the last two weeks.
First, on my 8 mile long run a couple of weeks ago I accidentally went 9.5 miles. I know that it sounds ridiculous, but there is a reasonable explanation. I didn’t know how to get across one of the bridges back to the East side so I just kept running to the next one and by the time I got home I found that I had gone an extra mile-and-a-half and was extra tired.
Then, this weekend I decided not to take my phone on my run. About a mile from my house I noticed how much I enjoyed hearing the sounds of my city. I stopped at an intersection and actually saw my husband, a city bus driver, at the stoplight in his bus. I continued on my jog after we exchanged a quick wave and smile and noticed a gorgeous rainbow that seemed to be right over the city. I couldn’t help but feel total happiness.
The rainbow quickly turned to a rainstorm. And, by the time I was crossing the river on the Hawthorne Bridge the rainstorm turned into a hailstorm; a very windy and cold one. I was soaked, cold, and trying to get my mental game on because I still had about 4 miles left in my run. Honestly, I loved it. The sensory overload was exhilarating. And, it made for a good laugh when my husband got home from work and asked how the rest of my run went with a ridiculous grin.
Please share your own funny running stories; I’d love to know that I am not the only total goober.
Secretary Cardona and the US Surgeon General penned an op-ed this weekend calling on adults to do their part to prepare students with the tools they need to be mentally and socially healthy and well. We heard this early and often last winter as leaders prepped to bring students back to buildings: we must help students build their stamina for school-time. However there is a need to focus on other parts of the mental game of school. For example, educators can pull from a robust research base on how to engage students in learning so they are simultaneously building social and emotional skills like creativity, persistence, fluency, and flexibility. But, where and how does that show up in school post-COVID?
Addressing the new mental game needed for post-COVID school?
In this week’s podcast on the Harvard EdCast: Learning from Mistakes, host Jill Anderson discusses the role that mistakes play, particularly in early childhood, with author Maleka Donaldson. Donaldson, author of the book From Oops to Aha: Portraits of Learning from Mistakes in Kindergarten, goes into detail about her research on mistake culture in US schools. She discusses how teachers and external factors shape students’ own responses to their mistakes.
Donaldson outlines ways teachers can cue different responses to students’ mistakes in the classroom, creating more positive engagement in learning. She says, “Part of what motivates this work… is showing there are some wildly different classroom cultures, and all of these teachers [can] teach within about a 15 mile radius of each other.” Most of all, like Cardona and Murthy’s op-ed, Donaldson shares a similar call to action: adults have a responsibility right now to create the right conditions for students to learn and thrive.
What are your thoughts on mistake culture? How did it shape your own learning in school? Do you see it being different in schools today?
Dr. Christine M. T. Pitts serves as Resident Policy Fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. As an Oregonian, raised by a multicultural family of educators, she brings over a decade of strategic leadership experience advancing a transformative vision for US education systems and bringing analytic skill to evidence-based policy agendas at all levels of governance. Prior to joining CRPE, Christine led research and evaluation for Portland Public Schools in Oregon and served as Policy Advisor at NWEA. Her academic research, focusing on accountability, governance, and social networks, can be found in Educational Researcher and Teachers College Record. As a lifelong educator, Christine has served in schools across the country as a teacher, reading specialist, and school and district administrator. Christine earned her BS and MAEd at East Carolina University, as well as her PhD at the University of Oregon. Christine lives with her husband and four children in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on Twitter @cmtpitts.