Watertown, NY, is "seeing a renaissance" in learning
For the first spot on the SOL Tracker, a story of rebirth
Hey there, Bell Ringers—today we’re zooming in on the first spot on the SOL Tracker.
Watertown, New York, a working-class community of about 30,000 people near the Canadian border, is moving from a largely balanced literacy and inquiry-based learning district to the science of learning. Educators and leaders I spoke with there have a profound respect for their new knowledge, and a palpable, sometimes even emotional desire for change and to make a difference for students. Read on below for more!
40 comments and counting: read the Open Thread about the value (or not) of homework
After my appearance last week on NPR’s All Things Considered talking about the value of homework and the available research, I opened up the conversation to The Bell Ringer community to ask what readers—the sharpest educators and parents on the planet—thought about assigning homework, doing homework, and under what circumstances it’s valuable to students.
One thing I learned from the more than 40 comments (and counting) in the thread is that homework is a complex topic, with different challenges and needs at different ages, and should be given much more thought and attention than many are giving it. Even though I’ll still stand by my original statement that homework can be valuable, especially when seen as meaningful practice.
Educators and parents brought up so many important points: how the homework has to be doable for students, how they have to know exactly what it has to do with what they’re working on in class; it has to be valuable practice that moves skills forward; it has to be AI proof because students are prone to take the cognitive shortcut. But often kids are getting dragged down by too much homework, or none at all, or homework that doesn’t necessarily support learning goals.
There’s so much gold in this open thread, I hope you’ll read it here.
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“Watertown is seeing a Renaissance”
Place: Watertown, New York
Why they are on the Tracker: This district is implementing evidence-based practices in reading while also aligning instruction, feedback and assessment with cognitive science on how humans learn. They’re biting off a lot at one time, but leaders see that the science of reading and the science of learning are connected, and want to get every educator moving in the same direction.
Heather Mulford had been teaching third grade for almost a decade in Watertown, New York, when she began feeling frustrated and defeated. She loved her students in the working-class town near the Canadian border, and was working tirelessly for them. But year after year, they made little academic progress. “The kids who got it, got it, and the kids who didn’t, just didn’t, and I didn’t feel like I was making a difference,” she told me recently. “If they came to me behind, they were going to leave behind—or further behind.”
