In early 2009, the Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) at Harvard University highlighted 15 high schools from around the country that have significantly improved student achievement. AGI is a university-wide conference held by the Harvard Graduate School of Education that focuses on public education. Many of the featured schools are underprivileged and the majority of the students are minorities. The AGI identified excellent schools from Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Texas, and Washington DC. The report “How High Schools Become Exemplary” sums up the research that was conducted in 2009.

Halloween will be here soon. Why not make your class part of the festivities? Kids can learn fun, creative, and educational ways of celebrating this holiday in the safe environment of your classroom.

Below are several possible resources and ideas from the web to help you plan your Halloween class. Please click on the links for complete descriptions, instructions, and additional resources.

Teacher and author Lynda Wade Sentz presents innovative strategies for involving parents in their children's writing instruction in the unique, new book Write with Me: Partnering with Parents in Writing Instruction. Read below for a tip from the book.

How much do you know about interactive whiteboards? In this post you'll hear from Amy Buttner, author of the upcoming Eye On Education title Getting the MOST Out of Your Interactive Whiteboard: A Practical Guide. Buttner shares her thoughts about using interactive whiteboards in the classroom. If you missed the first post about the basics of interactive whiteboards, click here.

How much do you know about interactive whiteboards? In this post, you'll learn about the basics of interactive whiteboards, including the brands to know and where to look for more information. In the second post of this series, you'll hear from Amy Buttner, author of Activities, Games, and Assessment Strategies for the Foreign Language Classroom and the upcoming Eye On Education title Getting the MOST Out of Your Interactive Whiteboard: A Practical Guide.

Eye On Education recently published Annette Breaux's newest poetry book, 101 Poems for Teachers. The book is illustrated by L. Susan Brandt. Read below for a poem and strategy about taking responsibility for the successes and failures of your students.

Author and real-life team Carole Goodman and Christopher Berry wrote Great Assistant Principals and the (Great) Principals Who Mentor Them for principals and assistant principals to read and reflect on together. Read below for their guidance on the importance of honest communication between the principal and assistant principal.

In a middle school classroom in Connecticut, students are exploring a creative new way to combine education and technology by writing their own blog and making their own podcasts. On the “Lunch Time Leaders Podcast,” Paul Bogush’s social studies students “interview leaders from around the world” and talk about how students can prepare for the future. Their class blog, “The Greatest School Blog in the World,” serves as an online platform for homework assignments, planning class time, communicating about different projects (sometimes even with other classes), and sharing student work...

Teachers and parents both have important - and different - jobs. When Amy Benjamin, an experienced teacher, needed help motivating her son in school, she gained perspective on the significance of her job as a teacher.

In our monthly E-News, we bring you the latest education news, resources, and classroom ideas from the Eye On Education Blog and other blogs we read. Click below for our favorite educational blog posts from the past month. If you would like to have E-News sent right to your inbox, click here to sign-up.

Last year, Lonnie Moore wrote The High-Trust Classroom for Eye On Education. The book presents a road map to earning the trust of students, parents and colleagues. A high-trust classroom will impact your ability to unleash the full potential of your students and to convince them of their own potential. It will also help your classroom operate more efficiently and improve student achievement. Read below to learn about the book and its author, Lonnie Moore.

John D. Strebe's book Engaging Mathematics Students Using Cooperative Learning shows K-12 teachers how to create a collaborative classroom where students learn together. Although the book is tailored for mathematics students, the strategies have been effectively used in many subject areas. Read below for a team-building activity.

In an article in The Wall Street Journal about the potential pitfalls of parent-teacher conferences, writer Jeffrey Zaslow featured quotes from School-Community Relations author Douglas J. Fiore. The piece cited miscommunication among adults due to parents' sensitivities and the possibility of teachers speaking too negatively of students as two reasons parents have often skipped conferences entirely and teachers tend to dread them.

Teachers are often reluctant to incorporate rigor in their classrooms, believing it involves making their lessons more difficult than necessary. In fact, rigor is about increasing complexity, not difficulty. Greater complexity, when applied well in the classroom, develops students' critical thinking skills both in and out of the classroom. With strategies that link rigor to critical-thinking skills as well as another technique widely seen to improve student achievement, formative assessments, Critical Thinking and Formative Assessments: Increasing the Rigor in Your Classroom by Betsy Moore and Todd Stanley is an ideal guide for teachers looking to increase classroom complexity overall.