Topic “teachers”

By Kevin Simpson The Denver Post For 10-year-old Kaitlyn Chin, the first few weeks of school came packed with holidaylike anticipation — especially when the fourth-grader at Legacy Academy in Elizabeth saw boxes delivered to the building. "I would always hope they were the iPads," she says. And finally, they arrived — a wave of tablet devices that, combined with other Apple technology, created a schoolwide learning system based largely on the second-generation iPad2. "The first day we could bring them home, I was up all night," recalls Kaitlyn. "I learned so many things, it really shocked me." Well into a first, full year of experimentation, many educators also describe a steep learning curve with their introduction to the popular touch-screen tablet. Students use the $600 devices to read novels, shoot videos, conduct research, hone their writing skills and bring new...

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Include, Belong, Learn, by George Theoharis and Julie Causton-Theoharis (associate professors at Syracuse University in New York) Two schools serving many students with disabilities show it's possible to let everyone learn together. --------- Kenny is a student at River View, a public K–8 school in central New York. Kenny spent his first few school years in a self-contained special education class because, according to an evaluation, he was "too disabled to be in the general education setting." In Kenny's 4th grade year, River View undertook a new schoolwide intervention. As part of that change, Kenny began learning in a general education classroom. Within a year, he no longer qualified for special education because he had made such significant academic progress. At River View—and a similar school that serves K–6 grades called Summer Heights—more students are now achieving at grade level in math and at a proficient or advanced level in reading than was the case before these schools rolled out a schoolwide intervention. Achievement went up for both nondisabled students...

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