Entries by The Learner First

A Contribution Solution

This post by The Learner First’s Joanne McEachen and Matthew Kane was originally published by Getting Smart.   Educational equity bears tremendous importance in traditional systems of learning. Everywhere, we dedicate significant time and resources, and in some cases even professional roles, to creating an equitable academic experience. Ideology cries out, “School should be fair!” […]

Teachers’ Moral Injury

I recently came across an article from STAT that discusses the moral injury experienced by physicians – injury commonly misclassified as “burnout.” It argues that burnout is a wrongful diagnosis that speaks to a lack of resilience or resourcefulness, while in reality there’s a far deeper source of their struggles: the health system’s failure to […]

Setting out on the Journey to System-Wide Wellbeing

Goldendale School District is a district of three schools (one primary, one middle, and one high school) and 920 students located in Washington State. To help kick off the 2019-20 school year, teachers and other school- and district-level staff engaged in The Learner First’s Wellbeing First Workshop, designed to promote professional wellbeing in ways that […]

Karanga: A Call out in Welcome to Better Lives for Learners

“While the previous industrial era demanded that nations provide one-size-fits-all mass education, the current digital revolution demands personalized, holistic education that will prepare humans to identify and develop their own talent, competencies and emotions . . .” – From “Education for Tomorrow’s World, Today” by Manjula Dissanayake and Dominic Regester Executive Team members Louka Parry […]

No. Test Scores Can’t Validate OR Invalidate New Measures of Success.

As a developer of tools that measure traditionally “hard-to-measure” learning outcomes, I’m frequently asked the same question by educators: “Why don’t you compare students’ new measures data with their standardized test results?” If you did, they continue . . . “Then you could prove what you’re doing is working.” This line of reasoning carries the […]

Wellbeing First

When working with teachers and school-level leadership through the question of what matters most at their school, I like to tell them a tale of two students. Meet Lucas and Jasmine – two students whose stories are partially described in the following table of data, which includes Learning Progression ratings for Self-Understanding, Creativity, and Connection. […]

Community & Contribution: How Can Schools Improve Their Communities?

Communities across the United States share a common and worthy concern: how can our community improve its schools? The value we place on individuals’ education stems from the long-standing promise of the American school system that receiving an education leads to better-paying jobs, reduced inequality, and lifelong success. But despite being more highly educated than […]