Schools Reimagined

Book excerpt: The pause in the traditional structure of schooling due to COVID-19 presents a unique opportunity for openness on many different levels: openness to the science of learning, openness to schoolwork centered around big ideas and authentic problems, openness to responsible assessment practices, and openness to a renewed ethic of social justice. In this book the authors make the case that now is a timely moment to reimagine schools and put the intellectual and social-emotional health of students and teachers at the center of the educational process. They offer practical classroom examples across disciplines and grade levels based on constructivist pedagogy, neuroscience research, psychological theory, and design thinking, as well as on their own experiences in observing and advancing instructional practice that fosters human development. Schools Reimagined will help administrators and teachers to structure their settings in ways that maximize the likelihood of meaningful and enduring student learning. Book Features: An approach for placing the well-being of students, teachers, and community at the center of schools.An accessible explanation of the sophisticated cognitive processes in which all people engage.Strategies and innovations that focus educators on student learning and the student agency that promotes it.Research-based approaches to schooling with specific examples of what they look like in action.Rolling summaries of the main points of each chapter throughout the text.