In this episode, we present the five principles of assessment empowerment—learner context, learning environments and relationships, appropriate purpose, responsive learning cycles, communication—and offer listeners strategies they can try for each.

In this episode, we discuss information why and how teaching programs fail to prepare gen ed teachers for working with students with disabilities, break down a few common myths about students with disabilities, and give teachers actionable ideas and strategies for building student agency with their entire class. Our guests are two NWEA experts in special education: Douglas Buttorff (content designer) and Elizabeth Barker (accessibility research scientist).

In this discussion, we cover how to recognize the assets emergent bilingual students bring with them, how to get back into the groove of academic language, and how to make room for both language and communication with English language learners.

In this conversation, we venture into the domain specific ways we, as educators, can empower students within our classrooms.

This episode will explore elements of culturally responsive teaching, supportive environments, and the actions that educators and leaders can take to create a space where students belong, feel valued, and thereby are more likely to take risks, make mistakes, and build a sense of self-efficacy that will serve them well in their academic journeys and in their lives beyond school.

This session examines elements of student ‘voice and choice’ as critical enabling elements needed to build in students that kind of self-efficacy that will help them thrive and meet their full potential as learners.

Teachers have tremendously complex jobs and a constantly shifting ecosystem of expectations, yet despite shifts across so many other areas of educational practice, building student agency remains a key desired classroom outcome that educators generally recognize as an area of need. This conversation will give teacher voice to the importance of student agency, varied practitioner views on the opportunities and challenges related to building student agency, and a frame for the season that will prepare listeners to hear about topics ranging from supportive environments and goal setting to meeting the unique needs of students with disabilities and emergent bilinguals.