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McREL
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Our expert researchers, evaluators, and veteran educators synthesize information gleaned from our research and blend it with best practices gathered from schools and districts around the world to bring you insightful and practical ideas that support changing the odds of success for you and your students. By aligning practice with research, we mix professional wisdom with real world experience to bring you unexpectedly insightful and uncommonly practical ideas that offer ways to build student resiliency, close achievement gaps, implement retention strategies, prioritize improvement initiatives, build staff motivation, and interpret data and understand its impact.

Aug 28
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Using curious conversations to build better classroom relationships

By Blog

One of the more interesting findings to emerge from studies of curiosity (which I share in my new book, Building a Curious School) is this: Curious people have better relationships.That’s likely because when we’re curious, we ask people questions—about their interests, values, and aspirations. In short, we learn what makes them tick. On top of that, the same studies find that curious people are generally more likable: We all enjoy being around someone who shows genuine interest in us—and conversely we feel irked when a supposed friend goes on and on about themselves without ever inquiring about our own lives.

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Aug 17
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For teachers, physical absence is no barrier to emotional presence

By Blog

As we begin (or for our Australian colleagues, continue) a school year unlike any in memory, I’m reminding our partner schools that good instruction is good instruction regardless of the location or platform where the teaching and learning happen. Of course, “good” is a subjective term, so how do I define good instruction? One concept has been my guiding light and always will be, regardless of what challenges the universe throws our way: Relationships.

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Jul 17
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Glen Pearsall on simple answers to complex questions

By Blog

Glen Pearsall, the Australian educator, teacher coach, and co-author of McREL’s new book Tilting Your Teaching: Seven Simple Shifts That Can Substantially Improve Student Learning, has encountered just about every challenge a teacher can imagine—and usually helped to resolve it. Recently we did an email Q-and-A with Glen from his home base in Melbourne. The common thread: Small changes can have big benefits.

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Jun 09
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Educational technology gets a new level of scrutiny

By Blog

In an era when we all have access to copious information to help us make even the most trivial buying decisions, it’s odd that good data can be hard to find when the stakes are really high. When it comes to buying educational technology for classroom or administrative use, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is aimed at changing this by insisting that companies provide evidence that their products or interventions are effective.

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May 12
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How the COVID-19 crisis could be a boon to curiosity

By Blog, Books, Curiosity

At an age when learning should be more engaging—high school students ought to be to exploring the deep mysteries of the universe, encountering great literature that reveals our shared humanity, and mastering the elegant language of mathematics that helps them solve complex problems—they’re bored out of their minds. Why should that be? Numerous studies point to the missing ingredient—something we observe in abundance in younger children, only to watch it slip away as they progress through school: curiosity. In this moment, teachers have the rare opportunity to engage students in some productive and semi-structured “unschooling.”

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