McREL CEO Bryan Goodwin presented at a large international conference in Doha, Qatar, in April, and the Gulf Times took note. The paper noted that Goodwin, under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department, traveled to the Fourth Annual International Education Conference of the Qatar Ministry of Education and Higher Education to share McREL’s findings on applying the science of learning to instructional design, as well as what school leaders can do to support effective schools. The conference, themed “Education That Makes a Difference,” drew 1,000 educators from the Persian Gulf states and beyond, the paper said.
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McREL International CEO Bryan Goodwin and his counterpart at Community Training and Assistance Center, William J. Slotnik, dug into the research related to a commonly held belief that teachers’ professional skills reach a plateau early in their careers and then barely budge. Their reexamination of the research found this conventional wisdom to be a fallacy, as they outline in the April 2019 issue of Phi Delta Kappan. The authors then present key ways that districts can set aside these past beliefs and encourage a lifetime of learning with a smarter approach to talent development.
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The education technology publication THE Journal reported on a grant project of McREL International and the Global Grid for Learning to disburse $25 million worth of safety solutions to as many as 500 schools, and then study the effectiveness of the technologies deployed. The 16 participating vendors focus on a wide variety of safety-related issues, from emotional well-being to managing sports injuries to keeping in touch with parents. McREL’s role will be to build “a better evidence base that helps educators and parents make informed decisions about which approaches will work best for their students and schools,” CEO Bryan Goodwin said.
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Education Week blogger Larry Ferlazzo turned to McREL CEO Bryan Goodwin and other leading education commentators for his Thanksgiving question of the week: What are effective strategies for having students teach their classmates and other peers? McREL has embraced reciprocal teaching and peer feedback (among teachers as well as students) for years and, as Goodwin shared in the blog, they are important components of several of our books, quick guides, and whitepapers, including Classroom Instruction That Works and The 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching. Goodwin acknowledges that students can feel awkward at first about giving and receiving peer feedback, and gives a few protocols teachers can use to help students ease into their new role as peer educators. “Reciprocal teaching is a good strategy to help students capture, organize, and reflect on important facts, concepts, ideas, and processes they will need to access later,” he said.
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Michigan’s Richmond Community Schools may only have three buildings, but that isn’t stopping it from thinking big for student success. Because McREL partners with regional educational service agencies across the United States, small districts like Richmond have access to world-class professional learning that might otherwise be out of reach. In this instance, as reported by The Voice newspaper, one of the district’s top goals for the 2018–19 school year is to send a five-teacher contingent to Macomb ISD, their local service agency, for PD on McREL’s Classroom Instruction That Works® (CITW), a research-based instructional framework that helps educators focus on the nine most effective strategies to create a great classroom environment for learning and help students develop deep understanding and application of new knowledge. Macomb ISD’s staff have been trained and authorized by McREL to deliver CITW professional development in their region. The district’s elementary school principal told the school board that CITW supports his top goals of improving student achievement in reading, writing, and math, the paper reported.