Ready to bring R.E.A.L.® to your school?
A series about teachers (who are the main characters of our mission) out there hustling to make their students feel known, heard, and challenged through student-led discussion.
AI is on everyone’s mind – and teachers are no exception. The recent rise in generative AI has educators undergoing somewhat of an existential crisis. If computers are smart enough to write an essay, to analyze text, and to draw connections and conclusions among various sources, what’s left for students to do? If teens have…
Thank you to Patrick Farmer for sharing his REAL life with us! Patrick is a reading/language arts and social studies teacher at Nativity Preparatory School in Boston, Massachusetts. Here are his thoughts on discussion, R.E.A.L.®, and learning. Current City, School, Teaching Assignments: 6th grade Reading/Language Arts and Social Studies Lead Teacher at Nativity Preparatory School…
One of the best parts of our job is seeing how the skills students learn from the R.E.A.L.® program directly affect their performance in class and elsewhere. Our dashboards allow us to gain insight into how students grow in multiple ways — in how they participate in class, in their comfort in expressing themselves, in…
Ellie Walsh-Moots is a Social Studies teacher, former department chair (and Jeopardy! Teachers Tournament quarterfinalist!) who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She is passionate about studying middle leadership – that is, the experience of school leaders who maintain teaching responsibilities – within schools. A Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Grantee, Ellie spent part of 2022 researching…
Thank you to Callie Hammond for sharing her REAL life with us! Callie is an English teacher at Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart in Houston, Texas. Here are her thoughts on discussion, R.E.A.L.®, and learning. Hometown: Concord, NC Current City, School, Teaching Assignments: Houston, Texas at Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart. Currently a…
by Dr. Ralph Covino They say that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Such was the case with my first set of R.E.A.L.® Discussions. To prepare, my girls had gone through each of the skills and – conceptually anyway – knew how to Relate, Excerpt, Ask, and Listen, understood the pass-off protocol, and…
Thank you to Weesie Cook for sharing her REAL life with us! Weesie is an English teacher at McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Here are her thoughts on discussion, R.E.A.L.®, and learning. Hometown: I live in my hometown in Chattanooga. I went to GPS (Girls Preparatory School), which is the sister school to McCallie. So,…
Thank you to Helene Sughrue for sharing her REAL life with us! Helene is an English teacher at Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts. Here are her thoughts on discussion, R.E.A.L.®, and learning. Hometown: Marion, MA Current City, School, Teaching Assignments: Marion, Tabor Academy, English 2, English 2 Honors, Advanced Topics: Rhetoric and Composition. Describe yourself…
by Emily Gromoll, Director of Program We began this school year excited to launch R.E.A.L. Discussion Dashboards, our new action research tool, but we were not sure what to expect. We hoped for a few things: first, that we could learn more about which areas – namely, discussion skills, sense of belonging, growth mindset, etc….
“To me, innovation in education is anything that helps learners make progress that wasn’t being done before. It doesn’t have to involve technology, and it doesn’t have to involve a newfangled design. In many cases innovation can mean executing something more purposefully and deliberately to produce enormous gains.”