Currently, the weather is warm and many of you are anticipating the end of another school year. While some teachers are hoping to complete their academic materials, others are already looking forward to the next school year and what it may hold.

Many times we hear or read articles that apply educational theories to classroom teaching. I am quite sure that at this time of the school year, theories are not a top priority in your classroom. Let’s take a closer look at the education in Nebraska and examine what will be happening and what might be on the horizon. I will present some educational components from the

Nebraska Unicameral and some legal considerations that may impact school systems.

Suicide awareness and prevention for all school personnel having contact with students will be required through the passage of LB 923. A mandatory one-hour online training will be available through NDE starting August 1, 2015. The system is designed to document the training for each participant.

During the current legislative session there are several legislative bills that will impact school systems. Senator Davis introduced LB 477, which changes the provisions relating to school districts maintaining the only public high school in a county. There are two bills, LB 616 and LB 103 that address charter schools

and student participation in public schools. There are several bills that deal with financial issues for schools and bills that impact teacher certification. These bills may not be passed by the legislature but they do give an indication of what may happen in the future. Information on legislative bills can be found at nebraskalegislature.gov.

Legal advice has been distributed to schools on the following issues: health care, transgender students and staff, bullying, and same-sex marriage. Right now, you are probably wondering when there is time in the day to teach in light of all these issues facing public education.

My advice is to focus on students and plan on having a great summer!

This February, technology staff members from ESU #17 had the opportunity to attend a conference in California. The conference focused on using the data gathered in BrightBytes surveys to create effective models for agency/school technology initiatives. Now, with the BrightByte’s CASE dashboard with data from the ESU level, we can understand the technology readiness of our own organization as well as area schools. In order to lead transformation we must create an infrastructure that supports modern learning. Modern learning should involve technology. With Clarity’s 21st Century Service Agency module, we now have the research and analysis to understand our agency’s level of technology readiness alongside clear,

personalized recommendations for improvement.

At the two-day event in February, Becky LeZotte and Patty Finney examined our service agency data. Service agencies from Texas, Iowa, California, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Nebraska were represented at this event. Becky and Patty were able to evaluate the data and make some action plans based on the needs of our staff. A couple interesting data points include:

Long-term professional development that models the type of learning expected of students is needed in order for educators to leverage technology tools that develop 21st century skills (Delaney, 2011).

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“Teachers who have a positive sense of competence in using technology are more likely to use it. In contrast, those who do not have confidence in using a certain technology are unlikely to engage themselves in teaching and learning activities that involve it” (Yeung et al., 2012). This BrightBytes Leadership module takes the guessing out of professional development by linking school leadership practices to improvements in learning outcomes. This model will help us prioritize our own professional development initiatives and help elevate unit-wide conversations around initiatives to pursue by using objective research and analysis.

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IDEA requires that students of transition age be invited to attend their IEP meetings. Students need to learn the roles of IEP team members, IEP terminology, IEP transition content, and what they need to do and say at their IEP meetings. Students who become actively involved in their meetings have better post-school employment and education outcomes.

As educators, we need to teach students these important skills. The website www.imdetermined.org has some great examples of how we can teach students to become actively involved. This year I have started my second graders with being involved in their IEP meeting. They have enjoyed it as well as the other IEP team members.

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Treatment depends on which you have. A health professional can help you choose the best therapy.

Common Cold Symptoms last up to 2

weeks Stuffy, runny nose; sore

throat; cough Treated with rest, fluids,

over-the-counter (OTC) medicines to ease symptoms

Seasonal Flu Symptoms usually last 1-2

weeks High fever (100-102 °F, or

higher in youngsters), headache, aches and pains, weakness, exhaustion, cough, chest discomfort

Treated with rest, fluids, OTC medicines, prescription antiviral drugs

Airborne Allergy Lasts as long as allergens

(such as pollen, pet dander) are present

Stuffy, runny nose; itchy, watery eyes

Treated with antihista-mines, decongestants, nasal steroids

- Reprinted with permission from NIH News in Health, October 2014 Issue, http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/

oct2014/feature2

In this working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research,

Leonardo Bursztyn and Robert Jensen report on their study of the effect

of peer pressure on students’ academic decisions in four large Los

Angeles high schools. A little over 800 students were given the

opportunity to sign up for a popular SAT prep course, free of charge.

Half of the students were told their decision to enroll would be kept

private, the other half that it would be made public – in other words,

their classmates would know. In non-honors courses, students who

believed their choice would be made public were significantly less likely

(11 percentage points) to sign up than those who believed their choice

would remain private. There was clearly a social cost in this peer group

to being seen as an academic striver. In honors courses, there was no

difference in the number of sign-ups in the public versus private group.

Bursztyn and Jensen ran the experiment again with students who were

taking two honors courses and at least one non-honors. When these

students were offered the free SAT course in a non-honors class, they

were 25 percent less likely to sign up, but when they were asked to sign

up in one of their honors classes, they were 25 percent more likely to

enroll. Another variable was whether students believed it was important

to be popular: students for whom this was a priority were especially

unlikely to sign up if they believed their choice would be made public,

but this was not true for students who said popularity was not

important.

“Changing cultural norms is obviously a difficult thing to do,” concludes

Amber Northern in her Education Gadfly review of this study, “but we

need to recognize that, when actions are observable, some kids may act

counter to their best interests.”

Reprinted with permission from Marshall Memo 551, September 8, 2014. Article is a summary of: “Five Ways to Help Your Students Become Better Questioners” by Warren Berger in Edutopia, August 18, 2014,

http://bit.ly/ZeNZdU

Phrases like "random acts of kindness" and "pay it forward" have become popular terms in modern society. Perhaps this could be best explained by those who have identified a deficiency in their lives that can only be fulfilled by altruism.

It seems that we just can't get enough of those addictive, feel-good emotions -- and with good reason. Scientific studies prove that kindness has many physical, emotional, and mental health benefits. And children need a healthy dose of the warm-and-fuzzies to thrive as healthy, happy, well-rounded individuals.

Patty O'Grady, PhD, an expert in neuroscience, emotional learning, and positive psychology, specializes in education. She reports:

Kindness changes the brain by the experience of kindness. Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it. Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it.

A great number of benefits have been reported to support teaching kindness in schools. Some of these are:

Happy Caring Children

Increased Peer Acceptance

Greater Sense of Belonging

Improved Self-Esteem

Better Concentration

Less Bullying

It's become quite clear that modern education must encompass more than just academics, and that matters of the heart must be taken seriously and nurtured as a matter of priority.

How do you teach kindness? Has it reduced bullying at your school?

- Reprinted with permission from The Ripple Kindness Blog, March 4, 2015.

Full blog post can be found here.