ASCD Inservice

H1N1 and Continuity of Learning

It’s clear the H1N1 flu pandemic will pose significant challenges for educators this school year. In this month’s “Is It Good for the Kids?” column, ASCD Executive Director Gene Carter emphasizes that in addition to prevention and monitoring efforts, schools must consider how they plan to support continuous learning, both for individual students who are home for extended periods of time with the flu and for the whole student body if the virus spreads widely and forces school closures.

“Some estimates indicate H1N1 could infect half the U.S. population this fall and winter, which translates into considerable classroom disruption and absenteeism,” Carter writes. “Students in the same class could end up in wildly different places in the curriculum. Meanwhile, entire classes could fall behind if their teachers are out sick for several days.”

He suggests educators form professional learning communities to help them work together to assess knowledge and skills when students return to school and develop plans for instructional next steps.

Along these lines, ASCD is conducting a live, one-hour Web seminar on H1N1 and continuity of learning. On Wednesday, September 30, at 4:00 p.m. EST, Ann Cunningham Morris, ASCD’s director of professional development, and John Brown, ASCD author and faculty member, will provide educators with tools and resources to address the varied learning needs and gaps students may have after their time away from school due to H1N1-related illnesses or school closures. Register for the seminar today.

The session is free and will address questions such as:

• What role does formative assessment play in determining returning students' learning needs?

• How will classroom instruction need to change to address varying student needs?

• How should teachers manage classroom instructional changes in a collaborative way so that they are supporting each other as professionals?

Do you have questions about H1N1 and continuity of learning that you'd like addressed during the Web seminar? Share them here.

Whole Child Podcast Preps You for H1N1

Jerry Weast, Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools (MCPS) superintendent, leads a district of about 142,000 students. Last spring Weast's district got an early taste of H1N1 and had to temporarily shut down a school that serves 1,600 students. MCPS's strategy going into this fall's flu season? Remain calm and connected. In this month's Whole Child podcast, hear Weast and our panel of experts discuss preparations and concerns for this year's flu season.

With about 200 nurses to those 142,000 students, there has to be a lot of interagency collaboration to monitor the sick, address the concerns of the worried well, and constantly communicate with all levels of the community. Fortunately, MCPS is well-connected to parents and its education community via e-mail and Web resources, and they've been working all summer to seal up any gaps in communication and ensure that messages make it home over multiple mediums to a community that speaks a range of 123 languages.

The advent of H1N1 has also created a unique opportunity for federal health and safety officials to collaborate with school communities, says Theresa Lewallen, ASCD's managing director of Constituent Services and the liaison to the federal government agencies handling H1N1. In addition to guiding schools on preventive measures and maintaining learning continuity, these groups also need to help schools balance high-stakes accountability mandates with the potential for lower attendance rates this flu season, Weast says.

Many questions linger, and the flu, by nature, is unpredictable, says registered nurse Linda Davis-Alldritt, president-elect of the National Association of School Nurses. We know that kids 6 months to 24 years old have been the hardest hit by this flu, and we know that schools will be dealing with H1N1 on top of regular seasonal flu illness, she says. Aside from that, schools are planning responses but are also alert to any emerging patterns.

Visit ASCD's H1N1 resource page to stay on top of developments relevant to the K-12 community.

Learning Doesn't Stop for the Flu

Yesterday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius presented new recommendations for continuity of learning in cases of students of school closure or student absences due to H1N1 flu. Sebelius stressed that "everyone’s goal should be to keep children healthy and in school. But if they get sick -- and some will -- we have to make sure that they don’t fall behind.”

The recommendations detail steps school leaders can take to ensure learning continues, such as creating and distributing take-home assignments and using the internet to post homework and other school communications. 

For those looking to keep up with H1N1 developments from a wider angle, we recommend the Washington Post Special Section on the flu, full of the latest breaking news updates, detailed infographics, and even how-to videos.

Find these resources and more at ASCD's H1N1 Web page. We'll be regularly updating the site with new resources as they become available.

We'd also like to hear from you: How is your school preparing for the flu—both in terms of preventing its spread and facilitating continuous learning in the case of an outbreak? Share your strategies in the comments; select stories might be highlighted on ASCD's H1N1 Web page.

What to Do About the Flu

Districts and schools across the country are bracing for H1N1 as the new school year begins. The virus took hold in dozens of camps this summer, prompting concerns among school officials that kids will be bringing more than new backpacks and notebooks with them at the start of the school year.

From Nashville to New York, schools seem to be taking to heart new guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention designed to curb the spread of the flu while minimizing disruptions to learning. They're educating students about proper hygiene, communicating to parents the importance of keeping their sick children at home at least 24 hours after they no longer have a fever, and making preparations to separate ill students and staff or selectively close schools with high-risk populations should the need arise.

What's less apparent from news accounts is how schools are planning to ensure learning continues in the event the virus spreads widely, forcing closures.

Challenging the Whole Child E-Book Free for Limited Time

How do we motivate students to embrace challenge? How do we encourage students to rise to challenges of their own? What is the connection between a meaningful, challenging curriculum and lasting achievement? ASCD's newest e-book, Challenging the Whole Child: Reflections on Best Practices in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership, addresses many of these questions and is available for download free of charge starting today and running through August 16, 2009.

This addition to ASCD's e-book series on educating the whole child features articles from Educational Leadership magazine and other ASCD publications that focus on challenging every student, offering a rigorous curriculum, meeting 21st century learning challenges, using formative assessments, and preparing students for college and the world of work. Authors include Arthur L. Costa, Robert J. Sternberg, Linda Darling-Hammond, Howard Gardner, Susan Brookhart, and other leading authorities.

Complementing this free e-book is the $7.95 ($9.95 for nonmembers) Engaging the Whole Child e-book, as well as the always free, always updated Whole Child Blog, a community-generated resource for strategies, ideas, and news relevant to ensuring that all children are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

Parents in Support of the Whole Child

The National PTA has signed on as a partner in ASCD's Whole Child Initiative, joining more than 40 other whole child partners that represent a broad swath of the education, arts, and health and wellness fields.

ASCD's partnership with the PTA is significant because the Whole Child Initiative is grounded in the belief that responsibility for educating and supporting the whole child neither starts nor stops at the schoolhouse door. That means businesses, community agencies, policymakers, and families must align with schools to provide conditions that support learning for each student.

Moreover, outside of educators, parents are the single largest group visiting the Whole Child Initiative's Web site. More than 40 percent of the site's visitors identify themselves as parents, a percentage that has steadily grown since the site launched just over two years ago.

ASCD Executive Director Gene Carter says ASCD will collaborate with the PTA to provide these parents with the resources and expertise they need to ensure that their children are receiving comprehensive education and support services.

Educators: Does your school encourage and support parent involvement? Parents: Do you feel welcome to contribute at your child's school?

Engaging Students in Learning

As many of you know, ASCD's Whole Child Initiative is based on the belief that students must be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. Since we launched the Whole Child Web site just over two years ago, we have noticed the resources we've posted about engaging students have received the most traffic. We think this could be because most educators know that we need to engage students in learning, but they are having difficulty doing so in light of the mounting pressures of assessment and acocuntability.

To respond to this need, ASCD created a new e-book, Engaging the Whole Child: Reflections on Best Practices in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership, which is available for free download through May 6. The e-book includes a collection of articles from Educational Leadership by renowned authors such as Carol Ann Tomlinson, Richard Sagor, Nell Noddings, Thomas R. Guskey, and Allison Zmuda. The articles address how to inspire trust and confidence, deepen students' thinking, instill the desire to achieve, build on student interests, and more.

How do you engage students in learning? Share your thoughts here.

Exercise Linked to Attention and Academic Achievement

Researchers at the University of Illinois have found a positive link between physical activity, attention, and academic achievement in children. Children in this study were better able to pay attention and performed better on academic tests after bouts of physical exercise. Particularly in reading comprehension, students tested performed a full grade level better after exercise. The study has prompted some curricular recommendations: integrating physical activity into lessons, daily outdoor recess, and 150 minutes of physical education per week at the elementary level and 225 minutes at the secondary level.

In other studies, and previous Inservice posts, brief, planned recess breaks were linked to better behavior. In monitoring the "Healthy" component of a whole child education, wholechildeducation.org reports that nearly 40 percent of elementary schools have eliminated or are considering eliminating recess, according to the National PTA, even though 75 percent of parents and teachers think elementary school recess should be mandatory.

Teacher Magazine recently reported that school districts in Oregon are failing to reach targets of 30 minutes of recess per day. In a trend that mirrors who gets recess nationwide, large urban schools in Portland were especially far from the mark―some providing only eight minutes of recess per day. Recess- and physical education–deprived schools often cite curriculum narrowly focused on academic subjects and lack of funding for facilities and instructors.

Has your school cut back on time for physical activity? If so, have you noticed any effects on your students?

School Counselors: Making a Difference for the Whole Child

Last week, our Whole Child bloggers wrote about a program in Colorado aimed at increasing the number of school counselors across the state. The program is based on the belief that students must feel supported by caring and qualified adults to learn at high levels. School counselors are in the news again because it’s National School Counseling Week, sponsored by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) and intended to "highlight the tremendous impact school counselors can have in helping students achieve school success and plan for a career."

In that vein, ASCA also just announced its school counselor of the year: Julie Hartline from Campbell High School in Smyrna, Ga. (pictured above, left, with her principal and supervisor). Hartline was chosen in part because of a number of initiatives she has introduced, including Campbell High School's Career Center, which provides students—many of them first-generation college applicants—with individualized postsecondary guidance. And Hartline's work to establish a Counseling Advisory Council with community, parent, and school representation reflects our belief that a broad array of individuals, from business leaders to parents to community members, need to support schools in efforts to develop the whole child.

Has a school counselor impacted your life or the life of a child you care about? How did that counselor make a difference?

Transforming Urban Schools: February's Whole Child Podcast

As more and more young people drop out or score poorly when tested, it is important to ensure that all urban schools are providing students with the education they deserve. On February 5, ASCD's Whole Child Podcast will focus on the crucial task of transforming urban schools.

We'll talk to urban education experts and activists New York University professor Pedro Noguera, National Urban Alliance for Effective Education Executive Director Yvette Jackson, and Monarch Academy principal Tatiana Epanchin. We'll hear firsthand about the challenges facing urban schools and how urban educators and students are working to defy the odds against them.

Tune in next Thursday by going to the Whole Child Web site to download this podcast (and browse previous podcasts). Or just click on the upper right corner of this blog, where we link directly to all of the latest podcast offerings from ASCD.

Make Someday Today: Sign the Whole Child Petition

Ask your state board of education to stand for policies and practices that support the whole child--Sign the Whole Child petition.

Someday happens. We saw that phrase on what probably was a homemade T-shirt at an inauguration event this week. And it gave us hope. It reminded us that perhaps the most powerful 45 words in the U.S. Constitution, the 45 words of the First Amendment, are the best possible tools for change and progress. Those 45 words guarantee freedom for all Americans from a government that tells us what to say or print, whether and how to worship, with whom we can gather, and how we can ask for change.

More than 200 years later, those foundational freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition continue to challenge us to live up to the expectations of those who came before us and make someday happen for those who will follow. 

What If We Also Set Up Teachers for Success?

Post submitted by ASCD author Robyn R. Jackson, author of Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching.

Marc Fisher's recent Washington Post two-part series (here and here) on teacher quality and school improvement struggles in the District of Columbia has caused me to wonder: What would we say of a teacher who told her students that they were performing terribly but did not provide them with the support and structure they needed to improve? How would we react if that teacher put her lowest-performing students on a 90-day instructional plan, and if they did not improve, expelled them? What if that teacher then replaced those students with a new crop of students but treated them the exact same way?

What would happen, in other words, if we treated our students the way that we often treat teachers?

ASCD's January Podcast: Education and the New Administration

President Obama and his Education Secretary nominee, Arne Duncan, face a host of education issues, with the rewrite of NCLB at the top of the list. Complicating matters are the severe budget deficits that are forcing dramatic cuts in education programs and services. This month's Whole Child Podcast addresses what the Obama administration can do to support our public schools and secure our children's future in these uncertain times.

In addition to rounding out education policy news and views posted here on Inservice, we'll also hear from Claus von Zastrow from the Learning First Alliance (LFA) on LFA's meeting with President-Elect Obama's transition team, and LFA's recent paper on the federal role in K-12 education. Lastly, student journalist Myles Miller will tell us what young people think Barack Obama should do to improve education in America.

What are your hopes for the new administration's efforts to improve education? How can federal policy ensure each child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged?

This month's podcast is available for download. Listen to archived episodes anytime by visiting www.wholechildeducation.org/podcasts.

Update: November’s Whole Child Podcast

This month’s episode of the whole child podcast focuses on how to develop students’ global understanding.

Listen to Kate Berseth from EF Education, a leader in international exchange programs, talk about how much American students have to learn about the world they live in. But the news isn’t all bad. Paul Sandrock from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction explains his state's innovative international education efforts. And Chris Sperry, a social studies teacher form Ithaca, N.Y., and director of Project Look Sharp describes how he engages students in learning by asking them to think deeply about tough issues from different cultural perspectives.

Global Understanding: The Focus of ASCD November Podcast

In our increasingly interconnected global society and economy, it's imperative that students understand the world we live in. Three leaders in international education will join host Molly McCloskey for the second episode of ASCD's whole child podcast, Changing the Conversation About Education. The episode goes live tomorrow, November 6, at 3:30 p.m. eastern time here in the "Podcasts" section and on the Whole Child Web Site.

Too Much Focus on Students' Weaknesses?

Are teachers focusing too much on struggling students' weaknesses instead of their strengths? That's what Yvette Jackson, chief executive officer of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, said in a recent meeting at ASCD headquarters. Her presentation on reversing underachievement in urban schools stressed focusing on students' strengths because "your focus is reality."

She warned against the assumption that underachievers have no strengths and the dangers of using labels (minority, disadvantaged, etc.) to support these assumptions. In order to close the achievement gap, educators shouldn't look at the lack of potential, but rather should have a fearless belief that all students have potential and teach according to that mind-set. 

Do you find yourself focusing on students' strengths or weaknesses? Or both?

Hear Jackson talk about the power of educators to nurture potential in students.

Ask New Mexico How to Beat Obesity

In New Mexico, about a quarter of students are considered overweight or obese, and increasing percentages are suffering from diseases like Type 2 Diabetes. To combat this crisis, New Mexico public schools will begin to measure school efforts to improve student health using ASCD's Healthy School Report Card.

This Thursday, as part of our Whole Child podcast, we'll speak to Dr. Veronica Garcia, Secretary of the New Mexico Public Education Department, about their new plan to shrink childhood obesity.

Are you wrestling with student health issues at your school? Ask Dr. Garcia about the steps New Mexico is taking, and/or share what's improved student health in your school or district.

Join the Conversation

On a day when U.S. voters will get an earful from the candidates for the vice presidency, ASCD wants to hear from YOU.

On Thursday, October 2, at 3:30 p.m. EST, we'll launch our monthly podcast series, The Whole Child Podcast—Changing the Conversation About Education. The premiere episode will feature segments on public opinion of public schools, community engagement in education, and creating healthy schools. In particular, we'll take on

• The results of the 40th Annual Phi Delta Kappa International/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward Public Schools
• A discussion between Dr. Gene Carter, Executive Director of ASCD, and Hugh Price, Brookings Fellow and author of Mobilizing the Community to Help Students Succeed
• An interview with Dr. Veronica Garcia, New Mexico Secretary of Education

We'll ask our experts: What should the next U.S. President do about education? Before we hear from the V.P. candidates that night, we want to hear from you.

What are your concerns and questions about safeguarding a whole child education for all?

Submit your questions or comments for our experts in advance, or reach us during the podcast at

• E-mail: wholechild@ascd.org
• AIM: WholeChildEd
• Twitter: WholeChildAdv
• Phone: 1-347-843-4958

Listen to the Whole Child Podcast live, or access archived episodes on BlogTalkRadio.

More Action, Less Talk Needed to Address Increasing Student Health Issues

We’ve all seen the stats on the rising number of overweight or obese children as well as the increased percentages of students diagnosed with preventable diseases, such as type two diabetes. Poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyles are top culprits and many schools have responded by eliminating junk food and increasing physical education. These measures are commendable, but are they enough? The state of New Mexico says, “No,” and today announced its plan to create a statewide report card that will measure how the state’s public schools are responding to increasingly alarming child health issues.

Over the next three years, all New Mexico public schools will use the Healthy School Report Card developed by ASCD. It will measure each school’s efforts to promote physical activity, provide nutritious foods, and encourage family involvement in the health and education of their children. Each school’s data will contribute to the statewide report card, which will help determine policies and establish programs at the local level. It will also help districts and schools meet the state’s wellness policy mandate, which requires school health advisory councils to provide twice-yearly data-based recommendations for improving student health.

Research shows the direct link between student health and school progress but it’s often an overlooked part of the academic achievement equation. New Mexico responded by providing state resources to collect the necessary data needed for real change. What types of school-community partnerships to address student health concerns are occurring in your area?

Submitted by Barbara Michelman, ASCD Communications Director.

A Tough Job Gets Tougher

School violence reared its ugly head again yesterday when a 15 year old shot and killed his classmate at a high school in Knoxville, Tenn. This is just another example of young people committing meaningless acts of violence against each other while not understanding the true consequences. In the wake of this murder a teenager is dead, another one is in jail, two families are destroyed, and classmates and teachers will have to cope with this terrible event. Despite the horrible circumstances, looking back at other similar instances indicates that resilient parents and teachers will rally together and help students through this traumatic event. ASCD's free resource Planned Responses to Unplanned Change offers tools for building resilient students and positive classroom environments.

As a teacher, what would you do to help your students cope if a tragedy of this sort occurred at your school?