The Marsal School community sees countless K-12 narratives that are cause for optimism. We want to tell these stories.
Teach Blue Fellows is an exciting new program and part of the school’s Teach Blue initiative, one of the Marsal School’s approaches to addressing the challenges of recruiting, preparing, retaining, and recognizing teachers by providing a comprehensive pipeline of opportunities and resources.
Teach Blue Fellows are working alongside their peers and Marsal School faculty members to address authentic problems of practice in their work. Over the course of three semesters, the fellows—all K-12 educators—will define a problem of practice, learn more about the surrounding issues, craft a solution to be implemented in the fall of 2024, and then report out findings at the Teach Blue Fellows Symposium in spring 2025. Part of the fellows’ role is to pull back the curtain and show the public what the hard work of teaching and learning looks like—including constant reflection on the part of educators. During their three-semester inquiries, fellows will be broadcasting their work to a wide audience including parents and members of their communities. In these times when so many are looking to define K-12 education, the Marsal School will be sharing authentic stories of dedication, skill, curiosity, and innovation of educators.
Current Fellows
Early Numeracy
Relevance in History
Educator Recruitment, Retention, & Sustainability
Grade Reporting for a Mastery System
Diversifying Voices in Literature
Engagement in Math
Recent Accounts
Even if educators conclude a new classroom policy is yielding improved results, a student might experience it differently. It says something about the School at Marygrove that one student felt he could stage a protest of in-class deadlines. That prompted an authentic conversation, which in turn prompted a realization for Ravi.
The new Model Teacher program has proven to be a fully-functional structure that supports positive student experiences and stronger staff teams.
The challenge posed to students about a local island and its indigenous past is sparking a new level of student engagement and ownership of their learning. This real-life problem led to the adoption of indigenous course texts, which in turn is deepening student understanding of the original problem and beyond.
A 26-century old fable becomes part of a new fable on more effective math instruction.
Teachers don’t have to frame our nation’s history as either a celebration or a broken promise. What if we defined it as unfinished work? Doing so sets up all sorts of possibilities that put students in active roles. One is to invite students to construct family histories that add to our understanding of a narrative of our past and how it got us to the present.
What’s a solution to the problems with traditional math instruction? Flipping the power hierarchy. Students belong at the top where they take ownership of their learning, leading to increased motivation and authentic buy-in.
Sometimes we start reinventing the wheel and then discover others have been at work reinventing that same wheel. Research can help us understand the work of like-minded practitioners. From there we can take another look at our problems of practice.
Early math literacy is so important. We can learn so much about our students at the very beginning of the year by knowing their math competencies. How could this understanding help us inform our teaching?