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This issue opens with a piece that David Price wrote in 2023 about school improvement and continues with stories about schools and non-profits taking relationships seriously, professional development where teachers can actually try out their ideas, school lunches, music festival projects of course, fiction-writing during lockdown in India, the cardboard arcade in Minnesota, and the virtual-reality geology.

Alec Patton talks to Michael McDonald, Stephen Rinaldo, and Tarima Levine about how Yonkers Public Schools and Bank Street Education Center improved eighth grade math proficiency particularly for students who are Black, Latinx, or experiencing poverty.

Alec Patton talks to Hamilton Elementary Principal Dr. Brittany Daley and San Diego County Office of Education Executive Leadership Coach Julia Bridi about how Hamilton cut its chronic absenteeism rate from 24% to 10% in a single year, using creative parent communication, home visits, data checks, and public sliming

Imagine peering down an ordinary school hallway, clutching an entry ticket that was sent to you. You turn a corner and stop in front of a wall. There, you spot a concealed opening and step through to Diagon Alley, the hidden magical market from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter novels.

Tracking  absences quarterly allows schools to spot trends and changes faster, whether they be  something to celebrate or a student who needs more support. When we track the number of absences by quarter, just a few missed days in a row can trigger early intervention or celebration.  

Alec talks to RISE's Linzi Golding, Erin Asselin, and Melanie Gonzalez about keeping things simple, celebrating small changes, smart ways to share data with schools, and how to recognize and celebrate effort, even when it doesn’t lead to the outcomes we were hoping for.

ELA teachers asked students to connect their personal and cultural identity to the academic content at key junctures in their lessons.

Alec talks to Deeper Learning 2025 keynote speaker Dr. Heather Michel about about her difficult experience with school as a kid, her own career as a teacher, and the strategies that she’s developed to help teachers take care of themselves.

Teachers plan meaningfully and rigorously in ways that allow the synergy of soft and hard skills to interact

Alec talks to Shelley Glenn Lee, director of High Tech Elementary North County, and Durrell Kapan, a Senior Research Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences, about how the Silvery Blue butterfly is filling the ecological niche left by the extinction of the Xerces Blue butterfly in San Francisco... with some help from Durrell and his team