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This issue highlights stories of school improvement and practical tools for educators. It features how Parkway Academy supports students during the school day, how NYC Outward Bound schools are rethinking advisory, and how the Teaching Matters Network is using identity questions to boost literacy. Tools include Baltimore’s method for turning routine processes into improvement projects, Chicago’s protocols for data reflection, and RISE Network’s resources on tracking absences and fostering improvement through personalized strategies. Additional insights come from educators like Loni Berqvist, Aneesa Jamal, Peter Jana, and Sara Sadek, who explore student voice, reading engagement, skill development, and child-centered learning.

Jeff Govoni kicks off this issue by writing about literal “making”—the power of construction projects in elementary school. Aneesa Jamal shares a strategy for helping students reconnect to their questioning abilities, Michelle Jaconette has suggestions for how to launch inquiry-rich lessons, “Dr Project” has ideas for helping students critique “models” and make high quality products, and Brad Blue offers advice on how students can curate their own work after a project. Robert Talbert and Sarah Strong both share ideas for making assessment meaningful and student-centered. And Elizabeth Brown, Paula Espinoza, and Amber McEnturff share stories and strategies that challenge us not just to help students “make the world differently.”

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.

This issue is packed with student (and teacher) empowerment, from a fourth grade math class in India, to special education in California, to pirates on the high seas!

This issue features a guide to codesigning with students written BY students, the story of a large school district in Kentucky that made student storytelling about their learning into an official part of the school calendar, a story about high school students helping other teenagers who are struggling with mental health, two stories about “C3 Mobility,” a project that paired high school seniors with college students so that the college students could help the high schoolers navigate the application process, a story about the tricky balance between “divergence” (letting people do what they want) and “convergence” (making sure everyone’s doing the same thing so you can compare it) in school improvement, and a piece by Amanda Meyer with specific, usable guidance for subverting the influence of white-dominant culture in school improvement.

Read the Spring 2022 issue of Unboxed! Now even more awesome!

We didn’t set out to make this an issue about cultivating community and relationships and schools, but it’s clearly on the minds of our writers and editors...

For teachers, the end of every year feels like the conclusion of a quest you’re physica...

Welcome to the Fall 2020 issue of Unboxed, which focuses on “Continuous Improvement” in education.