It’s no secret that school administrators have more priorities on their plates than ever. And at the top of the list you’ll often find the ultimate goal: student success. But how can you ensure students are meeting their full potential? Creating the right environment for students to thrive takes work, and involves many factors. Whether it’s developing teachers, engaging parents, or creating a school culture, our simple strategies will help you increase student success this school year.
1. Provide Opportunities for Growth
Research shows that high-quality teachers are the number one factor contributing to student success. To support student achievement, help your teachers be the best they can be with growth opportunities. Create a teacher mentorship program to help new teachers identify any gaps in their knowledge, and provide leadership opportunities for seasoned teachers. Professional development is another powerful growth driver. Did you know that the more PD teachers get, the more likely students are to succeed? With ExploreLearning STEM solutions, on-demand professional development is built right into the products to help teachers thrive.
2. Build a Positive School Culture
A positive school culture is key for creating a great work environment. And because supported, happy, teachers are more engaged in their classroom, they can better help their students succeed. Fostering a positive climate begins with a culture that encourages work-life balance, celebrates accomplishments, and promotes teamwork. Provide additional support by championing growth mindsets and choose education technology that makes your teachers’ jobs easier. With Reflex and Frax, teachers don’t have to be veteran math experts to create exciting math lessons!
3. Train your teachers in SEL Strategies
Teaching involves helping children develop in all aspects for the best possible outcome. And student success involves more than simply solving equations; students also need to learn crucial life skills like building relationships and making decisions. Improve student outcomes by training your teachers in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) best practices that they can use in their classroom. Discover three easy ways to nurture SEL in the math classroom.
4. Make a Plan to Support Family Engagement
After high-quality teachers, engaged families are the most important factor for student success. Yet, many parents might not know which steps they should take to best support their children. To start, create a plan with your teachers to involve families as partners, and create opportunities for engagement. A lack of time can be the biggest roadblock to family engagement, for both parents and teachers. Make sure to help teachers make time in their busy schedules! And provide resources for parents to support and encourage their kids at home, on their own time. Discover all our suggestions for supporting family engagement.
5. Choose Evidence-Based Edtech
Education technology (edtech) has great potential to improve outcomes for students. But not all edtech measures up! When choosing edtech, make sure your school selects a product that can produce quantifiable outcomes, has the evidence to back it up, and makes your teachers’ jobs easier. Quality solutions will be designed using research-proven educational methods, and include studies that produce evidence of its effectiveness. Learn more ways to identify edtech that produce real results.
6. Set and Track Student Success Goals
Once you’ve finished creating your new student success strategy, take an in-depth look at your current student success metrics to create benchmarks for future achievement. Next, work with your team to set S.M.A.R.T. goals: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely. After setting your goals, make sure you have a strong reporting strategy in place to track outcomes. All ExploreLearning solutions include intuitive reporting features that monitor student progress and track results. Now that’s powerful!
