Values are real when they are lived. We’ve asked a group of Classkick team members to share their thoughts on the meanings and actions associated with Classkick’s company values: Focus on People, Work Toward Justice, Advocate for Learners, Stay Curious, and Dream.

We’re excited to have Colin Shevlin, Senior Engineer at Classkick, share their thoughts on Stay Curious. Colin has one of the longest tenures at Classkick of any of our team members, and has seen firsthand how Classkick has stayed curious, growing and evolving as we’ve built teams capable of supporting more educators and learners.

This post is the final part of a 5-post series on Classkick’s company values. To read more about Classkick’s values and how they came to be, click here.

What is Stay Curious?

When you ask a follow-up question, investigate a cause, or use a series of “why” questions to get to the bottom of things, that’s staying curious. Curiosity is something humans are exceptional at; most of us are expert investigators by the time we’re toddlers. As we get older, we tend to find our way to the safe path and slowly stop asking questions. The secret to living this value is to resist the urge to retreat to safety, and to instead nurture that innate curiosity.

What does it mean for Classkick?

At Classkick, curiosity is essential. Many of us are former teachers, so we know how important investigation is in any classroom. The story about what happened on the playground during recess may not be what actually happened during recess. Or, even more importantly, an assessment showing a gap in understanding may be actually caused by lack of sleep or a distracting desk mate. The same is true for what we see on our team and in our software. When we see that teachers are not using a feature as expected, we start asking questions, digging into data, and observing classrooms that use Classkick. Questions lead to more questions, and our investigation never ends — but we grow and our product improves with each new finding. That’s staying curious at Classkick.

How did we know this was important to us as a company?

Curiosity is important to Classkick in two obvious ways. First, Classkick’s very existence is the result of a teacher being curious and asking, “Could teaching be better for teachers? Could learning be better for students?” What we have now is the result of years of curiosity and investigation. Second, the Classkick team is made up of some of the most curious people I’ve ever met. I learn something new every day at work about languages, home automation, calibration engineering, great books, lived experiences, and, of course, mushrooms. Because both our team and our product are so driven by curiosity, it was no surprise “Stay Curious” made it into our core values.

How does living this value make us better as professionals?

Living this value means that we’re constantly learning! Learning and applying knowledge is the virtuous cycle that allows self development to happen. Staying curious is central to getting better as professionals and as people. More importantly, staying curious is what allows us to help teachers and students in better ways every day.

How do our team members know we’re succeeding as a company in this value?

We’re successful in this value when we’re making Classkick better for teachers and students. If teachers continue to love and use Classkick, their students will learn more. If students learn more, we know that we’re asking the right questions, investigating, applying our learning, and generating new questions that make Classkick better. Student learning is our north star.

What will we change since adding this value?

Adding this value codifies something that has been inherent in our culture from the beginning. Our curiosity has always been part of how we approach our work. With “Stay Curious” as an official value, we now have the language to recognize exemplary curiosity as we continue building Classkick. This value allows us to celebrate each other more for staying curious and using our findings to make teaching and learning better for everyone.

How We Live Classkick’s Values: Stay Curious was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Jordan Williams, MAT, MEd, MA

There are a lot of myths surrounding teaching:

• Teaching is so easy, anyone can do it.
• Teachers are overpaid and do nothing all summer. (We wish!)
• Teaching is just standing up in front of the class and lecturing.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know these are total myths. You probably also care about best teaching practices. If nothing else, you probably care about your students’ outcomes and being the most effective teacher possible without wasting a lot of time and energy.

What you might not know is that a lot of what you’ve been taught about teaching and learning is just as whacky as the above myths. In fact, there’s a 95% chance you believe the one we’re going to talk about today. Many teachers still believe in this educational theory, even though it’s been thoroughly debunked.

Recent grads, you’re not exempt from this either! I encountered these myths in my MAT classes and the Praxis PLT exam as recently as late 2021. A lot of teachers are getting bad information about how learning works — through no fault of their own whatsoever. So let’s take a three-minute dive into one of the most popular myths out there… and then discover what actually works instead.

The Rise of “Learning Styles”

Several different theories around learning styles have been proposed over the decades. The most famous is Neil Fleming’s VARK model (Visual, Auditory, Reading, Kinesthetic) from 1987. This theory suggests that each student learns information best through one of the four learning modalities: visual learners learn by seeing pictures, auditory learners learn by hearing explanations, reader learners learn by reading text, and kinesthetic learners learn by physically doing things. According to Fleming, students will learn best when they are taught in their preferred learning modalities.

What the Research Actually Says

A lot of people have been excited by learning styles, and many researchers have tried to find proof they exist. However, there are some problems with this theory:

1. Neither teachers nor students themselves are good at determining a student’s individual learning style.
2. People (even amazing teachers) frequently confuse “recalling” with “learning”. (Sorry, Bloom!) Even if unique learning styles worked, their ability to help students absorb information and recall facts does not necessarily mean they also promote deeper understanding or schema organization, which are far more important.
3. There is no credible evidence suggesting that teaching for different learning styles helps with anything from basic recall to deeper learning.

So if learning styles don’t promote student learning, what does the research say actually works? As it turns out, multimodal instruction and metacognitive strategies for schema construction improve outcomes for every single learner in every single content area! Every student has a completely unique learning style that can’t be categorized into three or four boxes. By giving students a variety of modalities during instructional time, teachers can support every student’s diverse learning style, leading to academic success for all.

Why Does Multimodal Learning vs. Learning Styles Matter?

All right, so there’s no proof learning styles exist. But what’s the harm in believing in them, you ask?

A lot, as it turns out.

Widespread belief in learning styles can actually be harmful to student outcomes — and student outcomes are more critical than ever right now. These are just a few of the ways learning styles can harm students:

• Limited budgets may be wasted on ineffective products or testing.
• Precious teacher planning time may be wasted. (!!!)
• Students may be implicitly or explicitly discouraged from pursuing activities, classes, majors, or careers they would love.
• Students may develop a sense of learned helplessness and believe they can’t possibly succeed in an activity, test, class, etc. if they don’t have enough access to their supposedly preferred modality — which can often be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Students with diverse learning needs (such as learning disabilities or limited English proficiency) might not get everything they need to be successful.
• Some teachers might go overboard and actually try to differentiate by preventing students from having access to materials outside their supposedly preferred modality.
• Students and teachers may unconsciously limit their definition of “learning” to merely “recalling.”

Best Practices: Teach Smarter, Not Harder

If you’re like me, discovering that learning styles aren’t real — and can even harm students — is a lot to process. But here’s the good news: even if you believed in the VARK model, you’re probably already following the actual best practice completely by accident!

When you sit down to create lesson plans, you probably don’t say to yourself, “All right, how can I restrict students to a single modality?” (Because that would be slightly nuts, and also because it would take way too much time and energy.) No, instead of restricting students to one mode of learning, you probably try to accommodate all four learning styles with a single, multimodal lesson plan:

• You include visuals or graphic organizers to ensure comprehension.
• You include audio explanations through videos, direct instruction, or student group discussions or activities.
• You put text on slides so your students can read clarifying info (or be exposed to words, if they do not yet read English).
• You have students do some sort of practice, or perhaps they even move around the room for a whole-class activity.

Congratulations! By working smarter instead of harder (and, let’s be honest, weirder), you are already following best practices and supporting multimodal learning. However, I have a teaching lifehack that can make your content delivery more effective and multimodal — in even less time.

How to Teach Even Smarter (and Faster) with Classkick

I may work for Classkick now, but I also used the app in my classroom when I taught middle school ELA. And let me tell you, Classkick is an AWESOME way to make lessons, homework, graphic organizers, and even worksheets multimodal for all students! Yes, it’s great for online teaching, but I used it exclusively in-person, and it was incredibly helpful to me. Even as a newbie teacher and MAT student, I was able to teach effectively in an in-person classroom using Classkick. No matter what instructional strategies you prefer or what instructional settings you’re in, Classkick supports multimodal learning.

Here are some easy ways to use Classkick for faster, more effective, multimodal teaching:

• Swipe a pre-made lesson plan from our continuously growing and improving assignment library and use it as-is, or put your own spin on it.
• Click the microphone button and talk to include auditory input or read-alouds on any part of any page.
• Add manipulatives to activate the “movement” part of students’ brains.
• Upload PDF worksheets, texts, or graphic organizers, and then encourage students to highlight text, write notes, draw pictures, and create diagrams on your slides, just like it’s a notebook.
• Enable peer helpers and let students use Classkick’s multimodal canvas tools to learn through teaching.
• Add links to videos or helpful supplemental materials instead of reinventing the wheel.
• Check all students’ moods or understanding at a glance using the Single Question View on a slide with emoji manipulatives, multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blank prompts, or drawing spaces.
• Conduct instant formative assessments, adjust your instruction on-the-fly, and add real-time feedback with autograding and stickers.
• Encourage students to respond to you and help each other with text boxes, voice clips, and drawings.
• Hide text or picture hints under manipulatives so students can self-scaffold.
• Stick bonus activities, practice, games, or resources on your last page so early finishers can self-extend.

This isn’t just a good way to save time and get brownie points from your principal; it will also have a huge positive impact on the students who most desperately need highly effective teaching right now. In a matter of minutes, you can use Classkick to meet the needs of every single diverse learning need in your classroom. Classkick makes it easy to meet the needs of gifted students, English learners, early/emerging readers, students with learning disabilities, and yes, all the others in your classroom, too.

Conclusion

Even though learning style theory is debunked and potentially harmful, we continue to teach and test aspiring educators about it. Thankfully, most teachers are already inadvertently using best practices despite this. And now that you know the truth, you can use Classkick to make multimodal teaching even faster, easier, and more effective.

What do you think? What multimodal teaching strategies do you already use? Which ones will you use after reading this article? Let me know in the comments — I love hearing from fellow educators!

Want to start making awesome multimodal lessons with Classkick? Click here to get it free!

References

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-styles-myth

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/02/04/the-learning-styles-myth-is-still-prevalent-among-educators-and-it-shows-no-sign-of-going-away/

https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-state-teacher-license-prep-materials-debunked-theory/

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.602451/full

Why Multimodal Learning Beats Learning Styles was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Values are real when they are lived. We’ve asked a group of Classkick team members to share their thoughts on the meanings and actions associated with Classkick’s company values: Focus on People, Work Toward Justice, Advocate for Learners, Stay Curious, and Dream.

We’re excited to have Natalie Bloom, Senior Partnerships Manager at Classkick, share her thoughts on Dream. Natalie leveraged her experience as a classroom teacher to join the world of edtech, introducing districts across the United States to the powerful connections teachers and students make with Classkick, dreaming daily about how to reach even more students.

This post is part 4 of a 5-post series on Classkick’s company values. To read more about Classkick’s values and how they came to be, click here.

What is Dream?

If you can think it, you can do it! Dream is the ability to recognize challenges and expand the realm of possibility by flexing problem-solving skills. The first step is to identify the issues at hand and analyze the causes. Once we’re able to generate a set of alternative interventions, we can evaluate the best solutions and implement a plan. The plan is where the real magic happens — we get to learn from our solutions and assess effectiveness to ensure success. When we set goals and vision toward success, we’re able to better ourselves personally and professionally. That’s how we strive for excellence.

What does it mean for Classkick?

At Classkick, we encourage dynamic and diverse thinking, which inspires us all to think differently. To dream at Classkick means to aspire for bigger things and to not limit ourselves. Dreaming is one of the most exciting components of working at Classkick because we all start each day with the fundamental understanding that we can and will do better. All we have to do is dream up the path forward.

As a core value, Dream roots us all in the vision and aspirations we have for Classkick. Classkick is comprised of dreamers who lean on each other, our users, and experts to educate us on what we don’t know. We do this to better understand the gaps and areas most needed for improvement.

How did we know this was important to us as a company?

We knew Dream was an important value to us as a company because we constantly innovate, iterate, and improve our product, systems, and interactions with one another. I think most people at Classkick are lifelong learners, constantly pushing ourselves to learn new skills. As a rapidly growing start-up, we have big goals that each employee is invested in. These goals make us better as a team, but more importantly, they make Classkick better for our users: teachers and students.

How does living this value make us better as professionals?

Living this value incites a way of thinking that grounds us in the basis for success. We push ourselves to be active problem-solvers and take note of what is going on around us. By focusing on the things we can change or improve, we can implement meaningful, scalable solutions rooted in our users’ needs.

How do our team members know we’re succeeding as a company in this value?

We know we’re succeeding in this value when we are able to name our users’ pain points and envision significant adjustments and purposeful changes to address them. Our Dream value shows up every day in our work, from brainstorming collaboratively across Slack channels to teacher feature calls where we hear directly from the classroom, as we see the vision for Classkick’s future.

What will we change since adding this value?

Fundamentally, nothing will change because we have always been a company full of makers and doers. Adding Dream to our core values has just given us a term to identify and celebrate one another’s ability to think outside the box. If it wasn’t for Andrew’s initial dream to build a tool to support collaborative learning, Classkick wouldn’t exist in the first place. Even though Dream is a newly recognized core value, Classkick is a company that has always valued thought diversity and encouraged creativity, collaboration, and communication.

How We Live Classkick’s Values: Dream was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Values are real when they are lived. We’ve asked a group of Classkick team members to share their thoughts on the meanings and actions associated with Classkick’s company values: Focus on People, Work Toward Justice, Advocate for Learners, Stay Curious, and Dream.

We’re excited to have Bri Kelly, Customer Implementation Specialist at Classkick, share her thoughts on Advocate for Learners. Bri’s deep experience in higher education with recruiting and admissions counseling, and in K–12 education supporting college readiness, has exposed her to learners of all kinds and lends her a special perspective on learner advocacy.

This post is part 3 of a 5-post series on Classkick’s company values. To read more about Classkick’s values and how they came to be, click here.

What is Advocate for Learners?

Advocate for Learners means focusing on and listening closely to the needs of our teachers and their students. They know what they need more than we do, even those of us who are fresh out of the classroom. Advocating for learners means we’re committed to identifying the needs and challenges of teachers and students and then using our voices and product to address those needs. For me, specifically, it means showing up for students and teachers by having hard conversations about why and how their needs should be met. It means doing my best to offer space and support and believing them when they talk about their current challenges.

What does it mean for Classkick?

At Classkick, when we talk about advocating for learners, this means all of our users — including teachers. Teachers are constantly learning about their craft, their students, and the diverse learning needs in their classrooms. Advocating for learners means using our product to address gaps in education. We live this value by increasing students’ opportunities for innovative learning and academic risk-taking. By advocating for learners, Classkick allows teachers to meet students where they are and provide support whenever and however students need it. It means listening and understanding what changes could be made to our product to provide the best possible learning experience for all of our learners.

How did we know this was important to us as a company?

We knew advocating for learners was important to us as a company because our mission is literally “help teachers teach and help learners learn.” You can’t believe in that mission without also advocating for those teachers and learners. If you want to successfully live that mission and build a tool that positively impacts and helps these groups, you have to be willing to listen to their needs and implement changes. We knew this value was important to us as a company because we really do believe in simply doing what’s best for students and teachers.

How does living this value make us better as professionals?

Advocating for learners makes us better as professionals because it requires us to have (or develop) empathy for the people we are meant to support. It’s been really rewarding to be a part of the Customer Experience (CX) team, where we all truly work hard to listen to teachers and understand the situations playing out in classrooms. We then get the chance to show we care through the work we do, such as holding space and offering time to have 1:1 conversations with our users who are working to learn about the magic of Classkick.

Everyone at Classkick, regardless of role or team, is doing work that directly impacts our teachers and students. We become better professionals when we understand the impact our work has — the “why.” When we advocate for learners, we start to understand the impact our team and company have on this bigger picture. For me, right now, the bigger picture is the current state of education. Living out this value has challenged me to become a better professional because I’ve genuinely become invested in figuring out ways to support and advocate for learners and ensure they are getting the support they need to do their best learning.

How do our team members know we’re succeeding as a company in this value?

We know we’re successfully advocating for learners when we see changes being made to our product based on learners’ feedback, truths, and perspectives. We know we’re advocating for learners when we’re all sitting in accessibility training in order to make our product better and more accessible for everyone. We know we’re advocating for learners when we get bi-weekly invites to discuss user research, and when we use those data and metrics to provide the very best product and support for our learners and their needs.

What will we change since adding this value?

Although we already do a lot to advocate for learners, we can always do more. I think we will change and increase the ways and outlets we use to advocate for learners. We do a lot of advocating for learners when we’re working together to enhance the app and brainstorm new services for our learners, but I am excited for new ways to publicly advocate for learners in a broader way. We’re on the right track, so I’m confident that we will be living this value even more publicly in the near future.

How We Live Classkick’s Values: Advocate for Learners was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Black History Month may be ending, but the importance of teaching it isn’t. We think celebrating Black History should happen all year long, not just one month! African American history is a huge part of American history. Everyone benefits from knowing about the struggles and contributions of Black leaders throughout history.

Classkick is always striving to help teachers, and one of our company-wide core values is Work Toward Justice. That’s why we created this curated collection of 7 incredible new, FREE lessons for Black History Month and beyond! Teach an inspiring reading, music, ELA, or social studies lesson — with only a few seconds of prep time. Best of all, Classkick lessons work equally well in both the physical classroom and the online classroom.

To help you pick the best lessons for your classroom, Classkick Customer Implementation Specialist Bri Kelly shares more about each one. As always, you can copy these lesson plans to your Classkick account with a single click to modify them as much as you want. Now, join Bri for a closer look at these free assignments:

Meet Black authors and activists and scientists (oh my!)

Influential Black Americans (Grade Level: Primary or Elementary)

Introduce your classroom to influential Black Americans throughout history and the impact of their contributions. They’ll also have a chance to appreciate the power of names by using Classkick’s audio tool to practice the names of each Black History Month star. At the end of the assignment, we left space for students to reflect on Black leaders within their community. Inspire pride and greatness in the whole class with this uplifting free lesson!

Special thanks to The Tutu Teacher for creating the PDF this free social studies lesson is based on!

TIP: the voice recording tool is a great way to store examples of students saying their names, especially during your first few weeks together.

Teach features of nonfiction texts with Martin Luther King, Jr.

MLK Nonfiction Text Features (Upper Elementary Grade Level)

Martin Luther King, Jr. may be the most famous leader of the Civil Rights Movement. But how much do your students really know about him? This pre-differentiated lesson plan will help your students learn more about Dr. King’s legacy and impact, both on African American history and the world as we know it. Students will learn more about MLK Jr. through nonfiction texts, photos, and captions. Teachers can check for understanding by having the class create their own captions for photos and timelines.

We love this lesson because it shows how easy Classkick makes differentiation, scaffolding, and personalized learning. Struggling students can drag manipulatives off hints to scaffold themselves. Early finishers and curious minds can extend their learning with videos about MLK Jr. at the end of the assignment.

TIP: Create “hint boxes” to allow students to self-scaffold throughout assignments.

Dive into history and find out what Juneteenth is all about

Juneteenth Article + Questions (Grade Level: Middle or High School)

Less than a year ago, Juneteenth finally became recognized as a federal holiday. This assignment provides middle and high schoolers with the context and details behind this exciting and important day. Throughout this interactive lesson, secondary students will learn why and how Juneteenth became a day to celebrate freedom for formerly enslaved Black Americans. Use Classkick’s multiple choice feature to check for understanding, then edit everyone’s slide at once to clarify any points of confusion.

TIP: Auto-grade formative assessments instantly by assigning points to each multiple choice question.

Make a new friend and attend a story time about Black inventors

Have You Thanked An Inventor Today? (Grade Level: Primary or Elementary)

Take your class to a virtual story time with this exciting lesson! Join a young friend on an adventure to learn more about different inventions that he uses throughout the day, all of which were invented by African Americans. Multiple choice questions ensure comprehension, and voice prompts give students a chance to verbally discuss their favorite inventions. And just to make sure this is the best story time ever, we included a fun word search to wrap up the lesson!

TIP: Links outside of YouTube + Vimeo videos will open in a new tab.

Monitor reading progress with Jackie Robinson, the first Black baseball player

Jackie Robinson Reading Journal (Grade level: Upper Elementary)

This assignment is perfect for upper elementary students — especially those who LOVE sports but aren’t so sure about reading. Students can build reading fluency with Classkick’s recording tool as they read about one of the greatest baseball players of all time. This is a great way to effortlessly gather running records and reading fluency data while your class enjoys an engaging text. We didn’t forget about comprehension, though. This lesson also provides plenty of opportunities for students to practice writing about what they’ve learned, including sentence summaries and favorite facts.

TIP: Consider recording your own read-aloud and then having students create their own for either the same text or a different one, depending on reading ability and scaffolding needs.

Engage students with music by Black artists

Just Like Music (An Ode to Black Musical Artists) (Middle + Early High School)

Black artists have influenced music for decades. Some of the ways may even surprise teachers! Whether you teach music or not, strike the right chord with your classroom with this relaxing lesson on Black musicians.

This assignment highlights some of the most popular Black musical artists in recent history. Students in grades 6–10 will have the opportunity to share what Black History means to them while learning about the true roots of African American music. After using manipulatives and line tools to link musicians, songs, genres, and definitions, everyone will reflect on their favorite Black artists and the influence their music has had on students’ lives.

TIP: Tap into students’ creativity and have them write their own song. Copy student work to a portfolio when they’re done!

Teach SEL and ELA with Nina Simone

Nina Simone Poem Analysis (Middle School)

This assignment supports both SEL and ELA standards while introducing middle-schoolers to the power of poetry. Use this lesson to create a space for students to evaluate how they feel after reading the lyrics to I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free, as performed by Nina Simone herself. Open-ended questions help students find the beauty of subjective analysis of poetry and lyrics. Next, dig deep into critical thinking skills with a big discussion question: what does it truly mean to be free?

TIP: take this lesson to the top of Bloom’s taxonomy by having students create their own poetry. Enable workshopping with Classkick’s Peer Helpers feature, which keeps each poet anonymous. You can even turn on anonymity for the whole class and share your screen with students to show everyone’s amazing work!

BONUS TIP: Incorporate speaking standards by having students use the recording tool while reading their poems aloud at home.

Teachers, do you plan on teaching Black History beyond February? If so, which of these free lessons do you think will engage students the most? Be sure to tell us which ones are your favorite (and why) so we can keep making more. And don’t forget to follow our blog and social media accounts — we’re already working on our next curated collection of free lesson plans for you! (Because who doesn’t want a free lesson plan?)

7 Free Lesson Plans to Teach Black History All Year Long was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Teachers have always been asked to wear a lot of hats, but 2021 took this to another level. In addition to the usual challenges (increased paperwork, state testing mandates, diverse learning needs and student backgrounds, etc.), teachers faced extreme challenges this year. Substitute and certified teacher shortages led to massive increases in class sizes and decreases in teacher planning time. Schools often vacillated unpredictably between in-person and online learning — and frequently both types happened simultaneously in the same classrooms. Although nearly everyone wants to support and empower teachers, it’s a feat easier said than done. To figure out what teachers really want and need to feel empowered, we asked the experts: teachers.

One factor we explored in our recent Teacher Empowerment Survey was the relationship between teacher attitudes and grade levels taught. In this blog, we’ll examine the differences between elementary, middle, and high school teachers. Read on to learn our most interesting discoveries about teacher empowerment by grade level.

Middle and High School Teachers: Less Energy, More Thoughts of Quitting

The first question we asked teachers was how “charged up” their personal batteries were heading into the 21–22 school year. While the overall average was 66%, there was a negative correlation between reported “battery charge” and grade level taught. Elementary teachers reported an average battery charge of 68%, middle school teachers averaged 65%, and high school teachers averaged only 63%.

As any statistics teacher will tell you, “correlation does not equal causation!” Whatever the cause, high school teachers in our sample continued this trend across other items. For example, in response to the statement, “The way things are going, I think a lot about finding a career outside of teaching,” 39% of middle school and 41% of high school teachers agreed. For comparison, only 33% of elementary school teachers agreed.

Yet another surprising difference between secondary and elementary school teachers was in how harmoniously they anticipated their relationships with students and parents would be. Middle and high school teachers were 26% more likely than elementary teachers to disagree with the statement “I don’t anticipate any problems getting along with my students’ families.” When presented with the statement, “It’s a lot harder getting along with students now than it used to be,” 41% of middle school and 40% of high school teachers agreed — 28% more than elementary school teachers. Finally, secondary teachers were 25% more likely to agree with the statement, “I’m worried I’ll get in trouble for teaching certain topics (current events, referencing the history of slavery in the US, etc.).” Given the similar rates at which secondary teachers reported these three sentiments, it is possible that teachers may have anticipated conflicts with students and parents stemming from teaching current events.

Elementary School Teachers: Lack of Trust and Support

Although middle and high school teachers responded similarly to most of our questions, elementary school teachers often felt differently. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “My district and school have provided me with all the support I need to be successful,” only 48% of elementary teachers agreed. This was especially interesting to us because 58% of high school teachers agreed with the aforementioned statement, despite more feelings of depletion or thoughts of quitting.

Elementary-level educators were also less likely than those in secondary schools to agree with the statement, “My district and school administrators trust me.” In other words, elementary teachers felt more prepared for the school year and less likely to leave teaching, despite feeling less trusted and supported by district and school leaders — and vice versa for secondary school teachers. This seems to suggest — counterintuitively — that admin trust and support may not be correlated with teacher energy levels or retention. Although trust and support are important, teachers may not rank them as their most important needs.

What We Can Learn From This

Our survey discovered that secondary school teachers entered the 2021–22 school year feeling more drained and ready to leave the field than elementary school teachers. They also anticipated more conflicts with students and parents, and perhaps also with admin when it comes to teaching current events. By contrast, more elementary school teachers reported feeling unsupported or mistrusted by school leaders.

Although we don’t yet have any follow-up data on how the school year is actually going for these teachers, their concerns offer insights for leaders. To empower elementary school teachers, ensure they feel trusted and supported. To empower middle and high school teachers, give them resources and opportunities to recharge themselves and build rapport with students and parents. Above all else, ensure teachers of all grade levels have the tools they need to give timely, individualized student feedback — click here to find out why.

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The #1 driver of student learning and development is great feedback. We built Classkick to eliminate barriers and make sure students can get the individualized feedback they need — when they need it. We also are continually working to understand teachers more in order to better empower them. This blog is a part of a series based on findings from Classkick’s original Teacher Empowerment Survey.

Empowering Teachers at Every Grade Level was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Values are real when they are lived. We’ve asked a group of Classkick team members to share their thoughts on the meanings and actions associated with Classkick’s company values: Focus on People, Work Toward Justice, Advocate for Learners, Stay Curious, and Dream.

We’re excited to have Classkick’s Business Operations Manager, Adrian Mack, PhD, share his thoughts on Work Toward Justice. Adrian brings a wealth of experience as a researcher and DEI practitioner. His informed experience contributes to the strength of Classkick’s culture.

This post is part 2 of a 5-post series on Classkick’s company values. To read more about Classkick’s values and how they came to be, click here.

What is Work Toward Justice?

Work Toward Justice is one of Classkick’s core values. Classkick envisions a world with increased learning outcomes and equitable education for all students.

Whereas equality means each individual or group is treated the same way, equity focuses on how different individuals and groups face various circumstances and obstacles and, as a result, need access to different resources to be successful. Equity takes into account concepts like intersectionality (how race and gender intersect, for example), coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and the matrix of domination, coined by Dr. Patricia Hill Collins. Conversations about justice and liberation go a step further and evaluate how societal and systemic factors, such as systemic racism and sexism, impact various groups and how we can address these interconnected social issues.

What does it mean for Classkick?

Classkick’s emphasis on equitable education connects to our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This commitment is evident in many ways, including our culture, hiring practices, policies, and learning and development initiatives. In other words, Classkick strives to operationalize diversity, equity, and inclusion across the whole company. We know working toward justice is everyone’s responsibility, not just a single role or department. We have frequent company-wide sessions and discussions, both formal and informal — not just the occasional diversity training. For example, we recently discussed the importance of supplier diversity and are taking steps to achieve a more diverse supplier base.

One example of the regular DEI meetings we have is Work Toward Justice Wednesday (WTJW). In these meetings, we talk about current events, social issues, and share personal stories. Previous WTJW meetings have focused on neurodiversity, social emotional learning, anti-fat bias, the U.S. border crisis, transgender inclusion, ageism, and more. We also have a DEI book club that meets monthly. Books have included Hood Feminism, The Other Wes Moore, Moment of Lift, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, and Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.

Why did we decide this should be a core value?

The Classkick team includes former educators who witnessed many inequities impacting students and teachers both inside and outside the classroom. The Classkick app was created on the idea that personalized, just-in-time feedback could reach every student at the right moment. Our team’s experiences, as well as current events, have led to challenging conversations about social justice. This is how our core value of Work Toward Justice was conceptualized. Work toward justice is also foundational to Classkick’s other core values: dreaming, staying curious, advocating for learners, and focusing on people.

How do Classkick employees help make this core value a reality?

While we are intentional about Work Toward Justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion, we understand that there is always room for growth. Work Toward Justice requires significant work every day from every person at the company. Fortunately, it’s a responsibility everyone on our team is eager to take on.

How We Live Classkick’s Values: Work Toward Justice was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Values are real when they are lived. We’ve asked a group of Classkick team members to share their thoughts on the meanings and actions associated with Classkick’s company values: Focus on People, Work Toward Justice, Advocate for Learners, Stay Curious, and Dream.

We’re excited to have Anna Treesara, Manager of Customer Experience, share her thoughts on Focus on People, a topic near to her heart as a Classkick team member that directly interacts with both Classkick users and the team members she supports and manages.

This post is part 1 of a 5-post series on Classkick’s company values. To read more about Classkick’s values and how they came to be, click here.

What is Focus on People?

Focus on People says it all in the statement! It means that everyone is a human being first and that we should value them as a person before anything else. It means we should consider human-centered approaches and practices as much as possible. It means we should consider the whole person and all they bring to the table whenever we make large decisions that could ultimately impact people and their lives.

The whole person includes more than just likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc. It includes background, race, ethnicity, gender identity, socioeconomic status, and so much more. If we don’t consider these aspects of a person’s identity, we are telling them those pieces don’t matter. Focus on People means focusing on the entire identity of a human being and the experiences they’ve had that have contributed to who they are today.

What does it mean for Classkick?

For Classkick, Focus on People means that everyone is a human being before they’re an employee. Everyone is valuable and has something to offer our company. Additionally, the policies we create, the way managers lead, and the way we interact (especially in a remote culture) matter, and they should be intentionally thought out.

I think about this value a lot as a manager of people and someone who leads the Customer Experience team. In any one-on-one meeting with my direct reports, I take the time to really ask them questions about how they’re doing. I give them the space to process what they need, bring up any tough topics and issues, and overall just be vulnerable. I nod, listen, and empathize because at the end of the day, we just need someone to understand us as a human being. We need to be seen as a whole person who lives a life outside of work, but who also brings essential pieces of that life to work that could impact anything from our ability to carry out work tasks to our interactions with other people on our team.

How did we know this was important to us as a company?

We knew Focus on People was important to us as a company because we found ourselves using the words “humans” and “people” so much. We knew that in any policy we created or revised, we had to consider the whole person. This is reflected in policies like unlimited PTO, parental leave, and so on.

However, Focus on People goes beyond just having these policies. For a long time, employees weren’t even taking advantage of our unlimited PTO because there was this weird, unspoken idea that you CAN’T take unlimited PTO. This seems to happen a lot with companies that offer this benefit. We realized that to truly Focus on People, we needed to be extremely explicit about what unlimited PTO meant and lead by example. This meant not only encouraging employees to take mental health days every month, but also doing that ourselves as leaders. Before we knew it, taking time off was naturally embedded in our culture as new employees joined the team.

How does living this value make us better as professionals?

Living this value of Focus on People overall makes us better professionals because we’re considering the whole human, which in turn makes us good humans and better employees, managers, and leaders. It helps us do the work that needs to be done while also being empathetic to the needs of others, whether it’s our colleagues or the customers we serve.

How do our team members know we’re succeeding as a company in this value?

Our team members know we’re successfully Focusing on People in the little things, like how monthly mental health days are encouraged across the company as well as how managers take the time to build relationships and maintain positive culture and overall team health.

As the lead for the Customer Experience team, I try to do pulse checks by having recurring one-on-one meetings with everyone, even if they’re not my direct reports. I also build in time for “fun” through things like virtual escape rooms or gift exchanges.

Finally, we have spaces to reflect on a variety of things. We have monthly Team Retros and a DEI space where employees can discuss any social justice topic or current event with other team members. Again, the whole human being matters. Team members know we’re succeeding as a company in this value because of the actions that we’re taking.

What will we change since adding this value?

Although this is technically a new value, I think Classkick culture was already walking the walk when it came to Focus on People. Adding it to our core values just challenged us to be more explicit and consider how best to emphasize it for other employees, especially newer ones coming in. The little things we already did like explicitly taking monthly mental health days and encouraging others to do the same only confirmed that Focus on People was already a core value at Classkick.

How We Live Classkick’s Values: Focus on People was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We had a few minutes of downtime today (Jan 12th, 2022), and our team would like to explain what happened.

We have big plans for Classkick in 2022! Part of those plans is to create some tools that allow our team to make changes to Classkick faster so we can make Classkick better than ever!

Today we were using our new process to make changes to Classkick for the first time, and a change that was scheduled to go out after school hours accidentally went out right after we queued it up. This change overloaded one of our databases, and brought Classkick down.

As soon as we realized what happened we stopped the process and brought Classkick back up.

We’re sorry for the downtime today. We know Classkick is an important part of your classroom, and it’s important that it be available all of the time. We’re taking what we learned today and will use this new knowledge to make our process better in the future!

Looking forward to an exciting 2022,

Team Classkick Engineering

January 12, 2022 Downtime Report was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the greatest pleasures at Classkick is seeing users experience the magic of our tool and the creative ways they share how it makes a difference for their teachers and students.

After Morgan Vondenstein, Director of Education Technology, received funding from the EANS grant, she created this magnificent video showcasing how upper school mathematics teacher Heidi Nowicki uses Classkick to boost student engagement at Ascension Episcopal School in Louisiana.

See the video below:

Read on to see how Ms. Heidi Nowicki uses Classkick to boost student engagement at Ascension Episcopal.

Take the classroom paperless, give feedback in real-time

Ms. Nowicki needed an easy way to assign homework. Instead of printing off worksheets, she used Classkick to upload PDFs and clipped images to present math homework. Using the manipulative and fill-in-the-blank functions, Ms. Nowicki created an interactive format to unveil math concepts in a bite-sized way.

Then, while students work on the assignment, she uses stickers or comments to provide feedback. Some problems are even auto-graded!

“The kids love this because they’re not waiting until tomorrow to get feedback. They’re getting it in real-time,” said Ms. Nowicki.

Communicate and provide help, even when the students are at home

Ms. Nowicki loves the raise hand feature and the ability to write directly on a student’s work.

“Even when students are at home, they can work on Classkick and if they have a question they can email me or use the raise hand feature, and I can easily provide feedback directly on their screen. Or I can write on the main screen, and it’s pushed out to everybody.”

Using the feature, students are able to receive real-time direct instruction for flipped, blended, or remote classrooms.

Eyes on students comprehension and ability to adjust lesson plans to increase learning

Ms. Nowicki’s favorite feature is being able to monitor the students’ work and gauge their comprehension of the lesson.

Seeing the entire class work simultaneously allows Ms. Nowicki to “see all of their screens at once and go one-by-one to see if everyone’s on task.”

Whether it’s raising their virtual hand or raising their hand in class, Ms. Nowicki’s enjoys the various ways students can communicate their need for further help that allow her to detect patterns at scale and adjust lessons as needed.

Additionally, she uses Classkick to gauge emotional and social learning benchmarks asking questions like “How are you feeling about today’s assignment? How prepared do you feel for the upcoming test?”

Using EANS funds for educational technology

Her school used EANS funds to purchase a 12-month pro subscription and integrate adoption across staff. The EANS funds allowed Ascension Episcopal the opportunity to add educational technology at no cost to the school.

We are very blessed to have received funding through the EANS grant. [Our school district] made it SO easy to acquire funding for digital technology that we otherwise may not have been able to purchase. From start to finish, the process was simple. So far, our teachers are loving Classkick. Boosting student engagement is part of our campus-wide goal. Providing direct instruction and instant feedback in real-time allows the teacher to engage students in lesson content. The Classkick team has also been very supportive throughout the onboarding and implementation process. Overall, I encourage all non-public schools to look into the EANS funding for Classkick as it has been a game-changer for our school.

Classkick is excited to see non-public schools utilize EANS funds to acquire essential educational technology for their students. We look forward to seeing more schools take advantage of this funding and enabling more students and teachers to enjoy Classkick!

Get in touch

To learn more about how you can use EANS funds to get Classkick for your non-public school, get in touch with us via partnerships@classkick.com

Private school in Louisiana leverages EANS funds to purchase Classkick and boost student engagement was originally published in Classkick on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.