TeachingWorks

10/12/2026

✨Weekly HLP Spotlight✨

This week we're focusing on the high-leverage practice of cultivating and maintaining a safe and productive learning environment.

Teachers set and maintain collective expectations and establish classroom environments that ensure a safe and productive classroom community. They distinguish between the helpful use of boundaries to provide structure and the use of power to control. They develop specific approaches and routines to establish, maintain, and respond to these expectations and behaviors in ways that build a classroom community that supports students' learning and flourishing. Choosing and using expectations and agreements requires explicit care to avoid reinforcing values and patterns of control and behavior that privilege dominant ways of being related to race, class, and gender.

📄 Download the decomposition for cultivating and maintaining a safe and productive learning environment: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLP7decomp

🔎 Explore our resources for cultivating and maintaining a safe and productive learning environment: https://myumi.ch/marsal-TWRL_HLP7

📓 Download our report on the high-leverage practices: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsReport

🔗 Check out all of our HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-2026HLPs

💻 Register for our November 6 webinar on the HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsWebinar

10/09/2026

In the next post in our blog series on our updated list of high-leverage practices (HLPs), Francesca Forzani reflects on the changing pathways into the teaching profession:

"Programs may differ in length, structure, coursework, clinical experience, and who provides instruction and support. But those differences should not mean that beginning teachers emerge with fundamentally different expectations for what they should be able to do in classrooms. Different pathways can lead to the same profession, and all beginning teachers need opportunities to develop the practices that profession requires."

Francesca goes on to argue that the high-leverage practices are particularly critical in this moment of transformation:

"As the landscape of teacher preparation continues to change, we need standards that can travel across pathways. High-leverage practices can provide one such common foundation—helping programs of all kinds focus attention on what beginning teachers need to be able to do for their students, not simply on the route they took to become teachers."

💻 Read the blog post: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsBlog4

📓 Download our new report on the HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsReport

🔗 Check out all of our HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-2026HLPs

🔎 Explore our resources for the HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsResources

10/07/2026

Math teacher educators: How do we help our candidates keep cognitive demand high in the modern classroom? 🤔

Whether teacher candidates are adapting traditional curriculum materials or evaluating new AI-driven tools, they face the exact same risk: accidentally lowering the mathematical rigor and doing the heavy cognitive lifting for the students.

This month, to help you equip your candidates with the critical frameworks they need, we are continuing our Fall Webinar Series with two distinct sessions focused on maintaining deep, ambitious mathematics learning.

💻 Webinar 1 (October 23, 12:00–1:30 p.m. EDT): Preparing Teacher Candidates to Analyze and Adapt Mathematical Tasks for Deeper Learning

What we'll explore: Practical strategies to help candidates modify math tasks for diverse learners without watering them down. We'll examine common adaptation moves that unintentionally reduce classroom rigor and offer ready-to-use frameworks for your methods courses or clinical experiences.

Register here: https://myumi.ch/marsal-TW-Webinar3-reg

💻 Webinar 2 (October 30, 3:00–4:30 p.m. EDT): Preparing Teacher Candidates to Use AI-Enabled Teaching Tools in Elementary Mathematics

What we'll explore: Frameworks to help candidates evaluate AI math tools through the lens of cognitive demand. Learn how to help candidates distinguish between AI tools that engage students in effortful thinking versus those that do the math for them, keeping students at the center of learning.

Register here: https://myumi.ch/marsal-TW-Webinar4-reg

Give your teacher candidates the concrete, classroom-ready strategies they need to navigate today's evolving instructional landscape with confidence.

10/05/2026

✨Weekly HLP Spotlight✨

This week we're focusing on the high-leverage practice of implementing organizational routines.

Teachers organize time, space, and materials to support students to engage in the regular tasks of classroom life. Through the selection and use of organizational routines, teachers establish learning environments in which students have equitable access to resources, time, space, and voice in the classroom. Teachers introduce students to routines and provide opportunities to practice, analyze, and modify the routines. In some cases, they develop and enact routines collaboratively with students.

📄 Download the decomposition for implementing organizational routines: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLP6decomp

🔎 Explore our resources for implementing organizational routines: https://myumi.ch/marsal-TWRL_HLP6

📓 Download our new report on the high-leverage practices: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsReport

🔗 Check out all of our HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-2026HLPs

💻 Register for our November 6 webinar on the HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsWebinar

09/28/2026

✨Weekly HLP Spotlight✨

This week we're focusing on the high-leverage practice of implementing norms and routines for discourse.

Every content area has norms and practices for how people construct and share knowledge. These vary across subjects but often include establishing hypotheses, providing evidence for claims, and explaining one's reasoning to others. Teachers name these norms and practices, provide scaffolds, model, and offer opportunities for students to use the norms and practices. These norms and practices support students to engage productively in content-area learning.

We use the term "norms" to refer to a widely shared and accepted standard for work in a discipline. Subject-specific norms exist outside of individual classrooms and are often the standards of a discipline. This is not determined by a single teacher in a classroom, but by the broad community of disciplinary experts. It is through routines or practices that a norm is regularly carried out in a particular context and content area.

📄 Download the decomposition for implementing norms and routines for discourse: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLP5decomp

🔎 Explore our resources for implementing norms and routines for discourse: https://myumi.ch/marsal-TWRL_HLP5

📓 Download our new report on the high-leverage practices: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsReport

🔗 Check out all of our HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-2026HLPs

💻 Register for our November 6 webinar on the HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsWebinar

09/24/2026

In the next post in our blog series on our updated list of high-leverage practices (HLPs), Nicole Garcia reflects on the challenge of implementing HLPs for both beginning and experienced teachers:

"The idea of high-leverage practices is deceptively simple: they are the teaching practices that are central to the daily work of teaching; they are important for students' learning, participation, agency, and flourishing; and they are possible to teach to beginning teachers. They are the foundation of skillful teaching. But foundational doesn't mean that they are easy. In fact, I would argue that four of the high-leverage practices—eliciting, interpreting, and responding to student thinking, leading a group discussion, explaining and modeling content, and acknowledging competence—are among the most complex and demanding teaching practices, regardless of the level or subject matter you are teaching. This means that while these practices are important for beginning teachers to develop skill with, supports must be provided for continued growth across teachers' careers."

Nicole goes on to argue that both teacher preparation and ongoing professional development need space for learning that focuses deeply on the content-specific ways high-leverage practices are enacted. As she says, "Laying the foundation isn't enough. Continued care and maintenance are required."

💻 Read the blog post: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsBlog3

📓 Download our new report on the HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsReport

🔗 Check out all of our HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-2026HLPs

🔎 Explore our resources for the HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsResources

09/23/2026

Are your teacher candidates feeling overwhelmed by high-quality instructional materials (HQIM)?

While HQIM and internalization protocols are powerful tools for creating equitable, impactful learning experiences, they aren't always intuitive—especially for novice teachers.

If you are a teacher educator looking for practical ways to prepare your candidates for this work, join us for our free webinar this Friday: Preparing Teacher Candidates to Use Internalization Protocols and Other Lesson and Unit Analysis Tools (September 25, 2026, 3:00–4:30 p.m. EDT).

What we'll cover:

🛠️ A review of different lesson and unit preparation tools.

🎓 Proven approaches to help teacher candidates master these resources.

🚧 A specialized look at identifying barriers and supports for multilingual learners.

🧰 Free activities and examples you can immediately integrate into your own courses.

Whether you are completely new to teaching these protocols or just looking for fresh ideas and a community of support, we'd love to have you there.

Secure your spot today:

Teachers are increasingly expected to use internalization protocols and other tools for preparing to teach lessons and units from high-quality instructional materials (HQIM). These resources, used intentionally, help teachers create powerful learning experiences for students, no matter what curricul...

09/21/2026

✨Weekly HLP Spotlight✨

This week we're focusing on a new high-leverage practice: acknowledging competence.

Teachers deliberately broaden and label both (1) what counts as competence in a given domain and (2) who is seen as competent in that domain. A "domain" includes academic subject matters and disciplines, but also other areas of learning and practice. To broaden what counts as competence, teachers explicitly name and highlight students' contributions of specific knowledge, skills, and practices, both individual and collective, that are central to engaging and learning in the domain.

To achieve this core goal of acknowledging competence, teachers attend carefully to who is seen and acknowledged as contributing and who is seen as "struggling" or "not smart." They explicitly consider social identities. They intentionally call attention to specific competences in what those students say or do. These moves must be done in timely and authentic ways with sensitivity to how students and their peers are likely to interpret and respond to the attention. Teachers can acknowledge competence publicly in whole or small groups, or in one-on-one situations, at various points across a lesson or school day. When done well, acknowledging competence disrupts narrow, reductive conceptions of content, inequitable patterns in who is seen as "smart" or "good," and negative and deficit views that students carry of themselves.

📄 Download the decomposition for acknowledging competence: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLP4decomp

🔎 Explore our resources for acknowledging competence: https://myumi.ch/marsal-TWRL_HLP4

📓 Download our new report on the high-leverage practices: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsReport

🔗 Check out all of our HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-2026HLPs

💻 Register for our November 6 webinar on the HLPs: https://myumi.ch/marsal-HLPsWebinar

09/17/2026

We recently introduced a brand-new high-leverage practice (HLP): preparing for teaching using instructional materials.

In a world where new teachers are expected to seamlessly adopt complex, prescribed curriculum resources right out of the gate, understanding how to unpack and prepare these materials is essential for novice success.

Kick off the school year with us TOMORROW, September 18, 2026 (3:00–5:00 p.m. EDT) for our first free webinar of the fall: Introducing a New TeachingWorks High-Leverage Practice: Preparing for Teaching Using Instructional Materials.

Together, we will:

💭 Explore why this HLP is vital for today's novices.
🔎 Examine its core decomposition.
💡 Consider how to make this practice explicit and learnable within your teacher education coursework.

Register for the webinar today!

Today’s new teachers are far more likely than in the past to be required to use specific instructional materials—or to navigate an expansive array of available resources—when planning their teaching. Learning to work productively and thoughtfully with instructional materials is now a central p...