In September, Public Impact convened its Opportunity Culture Fellows for a day of collaboration and learning which featured sessions on tools to help educators personalize instruction, the science of reading, multi-classroom leader & principal strategies for team leadership and leading schoolwide change, and effective advocacy within schools and districts. On the Opportunity Culture blog, we are sharing some of what we learned in a series of blog posts. Check out the first two:

• The Learner Variability Project, created by Digital Promise, an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit, was created to translate the growing body of research on learning for educators and parents. Digital Promise created a whole-child framework that feeds into its free tool, the Learner Variability Navigator, which guides users through the factors they need to address for each student and strategies to match. Read more in Strategies for Personalization: Learner Variability Tool Can Help .

• Kelly Butler, CEO of the Mississippi-based Barksdale Reading Institute, condensed the science of reading into a one-hour overview presentation, issuing a clarion call for educators to follow the science of reading, focusing on phonics, brain development, the five components of reading, and the simple view of reading. Butler’s efforts to spread the word have helped move Mississippi’s reading growth to the top of state rankings. Read more in To Teach Reading Right, Understand the Science of Reading.

Keep an eye on the blog for more posts, or subscribe to the RSS feed here!