3Rs Newsletter

October 2025 Edition

Happy Friday!

I am excited to launch this year's 3Rs newsletter, a monthly resource to support our professional growth and build our Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE)—our shared belief in our ability to impact student success. Researcher John Hattie calls CTE the single greatest influence on student achievement. His work shows that we can achieve significantly more for our students when we all believe we can.

Each month, together, we will share resources (articles, videos, podcasts) tied to our strategic goals. These are meant to spark conversation and challenge our thinking. So please send your own recommendations, and if any topic inspires you to host a book club or discussion with others, let Director Lindsey Hooper, Director Kristen Callahan, or me know. We are happy to help organize.

I look forward to another year of learning with, from, and for all of you.

Sincerely,

Robin

From Dr. Katie Novak (UDL/MTSS Researcher):

Learning to read is one of the most complex skills humans ever acquire — the brain wasn’t designed for it, and research shows the foundation for literacy begins developing before birth. A report of Harvard’s longitudinal MRI study notes, "The process starts in utero.”

Students arrive with real variability in early language experiences, phonological awareness, attention, memory, and background knowledge, all of which matter for reading. UDL asks us to design Tier 1 with that variability in mind from the start, rather than retrofitting after students struggle. Firm goals, flexible paths, every day. For more on the intersection of UDL and the science of reading, read this blog by my brilliant colleague, Dr. Angela Burke.

Book Description of this NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

• From linguist Adam Aleksic, known as @etymologynerd on social media, comes a captivating exploration of how internet algorithms are transforming language and communication in unprecedented ways.

“Packed with fascinating facts, of-the-moment observations, and a sparkling voice, Algospeak is a gift to any word nerd. Deftly covering everything from emoji etymologies and trendbait to Taylor Swift fanilects… Adam Aleksic is the wise, yet accessible internet linguistics oracle we need.”—Amanda Montell, author of The Age of Magical Overthinking and Cultish

From “brainrot” memes and incel slang to the trend of adding “-core” to different influencer aesthetics, the internet has ushered in an unprecedented linguistic upheaval. We’re entering an entirely new era of etymology, heralded by the invisible forces driving social media algorithms. Thankfully, Algospeak is here to explain. As a professional linguist, Adam Aleksic understands the gravity of language and the way we use it: he knows the ways it has morphed and changed, how it reflects society, and how, in its everyday usage, we carry centuries of human history on our tongues. As a social media influencer, Aleksic is also intimately familiar with the internet’s reach and how social media impacts the way we engage with one another. New slang emerges and goes viral overnight. Accents are shaped or erased on YouTube. Grammatical rules, loopholes, and patterns surface and transform language as we know it. Our interactions, social norms, and habits—both online and in person—shift into something completely different.

As Aleksic uses original surveys, data, and internet archival research to usher us through this new linguistic landscape, he also illuminates how communication is changing in both familiar and unexpected ways. From our use of emojis to sentence structure to the ways younger generations talk about sex and death (see unalive in English and desvivirse in Spanish), we are in a brand-new world, one shaped by algorithms and technology. Algospeak is an energetic, astonishing journey into language, the internet, and what this intersection means for all of us. (Penguin, Random House)

Thank you Dr. Dudley for sharing this article and a shark shout out to your Oregon school!

Article by J. Silverman, 2025, The Oregonian (Dr. Dudley's previous school is highlighted in this article)

When it was her turn to host all her fellow middle school math teachers, her boss and her boss’s boss to observe one of her eighth grade math classes at Evergreen Middle School in Hillsboro last month, teacher Alex Krabiel decided she’d go out on a limb.

They’d come to the class that had started off the school year as one of the toughest she’d ever taught.

“There was a lot of energy in that class,” Krabiel told her colleagues. “It was a lot of me working with admin, of moving schedules. It was a lot of resetting expectations, almost daily.”

But with just a few more weeks left until summer break — and after a school year in which the Evergreen staff went all-in on a strategy centered on student conversations — Krabiel was ready to show off her eighth graders, confident they would come through for her.

Evergreen, which enrolls 700 seventh and eighth graders, nearly 50% of them Hispanic or Latino, is one of Oregon’s “targeted improvement schools.” That means it receives some extra money from the state because one or more of its student demographic groups need to improve their performance in core academic topics.

Hundreds of schools around Oregon share Evergreen’s targeted improvement status. But in the absence of hard-and-fast state guidance, the intervention strategies they use to help their students vary widely – and so do the results.

Hillsboro, Oregon’s fourth largest school district, has won past plaudits from both Gov. Tina Kotek and the nonprofit Foundations for a Better Oregon for its use of data to drive its spending decisions.

And amid dismal post-pandemic test scores statewide — and with middle school math newly under a statewide microscope thanks to an accountability bill under consideration in the legislature this year — academic pay-off in that realm carries extra importance.

That meant Evergreen Principal Kevin Hertel and his faculty had to figure out how to help the broadest number of students on a tight budget. They were guided by the work of influential Australian education researcher John Hattie, whose career-spanning meta-analyses of which factors make the most difference in a classroom rank both teacher quality and student collaboration at or near the top.

To read on: https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2025/05/to-help-middle-school-mathematicians-a-surprising-prescription-get-them-talking-in-class.html

This article is part of the collection: The EdSurge Podcast.

When some students hit an obstacle in school or college, they can take it as a sign that this whole education thing just isn’t for them. That can especially be the case for students who are racial minorities.

That can be true with challenges like glitches in the federal financial aid forms or a student registration system, says Greg Walton, a psychology professor at Stanford University. “Research shows that everybody finds things like that annoying, but if you're a first-generation college student, those start to trigger worries about belonging, because there's a belonging uncertainty there,” he says. “They think, ‘Is there something wrong with me? I can't even navigate how to sign up for classes, how am I ever going to graduate?’”

Messages in classrooms and how discipline is handled can also play a role, he adds.

Walton has spent decades researching how to foster a stronger sense of belonging in education settings. And he has helped develop a series of approaches and strategies that research shows can strengthen student-teacher relationships and a sense of belonging, which research shows can have significant impacts on the academic performance of students.

EdSurge sat down with Walton after a talk he gave this month at the SXSW EDU festival in Austin.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player on this page. Or read a partial transcript, edited for clarity, below.

― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

MRSD Website: Portrait of a Graduate

MRSD 2024-2028 Strategic Plan

We are proud to present Monomoy Regional School District’s 2024-2028 Strategic Plan. This plan will guide the operation of our schools in the coming years with a focus on the needs of our students, providing guidance and identifying priorities for a wide range of actions related to our schools – from professional development to curriculum planning to family engagement.

Monomoy Regional School District (MRSD) engages in a regular, cyclical process for curriculum review. This process is driven by educators from all levels of the MRSD learning community who collaborate to evaluate, analyze, plan, develop, and implement curriculum and instruction throughout the district schools. To be successful, the following curriculum plan has been developed to provide dedicated time, support, and resources necessary to complete a “deep dive” into the core of each subject area.

All Unit A staff have access to the WIDA AMS PD portal. This PD portal opens up many opportunities for free PD sessions and resources. Thank you to Holly Thyng for finding a way to open this access to all members.