Education Week’s photo staff presents our favorite images from 2016.
Education Week’s Photos of the Year for 2016
National School Choice Week Around the Country
This past week there have been approximately 20,000 demonstrations across the country in honor of National School Choice Week. The purpose of the week, according to the National School Choice Week website, is to raise public awareness of choice education options. These options include traditional public schools, public charter schools, magnet schools, online learning, private schools, and homeschooling.
President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education nominee, Betsy DeVos, is a strong proponent of school choice. The Senate is still reviewing her for confirmation.
For more information on what school choice means, check out Education Week‘s video explainer here.
Transitioning from Island Life to an Inland High School
Dominique Hessert, a senior at the Rochester Institute of Technology, documented the story of Connor Maxcy, a student at a one-room schoolhouse on Isle au Haut in Maine, as part of her senior capstone project. Over the course of a year, she documented Maxcy’s experience as a student on a small island moving inland to attend high school. The video, images, and writing are all by Hessert. Watch the full video here: Finding Home from Dominique Hessert on Vimeo, or by clicking the video above.
A century ago, 200 of the 3,000 islands spread along Maine’s coast were fishing communities. Today, only 14 of the islands are inhabited year round. Isle au Haut remains one of these communities with a current population of 30 year round residents. The difficulty of this remote lifestyle contributes to continuing declines in the island’s population. Unless one is a fisherman, surviving financially has proven to be difficult, while the reality of raising a family presents its own set of issues: The only source of education is a K-8 one-room school-house. When students approach 8th grade graduation, they have a decision to make:
- Move off the island to attend high school.
- Commute every day on the 40-minute mailboat to attend high school on the mainland.
- Attend boarding school.
Connor Maxcy is one of the two 8th grade students in the 2016 Isle au Haut school graduating class. In June 2016, Connor finished his last semester of schooling on Isle au Haut with the only other student attending the school. Unable to live with his father, who is a fisherman and frequently away, Connor made the decision to move in with a couple who have played surrogate grandparents to Connor since he was born, Linda Greenlaw and Steve Wessel. Linda’s knowledge from being the only female swordfishing boat captain on the East Coast of the United States blends well with Connor’s passion and deep connection with the outdoors. Linda and Steve’s large brown house sits across the street from Perry’s Bay in Surry, 10 minutes from George Stevens Academy,a private high school where Connor has chosen to attend high school.
One week before his 8th grade graduation, Connor’s goal for after high school was to be a fisherman. After a summer living with Linda and Steve and one day in a high school of 300 kids, Connor’s goal has shifted. “I’m looking forward to these four years of high school and then college,” said Connor, “I asked a few of my dad’s friends what they’d do differently if they could change anything, and they said they’d go to Maine Maritime Academy, get a degree. I’m gonna go ahead and try to do that.”
It’s November 22, and a sheer layer of white barely covers the patches of light brown grass spread around the dock in Stonington, located on the southern portion of Deer Isle, Maine. Connor hops out of the car as his guardian, Linda Greenlaw, wishes him a happy Thanksgiving while handing him his duffel bag. Connor had arranged to spend his Thanksgiving break with his best friends, Michael and Andrew Barter and their family. Paula Greatorex, Connor’s middle school teacher, offers him a welcoming hug as Connor climbs onto the deck of the Mink, exchanging excited conversation with Captains Garrett and Tracey. As the Mink approaches the island, Connor’s gaze shifted to the houses perched on Isle au Haut’s rocky coast. He takes a deep breath than says to his childhood teacher, “Finally, I’m home.”
When Connor was on the island, he couldn’t see himself leaving. Some leave, and can’t imagine coming back. Isle au Haut offers meaning to its residents in different ways, but there is one constant. Connor, a 14-year-old boy who spent his childhood couch surfing and hunting his meals while his father left for weeks at a time, still found family on the island. Isle au Haut offered him a unique freedom that gave him a chance at survival while providing him with a sense of family that mainland lifestyle couldn’t provide. On Connor’s journey, he discovered the intoxicating magic bringing residents back to Isle au Haut: a sense of family.
School’s Out: A Year-End Scrapbook
When Schools Close in Rural Communities
Schools across the country close down each year for a variety of reasons. In rural areas like Hughes, Ark., it’s often because they are serving smaller numbers of students and it no longer makes economic sense. More than 60 districts in Arkansas have consolidated or merged since a 2004 state law required at least 350 students to keep a school open. But research suggests that such closures sometimes have a disparate–and disruptive–effect on communities. Photographer Karen Pulfer Focht and Education Week reporter Denisa Superville recently visited the rural town to document the disruptive effects that students and families now face as a result of these school closures.
A Focus on Career and Technical Education
As they attract a new wave of attention and support in schools across the country, career and technical education programs grapple with new challenges: How should they maintain program quality and weed out career paths that lead students to dead-end jobs? As high-flying programs become popular and more academically rigorous, how can educators ensure that they remain demographically diverse? And how can schools do a better job of getting the word out to all students about all of these new college and career options? Photographers Mark Abramson, Andrea Morales and Joe Buglewicz worked with Education Week reporter Catherine Gewertz on a three-part series for Education Week that takes a look at the challenges and opportunities faced by three states’ career and technical education programs.
Smoothing the Entry to Kindergarten
Nearly 4 million kindergartners will be enrolled in the nation’s schools for 2017-18, mostly starting with a blank slate for teachers who may have little information on their skill level and previous learning experience. Reporting on efforts to ease young children’s entry into school, Education Week reporter Christina A. Samuels and freelance photographer Amanda L. Smith featured the Kids in Transition to School program at the Prairie Mountain School in Eugene, Ore., which helps prospective kindergartners focus on school readiness, social skills, and literacy.
Teen Gun Violence Plagues Cities Big and Small
Wilmington, Del., isn’t Chicago or Los Angeles, Baltimore or Detroit. It is a city of less than 72,000 people known primarily as the birthplace of chemical giant DuPont and as a cozy home for big banks and Fortune 500 firms. But an Associated Press and USA TODAY Network analysis of Gun Violence Archive data—gathered from media reports and police press releases, and covering a 3½-year period through June of this year—reveals that Wilmington far and away leads the country in its rate of shootings among young people under 18.
Of the 10 cities with the highest rates of teen shootings, most had populations of less than 250,000 people. Among them were Savannah, Ga.; Trenton, N.J.; Syracuse, N.Y., Fort Myers, Fla.; and Richmond, Va. Chicago was the lone large-population city high on the list.
Poverty and a sense of hopelessness in the most violent neighborhoods is a common thread. Syracuse, a university town that once cranked out air conditioners and televisions, now has a poverty rate of 35 percent.
Others, like Savannah, are deeply divided. While its antebellum mansions, gnarled live oaks, and marble monuments to war heroes drew more than 13 million visitors last year, away from the picture-postcard oasis of Southern Charm the scenery here quickly shifts to decaying neighborhoods, abject poverty, and deadly violence.
Scenes From Betsy DeVos’‘Rethinking School’ Tour
U.S. Secretary of Betsy DeVos took a six-state “Rethink Education” tour the week of Sept. 11 to kick off the school year, aiming to spotlight promising education approaches, mainly focused on K-12 but with a stopover at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. The tour took her to Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and, finally, Indiana, where she met with students recovering from drug addiction and attended a Friday night high school football game.
In an interview with Education Week at the close of the tour, DeVos talked about what’s next for school choice, implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, her department’s approach to civil rights protections, and much more.
Here are some of the visual highlights from DeVos’ tour:
Puerto Rico’s Schools, Communities Fight to Recover From Storm Devastation
Less than a month ago, Hurricane Maria slammed the island of Puerto Rico, swamping towns and displacing residents from their homes. Most schools are still closed to students, but many are now being used as shelters for displaced families. Education Week photographer Swikar Patel and reporter Andrew Ujifusa recently visited Puerto Rico to document the island’s efforts to reopen their schools and how residents are working to put their lives back together.
Click on links below to read more Education Week coverage on Puerto Rico’s efforts:
Here’s How Teachers Can Help With Disaster Relief Efforts in Puerto Rico
‘This Is My Island. My Students Need Me’
Boredom, Makeshift Lessons at Puerto Rican School Turned Shelter
In Puerto Rico, Chef José Andrés Heralds School Cooks Feeding Those in Need
Raising Kings: Inside a School Designed to Meet the Needs of Young Men of Color
From the early stages of recruiting students and training teachers, to the final bell of the school year, Education Week‘s Kavitha Cardoza and NPR’s Cory Turner followed teachers, students, and parents as they documented the first year of Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in the District of Columbia. The school is designed specifically to meet the needs of its young male students students of color – who are called “kings.” And for many of the young men, their needs are profound.
In Episode I of the three-part audio series, the school principal, director of culture, and school psychologist explain their vision and goals for the students. Their comments are excerpted in an audio slideshow below, with portraits by Jared Soares.
Principal Benjamin Williams talks about changing students’ mindset from using school as a social opportunity, to instead using it as an academic opportunity.
Dawaine Cosey, the director of culture, empowerment, and restorative justice, talks about the ways he uses love to interact with students.
School Psychologist Charles Curtis talks about restorative justice, and society’s expectations for the students at Ron Brown.
Raising Kings: Ron Brown College Prep Teachers Give Voice to Expectations
From the early stages of recruiting students and training teachers, to the final bell of the school year, Education Week‘s Kavitha Cardoza and NPR’s Cory Turner followed teachers, students, and parents as they documented the first year of Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in the District of Columbia. The school is designed specifically to meet the needs of its young male students students of color – who are called “kings.” And for many of the young men, their needs are profound.
In Episode 2 of the three-part audio series, Ron Brown’s unique CARE team and the teaching faculty continue their focus on nurturing students’ social and emotional growth. But their time becomes increasingly dominated by a few kings who are getting into trouble. The school’s math and English teacher talk about their expectations for the students; their comments are excerpted in an audio slideshow below, with portraits by Jared Soares.
Math teacher Shaka Greene talks about the need for high standards do to limited spots for internships and scholarships.
English teacher Schalette Gudger talks about the camaraderie among the students.
A Photographer’s View of Ron Brown College Prep
Photographer Jared Soares discusses his experiences, and shares his favorite images from documenting faculty and students at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C. The photographs were part of a joint audio reporting project by Education Week and National Public Radio that tracked the first year at the school.
“When I received the assignment to make photographs at Ron Brown Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C., I had no prior knowledge of the school or its mission. Typically, when I begin an assignment, I prefer to keep an open mind, so I don’t have a fixed idea about the story. I’ll do some brief background research in order to understand context. This approach allows me to be present while experiencing the place and people.
Upon arriving at Ron Brown, I was greeted by Principal Benjamin Williams, and then was quickly paired with a student escort for the day, who shuttled me off to the morning circle. The circle is a daily gathering event led by teachers and students, and it combines morning announcements with notes of encouragement. Most of the students are getting their ties straight and their books in order, preparing for the day ahead.
After morning circle, I zigzagged around campus with Zion Williams, my student escort. I saw students helping each other with their ties, teachers preparing for class in the morning, and impromptu study sessions taking place in the weight room. Passing periods and lunchtime were filled with louder moments. Classrooms felt intimate, and students seemed comfortable sharing and participating.
Squeezing a year-long reporting project into a day of photography was a challenge. Understanding the subtle nuances of each student and faculty member is an even greater one. The moments and set of portraits hopefully allow for an entry point into the project.
Below are some of my favorite images from this assignment”–
Thanksgiving Tribe Teaches Language Lost to Colonization
MASHPEE, Mass. (AP) — The Massachusetts tribe whose ancestors shared a Thanksgiving meal with the Pilgrims nearly 400 years ago is reclaiming its long-lost language, one schoolchild at a time. “Weesowee mahkusunash,” says teacher Siobhan Brown, using the Wampanoag phrase for “yellow shoes” as she reads to a preschool class from Sandra Boynton’s popular children’s book “Blue Hat, Green Hat.” The Mukayuhsak Weekuw — or “Children’s House ” — is an immersion school launched by the Cape Cod-based Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, whose ancestors hosted a harvest celebration with the Pilgrims in 1621 that helped form the basis for the country’s Thanksgiving tradition.
The 19 children from Wampanoag households that Brown and other teachers instruct are being taught exclusively in Wopanaotooaok, a language that had not been spoken for at least a century until the tribe started an effort to reclaim it more than two decades ago. The language brought to the English lexicon words like pumpkin (spelled pohpukun in Wopanaotooaok), moccasin (mahkus), skunk (sukok), powwow (pawaw) and Massachusetts (masachoosut), but, like hundreds of other native tongues, fell victim to the erosion of indigenous culture through centuries of colonialism.
“From having had no speakers for six generations to having 500 students attend some sort of class in the last 25 years? It’s more than I could have ever expected in my lifetime,” says Jessie “Little Doe” Baird, the tribe’s vice chairwoman, who is almost singularly responsible for the rebirth of the language, which tribal members refer to simply as Wampanoag (pronounced WAHM’-puh-nawg).
Now in its second year, the immersion school is a key milestone in Baird’s legacy, but it’s not the only way the tribe is ensuring its language is never lost again. At the public high school this year, seven students are enrolled in the district’s first Wampanoag language class, which is funded and staffed by the tribe.
Up the road, volunteers host free language learning sessions for families each Friday at the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Museum. And within the tribe’s government building — one floor up from the immersion school — tribal elders gather twice a week for an hour-long lesson before lunch.
“Sometimes it goes in one ear and out the other,” confesses Pauline Peters, a 78-year-old Hyannis resident who has been attending the informal sessions for about three years. “It takes us elders a while to get things. The kids at the immersion school correct us all the time.”
The movement to revitalize Native American languages started gaining traction in the 1990s and today, most of country’s more than 550 tribes are engaged in some form of language preservation work, says Diana Cournoyer, of the National Indian Education Association.
But the Mashpee Wampanoag stand out because they’re one of the few tribes to have brought back their language despite not having any surviving adult speakers, says Teresa McCarty, a cultural anthropologist and applied linguist at the University of California Los Angeles.
“Imagine learning to speak, read, and write a language that you have never heard spoken and for which no oral records exist,” she says. “It’s a human act of brilliance, faith, courage, commitment and hope.”
Nearly three decades on, the tribe is still in need of more adults fluent in the language to continue expanding its immersion school and other youth-focused language efforts — the keys to ensuring the language’s survival, says Jennifer Weston, director of the tribe’s language department. The school currently enrolls pre-K and kindergarten-age children but hopes to ramp up to middle school within five years. “The goal is really to have bilingual speakers emerge from our school,” Weston says. “And we’ve seen from other tribal communities that if you want children to retain the language, you have to invest in elementary education. Otherwise the gains just disappear.”
Education Week’s Photos of the Year for 2017
Education Week‘s favorite photographs from 2017, captured by staff and a nationwide network of freelance, wire service and newspaper photojournalists, document news events, policy developments, and people in pre-K-12 education in the United States.
Education Week‘s favorite photographs from 2017, captured by staff and a nationwide network of freelance, wire service and newspaper photojournalists, document news events, policy developments, and people in pre-K-12 education in the United States.
Inside Classrooms in Three States: Quality Counts 2018
The 22nd edition of Quality Counts 2018: Report and Rankings focuses on state-by state assessment of public education. The report aims to illuminate what the high-performing states did well, how low-performers are approaching improvement, and lessons for boosting the quality of k-12 education overall. The nation received a grade of C overall with a score of 74.5, about the same as last year, when it posted a 74.2, also a C grade.
Photographers on assignment for Education Week visited schools in three of the states.
Starkville Early Learning Collaborative- Starkville, Miss.
Though Mississippi scored 49th in the nation overall, the state ranked relatively high on indicators for preschool and kindergarten enrollments.
East Allegheny High School- North Versailles, Pa.
Eighth-ranked Pennsylvania was a leader in getting larger portions of its student body into and through college.
Washington Elementary School–Valley City, N.D.
North Dakota, which ranked 15th in this year’s report, has wrestled with budget issues, but is credited with maintaining funding for programs such as arts instruction, personalized technology, physical education, and nutrition.
A Look at Recruiting and Keeping Good Teachers
The Getting and Keeping Good Teachers report focuses on teacher shortages. An Education Week analysis of federal data finds that all 50 states and most territories reported experiencing statewide shortages in one teaching area or another for either the 2016-17 school year, the current one, or both.
Photographers on assignment for Education Week visited school districts where different strategies for retaining and recruiting teacher are being utilized.
On-Site Day-Care Facility
In a bid to keep more parent-teachers in the classroom, the Niles Township district in Skokie, Ill., built a day-care center on its middle school campus in 2013 and has since expanded it to two sites serving about 80 children from birth to age 4, after more than a decade of requests from teachers and staff members.
NxtGEN Teacher Residency
Angel Magana is studying elementary education at the University of Colorado Denver and is enrolled in the school’s NxtGEN Teacher Residency program, which allows him to work as a paid paraprofessional at a local elementary school, while working toward his teaching degree.
STEM Teacher Shortage
A persistent STEM teacher shortage in the Guilford County school system in Greensboro, N.C., led to opening the first in-house licensure program in 2008– and it’s still one of only a handful of districts across the country with such a program.
Learning in a Corrections Facility: A Day at Wyoming Girls School – Photo Essay
A stay in a corrections facility—often hours away from home, school, and everything that is familiar—is a shock to the system for any student. But studies show girls are significantly more likely than boys to enter the juvenile justice system with a history of all types of abuse and neglect—including a four-times-higher risk of sexual abuse. Juvenile facilities like the Wyoming Girls School are exploring ways to reengage students both academically and emotionally, and help them think of themselves as students again.
Education Week reporter Sarah D. Sparks and photographer Kristina Barker profiled the Wyoming Girls School as part of a special report on teaching vulnerable students.
Here’s a deeper look at their reporting–
Photos by Kristina Barker for Education Week
Reporting by Sarah D. Sparks/Education Week
Students Walk Out To Protest Gun Violence – Photo Gallery
Students nationwide walked out of their classes on Friday, April 20, for the second mass school walkout since the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. Students marched to demand action on gun violence and school safety on the 19th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado that claimed the lives of 12 students and one teacher.
Read the story on edweek.org
Using Job Data to Guide Student Career Choices – Photo Gallery
iLEAD Academy opened three years ago to help prepare Northern Kentucky students for careers in high-paying, high-demand fields. It uses a wonky weapon – labor-market data – to design course offerings that won’t leave students in dead-end jobs, and to give them solid advice that’s grounded in the needs of regional employers.
Read the story on edweek.org
Photos by Pat McDonogh for Education Week