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Nick Covington
he/him
Nick taught social studies for 10 years in Iowa and has worked as a labor organizer. He is currently the Creative Director at the Human Restoration Project.
Fighting Back Against the Future
The simple act of having hope for a better future breaks the doom-loop and builds a platform for action.
What Does it Mean to Lead a Liberatory, Feedback-Driven Classroom?
102: Fight Back Against Debt w/ Debt Collective
Engaging in a collective movement toward debt cancellation.
Bonus: Elevating the Conversation on NAEP Scores w/ John Warner
Deconstructing what test scores actually mean.
MINDFOOD I: Top 10 Books Every Progressive Educator Should Read
We break down our favorite books on progressive education.
My Pragmatic Journey to Voice & Choice in the Classroom
Yet my journey to student voice and choice in the classroom was born out of an intense frustration that what I and my co-teacher were spending hours planning, and daily troubleshooting, just wasn’t having the impact we were intending.
Cutting Content to Make Room for Learning
But writing “My Pragmatic Journey…” wasn’t just an exercise, it served as a clarification of my values and my role as a teacher.
“In your opinion, what matters?”
We were trapped in the circular logic and language of letter grades and points: I got an A so I must have learned it, and I know I learned it because I got an A.
Taking the Plunge
This is the kind of learning that is possible if we unencumber our classrooms from complicated instructional strategies...
Put Your Best Foot Forward
This year I challenged my sophomore AP Euro students as we headed into the final weeks of class: Put your best foot forward.
Review: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
...white rage through the most explosive periods in America’s racial history, which the reader comes to understand through the brutal clarity and consistent facts of the historical narrative.
Review: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms
...constructivism has been a consistent but controversial and often caricatured counterweight to the recurring top-down reform movements — rooted in accountability and standardized test scores — that have defined the last 30 years of the educational debate.
A Progressive Response to “Ed. Reform’s Lost Decade”
For those who believe the measure of a quality education can be distilled into an assessment score, the last 20 years of data must be intensely disappointing.
Why “What Works” Won’t Work and Why “What Works” May Hurt
In this article I’ll unpack the criticisms and limits of “what works” in what we call evidence-based educational research and practice.
What’s in a grade? GRExit, GPA, College Admissions, and the Mastery Transcript (oh my!)
In this article I’ll look at the movement of undergrad and graduate programs away from standardized assessments, unpack new research into our assumptions about standardized test scores as predictors of college completion, and challenge listeners to re-rethink “What’s in a grade?”
Range and the "Wicked" World
Do specialists actually get better with experience or not, and is narrow, deliberate practice the only way to achieve greatness in a given field?
Review: Radical Hope
What we absolutely can and should do, however, is define our work as educators biased toward life-affirming, student-centered, inclusive praxis and create a space where we can do the work of reversing the decomposition... a Radical Hope.
Universal Design for Fishing
No analogy is perfect, but I think we can use fishing as an example of an experience where the philosophy of universal design, combined with the support of experienced and conscientious adults, can help us develop a classroom learning experience that achieves the goal of UDL.
Creating a Virtual, Liberatory Feedback-Driven Classroom
This past week, Human Restoration Project has had the honor of presenting this workshop on ungrading and liberatory pedagogy at Digital Pedagogy Lab 2020. Here's an overview of the activities we covered, what we learned, and resources to share!
Endorsing Student Voice Through Virtual/Hybrid Activism
This is an overview of our August 1st Summit with Inspire Citizens (Donna Guerin, Steve Sostak, Kavita Tanna), Out of the Blocks (Aaron Henkin, Wendel Patrick), and Evan Whitehead!
Liberatory Learning: Dismantling the Hidden Curriculum
This is a recap of our asynchronous professional development session, where we worked as a cohort to develop actions and solutions for equitable practices in our classrooms.
A Teacher's Case for Critical Race Theory
What is this “toxic propaganda” the White House and Senate are taking action over, and what are the consequences of having CRT banned from our schools and public institutions?
One Teacher Can't Save the World
What is it about the world that is worth preparing students for, and are we dedicated to the work of building that better world alongside them?
Review: A Wolf At the Schoolhouse Door & the Unmaking of Public Education
What are the tenets guiding the unmaking of public education, what are the aims of the unmakers, and what is there for the rest of us to be worried about?
Review: Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Csikszentmihalyi’s blind spot is a critical one: that poverty is a cause of inattention and a lack of cognitive resources, not an effect.
"Current Events Do Not Belong in History Class"
As laws targeting so-called “divisive topics” intimidate and threaten teachers for having formal conversations and curriculum on these topics, we have to ask ourselves, if we aren’t talking to kids about the impact of these deadly ideas, who is?
What we're working on: Human-Centered Interdisciplinary Subject
Our goal is to answer the question: how can we prepare learners for a world that needs them to enact change?
Conference to Restore Humanity: The Need
It's past time to demand a conference model that is accessible, sustainable, and representative of the communities we serve.
Lessons Preview: Human-Centered Interdisciplinary Subject
This update showcases our progress on our Human-Centered Interdisciplinary Subject, a project in creating an actionable cross-disciplinary, holistic course.
Review: The Schools Our Children Deserve
In contrast with the methods books I had read for coursework and professional development, Kohn’s voice spoke to me with an urgency, a moral weight and clarity which framed dry topics.
