Nick Covington Nick Covington teaches high school Social Studies in Ankeny, Iowa public schools, and promotes progressive education across the board in his classroom. 22 posts Twitter
transcript 84: In Defense of Public Education w/ Dr. Jennifer Berkshire & Dr. Jack Schneider Today we are joined by Dr. Jennifer Berkshire and Dr. Jack Schneider. Dr. Berkshire is a journalist and educator who focuses on podcasting and labor organizing at Boston College and Umass Amherst respectively, and Dr. Schneider is an education historian focused on reform and school accountability. Chris McNutt, Nick Covington 27 Dec 2020 • 30 min read
Book Review December: 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? Nick Covington 4 Dec 2020 • 10 min read
Critical Analysis 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? Nick Covington, Chris McNutt 28 Oct 2020 • 5 min read
transcript 80: Pandemic Pods, School Choice, and Combating Inequity w/ Dr. Jon Hale How can we simultaneously acknowledge that schools need to change while being critical advocates for the need for public institutions and employee unions? How have market oriented takes on so-called school choice actually subverted the original intent of independent and charter schools? Chris McNutt, Nick Covington 16 Oct 2020 • 37 min read
Critical Analysis 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? Nick Covington 14 Oct 2020 • 12 min read
Progressive Education 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. Chris McNutt, Nick Covington 11 Aug 2020 • 7 min read
Social Justice and Activism Endorsing Student Voice Through Virtual/Hybrid Activism: Overview (Inspire Citizens, Out of the Blocks, SEL) 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! Chris McNutt, Nick Covington 1 Aug 2020 • 4 min read
Progressive Education 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! Chris McNutt, Nick Covington 31 Jul 2020 • 11 min read
Progressive Education 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. Nick Covington 15 Jul 2020 • 11 min read
Book Review June: Can 2020 Be the Year of 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. Nick Covington 8 Jun 2020 • 8 min read
Book Review March: Range by David Epstein Do specialists actually get better with experience or not, and is narrow, deliberate practice the only way to achieve greatness in a given field? Nick Covington 31 Mar 2020 • 14 min read
Progressive Education 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?” Nick Covington 4 Mar 2020 • 10 min read
Critical Analysis 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. Nick Covington 2 Mar 2020 • 14 min read
Critical Analysis 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. Nick Covington 30 Jan 2020 • 4 min read
Book Review January: “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. Nick Covington 27 Jan 2020 • 8 min read
Book Review October: The Schools Our Children Deserve by Alfie Kohn 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... Nick Covington 26 Sep 2019 • 10 min read
Book Review August: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson ...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. Nick Covington 25 Jul 2019 • 9 min read
Progressive Education 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. Nick Covington 31 May 2019 • 6 min read