While 2020 was wrenching, teachers made more progress on exploring possibilities, more quickly than ever before. As the pandemic winds down, is your school ready to take advantage of what is now possible? Schools looking to return to “normal” may find that they have been passed by the ones now bringing new opportunities to their communities. In this session, we’ll look at what makes a school magical going forward, giving students and teachers new ways to find satisfaction and excellence.
Rushton Hurley is the founder and executive director of Next Vista for Learning, which houses a free library of videos by and for teachers and students at NextVista.org.
Rushton has spent decades exploring innovative possibilities for bringing together proven approaches with cutting-edge technologies, from his graduate research at Stanford University (using speech recognition technology with beginning students of Japanese in computer-based role-playing scenarios for developing language skills), to his work with teenagers as both a high school teacher of Japanese language and a principal of an online school, to speaking at conferences and trainings around the world, to the 5-Day Teacher Challenge, which over 2000 teachers in 40 countries signed up to try.
With experience at a wide variety of schools around the world (elementary, secondary, and college; large and small; urban and rural; traditional public, public charter, private independent, and schools of faith), Rushton regularly works with school leaders on professional development, school improvement, change strategies, staff morale, promotion in the community, and getting the best out of students and teachers.
Rushton is the author of three books on school and teacher improvement: Making Your School Something Special and Making Your Teaching Something Special (both from DBC Books), and Technology, Teamwork, & Excellence (NCEA).
He loves to travel, makes occasionally successful attempts to take a good picture, cleans up after his cats, and considers himself to have married up.
