It's Time to Build 21st Century Schools
for 21st Century Kids

Why Are Our Schools Not 21st Century?

#1  Education is Too Expensive

The reason education is so expensive in the United States is because schools tend to waste lots of money 
on unnecessary and unneeded resources, tools and gadgets. When the truth is that's not what kids need to learn.
Therefore the solution to this problem is identifying the most important resources, tools and gadgets that kids actually need and then only buying those things and STOP wasting money on nonsense!

#2 Test Scores are Too Low

The reason test scores are so low, in fact they are at the lowest levels in US history 
is because the K12 system wants to rush every student through the grades. 
This is a recipe for disaster. The truth is every child is unique and every child learns 
at their own pace, so then why does the school system want to push 
every kid through the grades without caring about how much they have learned??
The solution then is to slow everything down. What's the rush?

#3 Teachers are Burning Out and Quitting

The reason teachers quit is because they feel like things will never get any better. 
When you look at your future, do you see hope or despair?
The problem is when teachers look into their future, all they can see is that nothing will ever improve.
Why would anyone stick around if nothing will ever get better than it is today?
So What's the Solution?
If you want less teachers to quit, the answer is make teaching fun again!
It might sound like a good idea to praise teachers for wearing 15 different hats, 
but the truth is teachers only have one job to do. 
And if you want to prevent teacher burnout and retain more teachers,
then we need to stop DEMANDING teachers wear 15 hats!
Teachers need to be focused on student learning and we need to stop
distracting teachers from their core mission. 

#4 Students are Out of Control

The reason students act out in school is because there is a toxic culture inside your school 
that is teaching the kids how to misbehave.
So here's what the psychological research has to say about student behavior. 
According to B.F. Skinner, the father of behavioral psychology, 
"all kids crave attention and if you starve them of positive attention, 
then they will do whatever it takes to get negative attention instead."
This means, if you want less chaotic classrooms and you want more model students,
then teachers and schools need to provide all students with much more positive attention!

#5 Kids Don't Pay Attention in Class

The reason students don't pay enough attention in class is because the curriculum schools use 
happens to be too old for 21st century learners. 
So what does the academic research say?
According to Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, 
the world's foremost expert on 21st century curriculum design, 
"21st century learners need more cross-curricular learning experiences."
This means, if you want to get kids to pay more attention in class, 
then you need to re-write your curriculum,  so it aligns with the needs of 21st century learners!

#6 People Don't Trust the School System

Let's face it, teachers don't trust administrators, students don't trust teachers, 
and parents don't trust the whole school system.
So what can we do about the lack of trust?
The reason people don't trust schools is because there is a lack of vision.
Education has become too complicated.
The curriculum is confusing, teachers are stretched too thin, and administrators are just glorified baby-sitters
What we need is a new vision for education.
We need a 21st century vision for learning!
When schools stop using marketing gimmicks and fancy rhetoric to teach kids and lean more into a laser focused vision for 21st century learning - then everyone can start to trust what teachers and schools are trying to do.

What Problems Does Your School Deal With?

These are just the six most common problems that all schools deal with, but your school has its own list of problems. And the question becomes...

Who is Helping You Solve Them?

  • 12 Years of Problem Solving Experience:  Leaf Academy founder, Doc Schwartz, M.Ed. founded the Education Development Institute back in 2013 because hundreds of school districts were struggling with all of these problems and there was no one offering them any viable solutions. Before they heard about Doc, they did what any school district would do - they managed the situation. But that made the situation even worse than before. When you only manage a situation, instead of fixing it, that forces all the teachers, principals and superintendent to go into survival mode. And who wants to work in survival mode, when its much better to work in "Thriving Mode!"  This is why school districts contact Doc. He listens to teachers and principals tell him their problems and then comes up with innovative solutions to solve them.  Why live in survival mode, when you can solve your problems, and start living in Thriving Mode?
  • Innovative Solutions:  The minute you contact Leaf Academy to help you solve your school problems, is the minute you open the door for innovative, out of the box solutions. (Read the Teacher Development Story below...) 
  • Our District Has No Money: The reason your district is on a shoe-string budget is because you've lost sight of your priorities. When everything is important, then nothing is important. The truth is you can't make 15 different things a priority. Schools must prioritize. They must make tough decisions and some things need more money and attention than others. If you don't prioritize the right way - then that's why you always feel like there is never enough money. 

The Teacher Development Story

(An Innovative Solution Case Study)

"I would have quit teaching, if not for the Teacher Development Program..."

Teaching is the most noble profession in the world and teachers have been doing the job for thousands of years. In fact, Plato, Socrates and Aristotle were all teaching people before Christ, so then why do so many 21st century teachers want to quit the profession?

Does this mean there is something wrong with 21st century teachers? Or could there be something wrong with education?

When the founder of Leaf Academy, Doc Schwartz, M.Ed. first stepped into the school administrator role, he was faced with a similar dire situation. Not only were his student test scores plummeting, but more than 40% of his school faculty were threatening to quit their positions if he didn't fix the problem.

But what could he do? How does a school boost student achievement without more funding? How can a school get kids to stop misbehaving, when they have run out of consequences to give them? And how can you stop teachers from quitting, when the school offers them every support they can think of?

Those were the questions Doc was faced when he first became a school administrator.

So what did Doc do?

It turns out the solution is to think outside the box. The first thing Doc did was gather all the data and start to analyze what was happening inside his school. Why were test scores so low? Why were the students acting out so much? And why did more than 40% of the faculty want to quit? 

And that's when he found the answer. The reason the kids were acting out in class was because the teachers stopped giving out positive praise. And because the teachers spent more time on discipline and classroom management techniques, there was less time on teaching the material. This is why the test scores were plummeting.

Therefore, if Doc could fix the behavioral issue, he could make the classrooms less chaotic, which in turn would make the teachers not want to quit anymore.

But how was he going to get the kids to stop acting out? The problem is Doc didn't have a lot of time to think about it. He was named the new administrator in June and the new school year was starting back up in September. That meant, he only had a matter of weeks to solve a problem that most schools don't know how to fix.

And then Doc had a Eureeka moment!

What if he could give the teachers more targeted professional development that helped them become better teachers in the classroom? In other words, what if he could teach the teachers how to deal with real life situations, instead of bringing in traditional PD presenters who would spend 60 minutes going over software solutions?

And that's how Doc developed "The Teacher Development Program." 

At first, all of his teachers were skeptical. "We don't need a new marketing gimmick" the teachers said. "We want real support from you."

But Doc knew their skepticism was sparked by previous administrators who failed to be helpful. And the "Teacher Development Program" was going to be the first teacher support program that worked. And here's why?

The very first thing the Teacher Development Program did was give each teacher a legal Professional Development document. This document allowed each teacher to finally take control over their own PD for the year. This meant, each teacher was no longer obligated to sit through the traditional boring PD workshops after school, especially if those workshops were not part of their own PD plan.

For the very first time, teachers were in control and this made some of Doc's teachers very happy. 

For instance, the art teacher, PE teacher and other specials teachers felt like someone was finally on their side. "Now we don't have to sit through a 90 minute lecture on math skills, when we don't teach math," said one PE teacher.

But that wasn't the only thing the Teacher Development Program did. The second thing the Program did was focus every teacher's attention on the 10 Teaching Standards. To Doc's surprise most teachers didn't even know these 10 teacher standards even existed. "Where have these been my whole career?" one veteran teacher said.

By focusing each teacher's PD plan on the 10 teaching standards, it gave teachers a clear focus for skill development. It also helped the teachers better understand Doc's comments and feedback when he would do walkthroughs and classroom observations.

"I've been teaching for 15 years and I never understood what any of my principals were talking about," said one veteran teacher.

Obviously, giving teachers back control over their time and making PD more focused seems like a no-brainer, but how could this innovative program reduce student behavioral issues and also boost student achievement? Because unless it could solve those two problems, many of Doc's teachers were ready to walk out the front door.

Which is why the next thing the Teacher Development Program did convinced every teacher to get on board. This was the one deciding factor that turned every skeptic into a believer. 

So, the single biggest issue with traditional PD workshops is that they all follow a "one size fits all" model. The problem with this model is that when a PD presenter visits a school, teachers are forced to adapt to the presenter, instead of the presenter adapting to the teacher's needs.

What the Teacher Development Program does is put the individual teacher in the driver's seat of their own career growth. No longer are teachers beholden to school district whims and changing priorities. Each teacher has the 10 teaching standards in their hands and they get to choose which standards they want to work on for that year. And more importantly, once the teacher and principal sign off on that official PD plan - the school cannot change its mind. 

Therefore, if one teacher wants to focus on how to elevate their lesson plans from low order critical thinking skills to higher order critical thinking skills, then that teacher gets full credit for all the hours, research and learning they will be doing, in order to elevate those lesson plans.

That's no longer wasted time, but official CEU credit time. 

And once every teacher saw how they could use their time more wisely and they were no longer forced to sit through PD workshops that had nothing to do with their classrooms or jobs - they felt FREE!!

All of a sudden the new Teacher Development Program didn't seem like a problem anymore, instead it seemed like a savior for them and their careers. Doc ran the Teacher Development Program from 2009 to 2019 and nearly 5,000 teachers went through the program. 

And over that time frame, zero teachers have quit the profession so far, which is saying something since more than 1 million teachers have quit the school system since 2018. 

But what about student behaviors and boosting student achievement?

Now that every teacher had the power to choose their own career path, Doc asked the teachers to get together and discuss the most demanding classroom problems the teachers wanted to solve. And to no one's surprise all the teachers wanted to learn how to reduce student behavior.

So Doc did the research and then created his own PD workshop to teach the teachers how to reduce inappropriate behaviors in the classroom. And the results were groundbreaking. Since all the teachers were now focused on solving one major problem, they didn't feel distracted anymore in class.

And based on Doc's academic research, he was able to show the teachers that students act out simply because they are seeking attention. Therefore, every teacher needs to make sure they are providing enough opportunities for positive attention in class, otherwise the students will always go after negative attention seeking behaviors.

Armed with this new knowledge, the teachers embarked on the most comprehensive positive praise program in any school in the country. And since the teachers and Doc were now on the same page, the teachers welcomed his walkthroughs and classroom observations. In fact, Doc would enter each classroom and count how many positive praise comments each teacher would give the students, by using a clicker counter in his hand. 

In any other school, this would have been seen as a "gotcha" tactic, but now that Doc introduced the Teacher Development Program and teachers were being recognized for their growth, the data Doc collected was now being used by each teacher as a benchmark for success. 

"I would have quit teaching, if not for the Teacher Development Program," one teacher said after completing the two-year training program. "When you graduate from college, you think you're prepared to be a teacher, but that's not really true. You learn "what" to do in college, but this program teaches you "how" to do it in the classroom with real kids."

In the end, all the teachers were able to reduce student misbehavior and subsequently boosted student achievement. Not only did this make teaching fun again for the teachers, but the students liked coming to school now that they could receive more positive attention and less negative attention. Of course, the less phone calls home made the parents happy and proud of their kids as well. 

This is what out of the box thinking looks like. And if you want to help your teachers feel less stressed out, or how to find more spare time then maybe you want to consider implementing the Teacher Development Program in your school too!

Do You Want to Help Teachers??
Then Tell Them About the Teacher's Room

Teachers Join for FREE!!

Inside the Teacher's Room, teachers will have access to free resources, teacher forums and teacher discussion boards. The Teacher's Room creates a virtual resource center for every teacher to ask questions and be heard. One of the biggest issues teachers face today is teacher isolation.

What the Teacher's Room does is help teachers stay more connected to other teachers and stay away from feelings of loneliness, isolation and that everything is on your shoulders. 

Huge Teacher Benefits

  • Teacher Collaborations:  Every teacher feels at some point in their career, that there is too much work for the amount of time they have.  And the only way to solve this problem is through teacher collaborations. When teachers get together and split the workload - more can get done in less time on each teacher's shoulders. The problem is "bad collaborations" can make the situation even worse for those teachers. That is why we have structured teacher collaborations, so that if you want to work with other teachers - you don't feel the stress and burden of "will this collaboration work?"
  • Discussion Forums:  Teachers are always stressed for time. You have to grade papers, you have to create a new test, and you have to analyze data, it doesn't matter what a teacher has to do, there seems to never be enough time to get everything done. But what if there was a way for teachers to ask questions and to share classroom experiences that could save you time and energy? That's what the discussion forums allow teachers to do. Whatever situation you just experienced, another teacher has already gone through the same thing. So what did they do? How did they solve that problem? And what recommendations would they give to someone else in the same shoes? When you have access to a teacher discussion forum, you're no longer alone. 
  • ​Professional Development Courses: The old way of doing PD is a "one size fits all" approach, which we all know doesn't work. The problem is there has never been a viable alternative, until now!! Inside the Teacher's Room, teachers will finally have access to PD courses that fit their individual needs. 
  • ​Teacher Resources: The teaching profession has been around for thousands of years and yet our school system refuses to give teachers the most basic resources. That is why the Teacher's Room has developed simple to use Teacher Resources that every teacher wants to have and now they can download them for FREE!! 

Teachers Can Join for Free!!

Founding Supporters!!

Everyone that pre-registers right now, will be eligible to become one of our founding supporters. What that means is you will be able to pay a one-time fee, which will grant you access to every single 21st century course Leaf Academy develops today and into the future.

That means, you only pay once and you will get lifetime access!!

Some of Our Planned Courses

  • Personal Leadership Course ($997 Value)
  • ​Organizational Leadership Course ($997 Value)
  • The Trusting Team Course ($997 Value)
  • ​21st Century Project Management Course ($997 Value)
  • How to Build a Social Media Following ($997 Value)
  • ​The Science Behind Virality Posts ($997 Value)

Pre-Register Right Now
And Become One of Leaf Academy's Founding Supporters!

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