Indiana State Superintendents Study Cognitive Skills and Well-Being

Betsy Hill, president of BrainWare Learning Company, will join Chris Winchell, superintendent of John Glenn School Corporation, and Gregg Goewert, principal of Urey Middle School, in a presentation at the annual conference of the Indiana Association of Public Schools Superintendents.

Much of the discussion on how to help students recover following the pandemic has focused on teaching rather than on students’ learning and what we can do to support them in closing the gap. The achievement gap predates the pandemic and it has widened for many students following the pandemic. The gap is closing at Urey Middle School.

The presentation will share how Urey Middle School, in the 2021-22 school year, addressed student learning and well-being by helping students and teachers understand each student’s cognitive skills and by building students’ learning capacity. The presenters will explain how a completely new approach helped students who were behind academically to improve their ability to learn, their focus and engagement in the classroom, their ability to think more deeply and flexibly, their ability to remember what they learned in the classroom, and their confidence in themselves as learners, athletes and community-members. The discussion will share the unprecedented growth in ILEARN performance that accompanied the gains students experienced in their cognitive skills, attitudes, and feelings of competence and self-confidence.