Traditionally secondary teachers have not been taught how to teach LEARNING, actual techniques to help students become more independent academically. Instead we have been trained to deliver curriculum, and most of us assume that assigning more reading is the key to student improvement. If you are a teacher in a classroom you KNOW that our students come to us believing that learning is a passive process, that teachers will and are supposed to'bring and deliver' information.
     I knew I had to change the way I delivered instruction to get my students to become more active learners. This epiphany came to me in my sixth year of teaching high school English, after I took over one hundred hours of adolescent litearcy training through the Oakland, California based Strategic Literacy Initiative. From 1999-2004, I then worked with students and teachers to introduce the research based, cross-curricular learning strategies I had learned. It became clear that I needed a way to deliver these strategies to all teachers and all students in our district so, I wrote and produced a series of video lessons featuring our own high school students teaching their peers active learning strategies that were already changing their lives. This series, Learning to Learn (formerly known as Reading to Learn) was recognized by state Superintendent of Schools, Jack O'Connell and lauched district wide in the fall of 2003. STAR test scores raised significantly that year. 
     I started Energizing Education to take what we learned out into the world so it can transform the way more of us look at secondary education and learning. 
     Please read some of  the current research and data supporting our belief that we MUST focus on this type of teaching in high schools on our Data and Research pages.
    Our workshops, based on the philosophy "If you teach a mind to fish"...are the answer to the huge black hole teachers and students face between learning to decode in elementary school and becoming independent learners when they leave high school which we all know they need to be. 
      Thanks,
      Beth Decker
      Executive Director
      Energizing Education

Newspaper Article 3/28/2007 Contra Costa Times entitled,
"API scores strongest in elementary," has some powerful information we MUST look at.
"High schools gained seven points, to a median of 700. That's only 80 points more than in 1999.
The mediocre number embodies the persistent dilemma of high school education reform,
which state Superintendent of Schools, Jack O'Connell called the state's "biggest challenge".
"We're moving in the right direction," O'Connell said,"but we're not where we want to be."
Jim Lanich, president of California Business for Education Excellence says,
" The economic implications are enormous. We have no time left to get this right."
He concluded saying, "We don't know where we are going.
At best, we're treading water without ever arriving at the destination."
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/email/news/16986365.htm