Our mission is to solve your school's most stubborn problems. 

SOLVED was founded and is led by former NYC Public School educators.
In collaboration with school leadership teams, SOLVED consultants support teachers’ efforts to improve students’ learning opportunities. We leverage six major areas of instructional design and implementation to improve teachers’ pedagogy and students’ learning outcomes.
Promote Growth Mindset for Students & Teachers
  • A school culture which values growth mindset encourages students and adults to persevere, learn from their mistakes, and take ownership of their own learning
  • ​As students and adults learn how their brain becomes stronger through persistence and effort, they start to develop an attitude more conducive for intellectual growth. ​
Demonstrate Effective Feedback Strategies
  • Support teachers’ learning of using real-time verbal feedback to deepen student understanding.
  • Model research-driven feedback strategies to assess students' work and encourage their continued improvement.
Assess & Analyze Data to Inform Instruction
  • Integrate proven technologies into the everyday classroom experience to systematically collect data on student performance.
  • Collaborate with teachers to analyze data, determine students’ current understandings, and plan next instructional steps.
Increase Student Engagement through Discourse
  • Leverage students' natural desire to communicate to optimize their engagement.
  • Facilitate whole- and small-group discussions to deepen student learning.
Deepen Pedagogical Content Knowledge
  • Engage teachers in extending their content knowledge and connect this new learning to their classroom practice.
  • Establish effective PLC structures enabling colleagues to collaborate and further their knowledge.
Develop Rich Curriculum, Unit, & Lesson Plans
  • Use unit & lesson plans to implement rigorous, standards-based curriculum.
  • Design differentiated tasks that engage learners with multiple access points and encourage deep thinking

Research-Driven

All of our services and offerings are driven by the latest educational research. We continuously update our instructional strategies, coaching services and implementation efforts using both academic and field research. With a number of coaches and consultants working directly with schools and teachers, we also collect, analyze and share objective and subjective internal research to evaluate our own impact on educators.  Our work is largely influenced by the authors, professors and intellectuals listed below.  
  • Carol Dweck
  • Jo Boaler
  • Sir Ken Robinson
  • Barbara Oakley
  • Bill McCallum
  • Doug Lemov
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Academic Literature

  • Dweck, C.S. (2006a) Mindset: the new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books.
  • Dweck, C.S. (2006b) Is Math a Gift? Beliefs that Put Females at Risk, in S.J. Ceci & W. Williams (Eds) Why Aren’t More Women in Science? Top Researchers Debate the Evidence. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.
  • Dweck, C.S. (2012) Personal Communication, Teaching Mathematics for a Growth Mindset workshop, Stanford, CA, July. 
  • Deeck, C.S., Walton, M., Cohen, L. (2014) Academic Tenacity Mindsets and Skills that Promote Long-Term Learning. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/manual/dweck-walton-cohen-2014.pdf

Growth Mindset Literature

  • Boaler, J. (2013) Ability and Mathematics: the mindset revolution that is reshaping education. FORUM Volume 55, Number. http://www.youcubed.org/wp-content/uploads/14_Boaler_FORUM_55_1_web.pdf 
  • Boaler, J. (2005) The ‘Psychological Prison’ from which They Never Escaped: the role of ability grouping in reproducing social class inequalities, FORUM, 47(2-3), 135-144. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/forum.2005.47.2.2
  • Boaler, J. (2010) The Elephant in the Classroom: helping children learn and love maths. London: Souvenir Press.
  • Boaler, J. (2013) Ability Grouping in Mathematics Classrooms, in S. Lerman (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education, Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Boaler, J., Wiliam, D. & Brown, M. (2000) Students’ Experiences of Ability Grouping --- disaffection, polarization and the construction of failure, British Educational Research Journal, 26(5), 631-648. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713651583 Bracey, G. (2003) Tracking, by Accident and by Design, Phi Delta Kappan, 
Robinson, K. (Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education (2015) http://sirkenrobinson.com/creative-schools-the-grassroots-revolution-thats-transforming-education/

In addition to the notable authors and academics above, the following body of work  is highly influential  to our coaching, staff development, and instructional support services. 

Growth Mindset Learning Culture

Feedback & Formative Assessment

Learning How to Learn

Discourse & Discussion

Teaching Mathematics

Student Engagement
INFLUENTIAL WORKS


Why Do Americans Stink at Math?
 "Instead of having students memorize and then practice endless lists of equations - which Takahashi remembered from his own days in school - Matsuyama taught his college students to encourage passionate discussions among children so they would come to uncover math's procedures, properties and proofs for themselves."

​The Coach in the Operating Room
"Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence. The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short."

At P.S. 172, a Principal Rewrites the Book
"Teachers, students and administrators are engaged in a constant process of figuring out what works and what doesn’t; why, for example, one student might be quickly gaining an understanding of symbolism in reading while another isn’t. Professional development is an experience that is not relegated to occasional seminars but is lived daily. Strikingly, members of the school’s senior staff have an extended shared history of knowing what is effective and what isn’t — Mr. Spatola’s assistant principal, Erika Gundersen, has been with him for more than 20 years; the math and literacy coaches on hand to work with teachers to enhance practices have been with him on average more than 12 years."

Design Thinking Comes of Age
"To build empathy with users, a design-centric organization empowers employees to observe behavior and draw conclusions about what people want and need. Those conclusions are tremendously hard to express in quantitative language."



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New Approaches to Teaching Fractions_
"If you don't understand fractions, it's literally impossible for you to understand algebra, geometry, physics, statistics, chemistry," ​

    Interested in Professional Learning for your school? Drop us a message.