Preview the SchoolSims Library of Simulations

You are a first-year teacher in an inclusive SPED classroom as the SPED teacher. The students have been assigned independent reading time. She observes the Regular Ed teacher spending most of the period playing an online game on her laptop, occasionally laughing or reacting aloud. Some students seem off-task, a few glance over at the teacher’s screen, and one even whispers to a classmate, “How cool it is she gets to game at work.” You’re unsure how to process what you’re witnessing — is this a moment of harmless downtime, or a breach of professionalism affecting student engagement and classroom norms? As a future educator, you’re left with a decision: do you ignore it, address it, or seek guidance?

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This mini-simulation is designed for non-licensed staff or newer teachers looking to practice engaging a disengaged student. In this simulation, you assist in a fifth-grade classroom during a math lesson on fractions. The lead teacher, Ms. Johnson, explains adding fractions with different denominators. You notice that one of the students, Lily, is not paying attention. She is doodling in her notebook and not participating in the class activity.

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As a team leader navigating concerns of your team, your goal is to make thoughtful decisions that not only resolve the issues effectively but also support your team and contribute to overall mission success.

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You are a college student in your first internship. Your performance in the beginning months of an internship is crucial for building your reputation and learning the ropes. You will face realistic challenges and moments where your decisions will shape how your co-workers and supervisors see you.

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You are a first‐year intern at a fast‐paced company renowned for its innovative projects. Excited yet nervous on your first day, you soon learn that effective communication is key—but it isn’t always straightforward. The project instructions you receive are often vague, and when you try to share your ideas in meetings, they sometimes fall flat. Over the course of your internship, you’ll face a series of decision points where your choices determine whether you clear up misunderstandings or fall into common pitfalls.

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Your supervisor alerted you that the company is addressing a crisis, and that you’ve been selected to support a cross-functional group of managers as they formulate a response.

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After successfully launching a new product, a quality control issue has been identified, leading to a product recall. Your supervisor has assigned you to be part of the cross-functional team that must manage communication, logistics, and customer engagement during the recall process.

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You are attending a career fair where you’ll have the opportunity to meet and speak with potential employers. How will you distinguish yourself as a candidate and effectively interact with recruiters amidst the crowd of other students?

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You are the principal of Juniper Middle School, where overall trends seem to be going in the right direction. However, on deeper analysis, you uncover another story… a concerning trend that students of color, a growing population in your school, are underperforming, and not making progress or growth in significant content areas (particularly math). A significant number of students of color are also being over-identified for special services, making your participation significantly higher than the national averages. Students of color are also disproportionately engaged in disciplinary measures. You will deal with perceptions and biases that tend to cause students of color to feel disenfranchised and may limit their potential.

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In this simulation, you will see what may seem like prejudice or bullying against the religious identity of one of the students. As a fourth-grade teacher, you will have opportunities to address the situation with the parents of the students involved, with your class, as well as with the principal.

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In this simulation, you are the STEM Integration Coordinator and 8th Grade Math Teacher at Stonehenge Middle School, where STEM performance continues to sag. A shift in community demographics has average class sizes exceeding 34 students, and teachers are spending more remedial time with struggling students. Top students are transferring to more progressive private schools. Those leaving voice frustration at a lack of AP courses and opportunities to earn high school credits, as well as a weak STEM program. To this point, every solution proposed by leadership results in more work for already overloaded teachers. The principal asks you to work with peers to find, propose, and implement solutions.

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In this simulation, you are an Academic Advisor at a boarding school who must advocate for interventions that you and your colleagues identify that your advisee needs while collaborating with the advisee’s family who does not necessarily want their child to have these recommended supports.

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This is a mini-simulation designed for pre-service or newer teachers. In this simulation, a teacher is working to create a lesson plan. What considerations go into this process?

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In this mini-simulation designed for preservice or newer teachers, a teacher is about to start a lesson. Mr Xavier wants to discuss environmental sustainability with his class, and his goal is to get his students engaged and interested in this important topic. What options does he have to keep the class engaged and the conversation flowing?

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This is a mini-simulation designed for pre-service or newer teachers. In this simulation, Ms. Carter asks Sarah to put her phone away. When Sarah refuses, what options does Ms. Carter have and what are the consequences of each option?

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This is a mini-simulation designed for pre-service or newer teachers. In this simulation, Ms. Johnson asks Jake to take off his hat. When Jake refuses, what options does Ms. Johnson have and what are the consequences of each option?

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You are a high school student a few weeks into the first semester. You’ll need to consider a friend’s mental health and determine if and when you should intervene as a positive force.

Note that while this simulation is from the perspective of a student, it is designed to enable teachers and administrators an opportunity to reorient their point of view to engage with challenges faced by students.

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You are a high school student. The simulation focuses on your interactions with two of your close friends, Catarina and Joe. How will you address Joe’s request for “help” in before he takes a test he hasn’t studied for?

Note that while this simulation is from the perspective of a student, it is designed to enable teachers and administrators an opportunity to reorient their point of view to engage with challenges faced by students.

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As a high school student, you will navigate through situations both live and online, applying leadership practices along the way to facilitate positive outcomes. You find yourself being asked for advice from two friends about a bullying issue. At the same time, you encounter online bullying in a chatroom and need to determine how you will respond, if at all.

Note that while this simulation is from the perspective of a student, it is designed to enable teachers and administrators an opportunity to reorient their point of view to engage with challenges faced by students.

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At the start of the new school year, the district’s leadership team notes a drop in enrollment due to middle and high school students leaving to attend a more progressive district nearby. A state report shows that about half of the district’s college enrollees are dropping out or failing in their first year of post-secondary education. The report also shows that the students are poorly prepared in the STEM fields, given the number of remedial science and math classes they are required to take.

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In a middle-school class that has students with a variety of orientations, you’ll need to address rumored self-harm, slurs in the classroom, and parent concerns while considering what level of support you’ll need.

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This simulation addresses issues surrounding Advanced Program participation goals and criteria. It seems that current AP participant demographics at Spalding Middle School do not mirror those of the school or community population. In this simulation, you will deal with issues including equity, self-awareness, data analysis and interpretation, communication, advocacy, and time.

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In this simulation, you will play the role of a middle school teacher who must address classroom challenges by encouraging teamwork and partnerships and building interpersonal teacher-student communication. You’ll be able to reflect on how you apply social-emotional skills to your classroom management.

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In this simulation, you play the role of a middle school teacher who must address the challenges of integrating a new student into your classroom after common behavior expectations have been formed. Several scenarios in this simulation will challenge you to build and draw on a culture of respect among students and between you as the teacher and the students in class. Key roles assigned to students are contested and questioned by their classmates.

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Assuming the role of the Counseling Chair at a medium-sized middle school (grades 6-8), your objective is to comprehend and implement processes that mitigate truancy. Throughout this simulation, various impacts resulting from absenteeism will be considered. This resource is an excellent starting point to grasp the complexities of absenteeism, foster discussions, weigh tradeoffs, and establish your own Network Improvement Communities.

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A star player on your school’s state championship basketball team is failing your English Composition class. His eligibility for the 2nd semester rests on your decisions regarding handling what turns into an ethical situation.

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You are a first-year teacher learning how to effectively deal with learning loss and social-emotional impacts from prior years of virtual learning. You will deal with the student and parental needs and frustrations, leveraging available resources to help them meet grade-level expectations.

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You play the role of an English teacher striving to be effective despite a consistently disruptive student. The student has a reputation among all teachers as disruptive, but you’ve worked with him for some time now and have developed a fragile relationship based on a strong personal connection. You’re nervous about breaking this trust, but at the same time can’t allow his behavior to continue to impact/hijack the entire class negatively.

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In this simulation, you are challenged to align programs with this vision enhancement as quickly as possible.

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In this simulation, you are the Head of School at the Harkness Academy and are forced to navigate leadership decisions that impact board members, students, senior leadership, and others after a prominent student commits a post-prom prank. This simulation can help improve decision-making skills and judgment by allowing you to experience difficult decisions with imperfect options, which lead to consequences you must manage during this real-world scenario.

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In this simulation, you will play the role of the outgoing Superintendent at the Gunderson Community School District. The district is a 3-A system with 3500 students, 500 staff members, 4 Elementary schools, 1 Middle School, and 1 High School.

Due to your relatively short tenure as Superintendent, the Board wants a voice in the next high school principal hire. Now that the initial interviews have limited the field, they want to be involved.

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In a school, resistant to change, you will lead a student performance improvement initiative. You must identify best sources for, then collect and disaggregate available data in an effort to identify areas/practices where improvement is most needed. You must identify strategies to deal with resistance and engage others in the change process while addressing leadership’s concerns regarding time and resources. Where both district and building leadership are most interested in seeing results, you will need to address both sets of needs with your strategy.

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In this simulation, you are confronted with a volatile parent situation brought on by past parent and teacher relations. The angry parent of a 5th grader presents you with a challenge to meet the needs of their special education student. Your understanding of the issues, federal requirements, and way of communicating with staff and parents will impact the success of your initiatives.

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In this simulation, the Superintendent shares concerns relative to the declining performance of EL students at your school. He tells you he favors finding ways to improve the existing English Immersion Program, but that he would like to hear your perspective and recommendations in two weeks.

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This simulation is based around a collaborative teaching team. There is one teacher on the team, newer to the school but a mid-career teacher, who is “not a team player.” The simulation begins with another teacher on the team coming to the school leader and expressing concern over the way the disruptive teacher is behaving. The school leader ultimately ends up at a team meeting and witnesses behavior that is inappropriate and over-the-top. The simulation goals relate to school culture and climate, conflict management, and responding to teacher concerns.

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This simulation involves a new school leader taking over a failing middle school with an entrenched staff and little community support. As you seek to get a handle on the school’s finances, finger-pointing abounds. You will have to determine the best path to building accountability, commitment, and trust in turning this school around.

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Are you ready to face the challenge of continuing to build a positive classroom culture while working with an unengaged learner, and while addressing student behaviors outside of classroom norms? In this simulation, you are a 6th-grade teacher and notice one of your students arrive who is usually energetic and cheerful, but who seems down and disengaged today, and then disruptive. How will you engage him? After working through scenarios with him, on the next day, one of your students makes fun of another in a very public way. How will your address it?

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In this simulation, you have a reading project where your 3rd graders make 30-second commercials to encourage pairs to read their book. This week one of the posted commercials on the class website included the book And Tango Makes Three which focuses on 2 same-sex penguins and a baby given to them by a zookeeper. One parent was not happy about the topic.

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You are the Team Chair for Special Education at Westley, a relatively new school in a growing district near a large metropolitan area. You have been a teacher, a school counselor and are now working with teachers who have tier 3 students. The recent shift to a virtual environment necessitated by the pandemic has had a significant impact on most students, but more especially on several of your special education students. A parent of one of your students wants hour-for-hour compensation for the time when her son was not receiving in-person services.

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This simulation is a decision-making experience designed for the conscious application of the virtues guiding your vision and actions as a leader. It is not a test – you are not being evaluated. It is not a tutorial – this is not designed to teach specific applications, but rather provide an opportunity to make decisions and reflect on choices in light of how virtue may have been applied.

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In this simulation for aspiring and current teachers, a parent contacts you regarding a book report on ‘George’ by Alex Gino. One of the students in the class chose this book for their book report. You have been conducting a year-long focus on reading by having students put up book commercials.

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This simulation involves a new superintendent taking over a small school district that happens to be the primary employer in the community. When a budget shortfall is discovered, the superintendent must decide which resources to involve in the resolution while balancing transparency and strategy among key constituencies. Decide which conditions warrant more persistence versus flexibility while keeping the focus on students.

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This simulation involves an early-career elementary school teacher. The simulation begins following the school leader’s observation of the teacher teaching a literacy lesson. The teacher teaches directly from the teachers’ manual and the lesson has no higher-level skills or thinking embedded within it. At the same time, there has just been a new teacher evaluation rubric implemented in the district that is based on four performance levels. The school leader must meet with the teacher and coach improvement to instructional practice while also helping the teacher understand that the new rubric, though no longer saying her performance is “satisfactory,” the new rubric does not mean she is “unsatisfactory.”

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This simulation is based around a veteran social studies teacher in a middle school. The teacher has set goals that are not aligned with the new school goals or the Common Core standards. As the school leader, you must decide what steps you will take to try and move this teacher toward alignment with the school goals, and outside his comfort zone.

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As a school leader in this simulation, you will face a variety of issues related to working in an environment requiring social distancing and coordination challenges while considering how your intentions, execution, and consistency are viewed by the school community.

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In this simulation, you are the administrator for a growing school district that is considering adding another elementary school. You will need to anticipate and address the impact this may have on financial and geographical segregation. How will you manage the dialogue with stakeholders across the district to elicit perspectives and optimize a solution?

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The Pandemic has had a major impact on our schools and created an environment filled with challenges. In this simulation, you will face, prioritize, and deal with a variety of issues and challenges associated with transitioning to and working in a virtual environment. You will deal with trade-offs between academic rigor and engagement, as well as maintaining structures and systems while building and sustaining relationships, all while managing the satisfaction of a large number of stakeholders with very diverse needs.

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This simulation involves a middle school principal responding to a request from the superintendent for a 15% budget cut in two weeks. The principal must determine the process for arriving at the cuts, who to involve in the process, and how to drive alignment around priorities. Of course, there are many conflicting perspectives to be managed, as well as a rumor mill working overtime. How will various stakeholder groups be managed to arrive at an optimal result?

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As the new principal of an elementary school, just before the school year begins, anxious parents of a kindergartner present you with a challenge: to meet the needs of their chronically ill child. In this simulation, you will seek to ensure student safety and security while promoting independence and appropriately utilizing school district resources. Your understanding of the issues and way of communicating with staff and parents will impact the success of your initiatives.

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In this simulation, your role is an administrator in the first week on the job. You will be faced with the need to manage various stakeholder groups, working to gain the trust and confidence of community members and district employees. You’ll have to balance strategic direction with the shifting demands of daily issues. And you’ll need to determine when to delegate and when to take ownership, and anticipating the broader impact of your actions.

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A parent at the high school where you are the school leader goes to a school board meeting to complain about the way the girls’ basketball coach is treating the players on the team. You must decide how you address the parent’s concern and the alleged behavior of the winningest coach in school history.

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Suicide is a tough reality among our teens and, as such, an inevitable tragedy for our schools. This simulation focuses on supporting the school leader as he/she navigates a loss due to suicide. From the first moment of notification, through the nuances of sharing the news with your students, staff, and community, and into the days and weeks after the tragedy, this simulation helps define what considerations to make when crafting decisions that will impact your community on every level.

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In the face of a potential threat to students, you will work with others to respond decisively, while balancing conflicting considerations. How you measure the situation and choose to act will bear different consequences. In the process of this simulation, aspects of your leadership style may be revealed.

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In this simulation, you are a middle school principal responding to challenges associated with advancing technology. You must identify and successfully deal with challenges associated with cyberbullying and its impact on school learning environment, students, faculty/staff, parents, and the community in general. You will become acquainted with and comfortable applying the growing body of law and court cases addressing cyberbullying and first amendment rights.

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As the principal of Fairlawn High School, you must address the needs of a family whose 16-year-old student is transitioning gender. You will have the opportunity to become acquainted with current laws and accommodation requirements associated with transgender students. You will also be provided a tool to assist in identifying/prioritize risks and developing mitigation strategies to ensure all student needs are met.

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As a new assistant principal at Thornbush Middle School, you are tasked with improving the student’s experience by enabling a stronger, more meaningful relationship between them and the school counselors. Your understaffed counselors at Thornbush spend a majority of their time completing administrative tasks and are justifiably defensive. Further, you’re faced with apathy and resistance from seasoned teachers and staff. To successfully engage counselors in activities aimed at preventing rather than responding to problems, you’ll need to identify root causes, redistribute administrative tasks and lead change efforts despite growing resistance.

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Dealing with difficult parents can be one of the most challenging responsibilities for a school administrator, especially when it involves making difficult decisions. Teachers can complicate these difficult situations when the decisions he or she makes jeopardizes a student’s safety. Administrators must be diplomatic in the decision-making process, thinking every decision through without being rash, to find a solution that is in the best interest of the student.

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In this simulation, you will play the role of superintendent in a traditionally well-regarded district that is experiencing significant population shifts with a host of changing needs. Your challenge is to work with a variety of stakeholders to develop and pass a budget that will provide funding in an equitable manner. This will call for a different process than that which has been used in the past – it is a significant change that must be managed.

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As a principal supervisor, your goal is ensuring equitable learning opportunities for students of color, while also attending to your own and others’ biases while framing your message about equity. In essence: building policies and structures to serve equity, while acknowledging both material differences and political interests.

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In this simulation, co-authored with the National Parent-Teacher Association, you will be addressing communication strategies as they relate to Community Partnerships, one of the seven gears within the Future Ready Framework. In the role of superintendent, you will work with your leadership team and community members to optimize the roll-out of technology to your district. In an era of connectivity and connectivity gaps, being strategic about how you meet families and the community where they become critical to the inclusive learning community you strive to create.

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This simulation involves a school leader finding a phone with messages describing an underage drinking party going on. As events unfold, you will need to collaborate with school and community constituents, responding to a diversity of interests. You will be challenged to act with integrity and fairness while promoting the success of all students in an ethical manner.

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As a school leader, you must know the signs of child abuse and neglect, and know how to act sensitively, accurately, and legally toward all parties involved. When accusations are made, you need to act promptly and appropriately, as well. This simulation gives you practice recognizing and responding in a variety of situations and also provides you with an application tool for assessing and mitigating risk.

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This simulation places you, a month into your new position as principal of Waterside School, in a district experiencing significant shifts in demographics, which in turn leads to challenges balancing needs and perspectives of long-time residents with those of newcomers. The district has a stated commitment to “Create High-Quality Learning Experiences that Meet the Needs of Each Child.” Your job is to uncover specific needs, and resolve discrepancies in the treatment of students, wherever they may exist.

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