Many American students are overwhelmed at the thought of education beyond the high-school level, particularly when confronted with the idea of having a STEM-based job. STEM is the acronym defined as “science, technology, engineering and math,” and majors leading to careers in these fields, despite encouragement by educators and administrators, are not seeing the growth necessary to sustain the future workforce. In an article from The [...]
The age-old adage “patience is a virtue” is becoming harder and harder for students to grasp, according to Jessica Lahey. In her article “Relearning the Lost Skill of Patience,” Lahey discusses the lack of patience among today’s youth and the need for teachers to instill this traditional quality in their students in order to strengthen their learning abilities. Today’s students are surrounded by computers, tablets [...]
Two studies came out in 2013—one administered in the Netherlands, the other in the US—that suggest that people who read literary fiction are more skilled at reading, and consequently are more skilled at relating to others. David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano, two American social psychologists from the New School for Social Research, investigated whether peoples’ Theory of Mind (ToM)—the ability to recognize that other people [...]
In 2010, Kentucky was the first state to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into its classrooms. Since then, students have had to adapt to a new way of learning, and for some, this adaptation isn’t happening fast enough, causing some reservations and confusion about CCSS. While CCSS does mandate a standard of education across the states that are adopting it, it is [...]
I love food. I mean, who doesn’t? Unfortunately, my cooking skills are limited to mac and cheese, Bagel Bites and my GrubHub app. However, I do consider myself a “foodie.” Every time I dine at a new restaurant, which is probably once every two weeks, I make a conscious effort to order the most popular or interesting item on the menu—unless they have [...]
A recent game developed by No Crusts Interactive and released on the iTunes App store is an endless runner that is a little different than your average smartphone app. Stride & Prejudice combines the mechanics of an endless runner with the entire text of Jane Austen’s beloved Pride and Prejudice. The player controls the character, Elizabeth Bennet, as she runs across the screen. Below her, also scrolling sideways [...]
You may have heard of Body Worlds, an exhibition about health and the human body that has been at major cities for the past several years. It is not like other exhibitions you may have seen, however, in that it features real human bodies displayed to educate the viewer about his or her own body. These bodies are preserved using a technique called plastination, invented [...]
I applied to various graduate schools in October 2011. I researched the schools extensively and set aside ample time to visit each before I made my selection. Also, I needed to debate whether grad school was the right choice. I made a list of all the reasons I wanted a master’s degree. Here are the top three: First, I loved my undergrad major—Magazine [...]
Whenever my father gives a book as a gift, especially if the book’s recipient is a fan of the author, he will write something funny on the book’s title page and sign it as if it is from the author. While no one who receives these books is fooled by my father’s joke, the recipient still appreciates the idea of the author signing [...]
When I first heard the term close reading, I was tempted to correct the speaker by asking, “Don’t you mean cloze reading?” referring to an old method of measuring a student’s ability by asking the student to determine a missing word from the context of a sentence. Such was not the case. Nancy Boyles, graduate reading program coordinator for Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven [...]