As a Latina riding on the school bus to my predominately white elementary school, I remember the way we would all peer out the windows with our faces half hidden when the bus from the northern part of town passed by us. “That’s the school with all the black people,” someone would say, and we’d turn to her and wonder how she could [...]
In high school, I tried to avoid gym. Who wanted to change into shorts in the middle of the school day, run a mile, and return to class sweaty—because who really used those showers? Not me. I had friends whose physical education requirements were waived for any reason from varsity sports to asthma. While my friends took extra nonathletic electives, I learned the [...]
Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) in Brooklyn entered its second year this September, touting a unique six-year program that goes from grade 9 through grade 14, after which students graduate with an associate’s degree. The initiative began in September 2011 to develop science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills in students to better prepare them for the job market. In [...]
Elementary schools are saying, “Class dismissed!” to traditional lectures. The Responsive Classroom approach, a teaching technique promoting social-emotional learning strategies, was discussed this past fall at a meeting that the Society for Research on Education Effectiveness (SREE) hosted. The study, funded by the US Department of Education and conducted by researchers at the University of Virginia, found that fifth graders who were taught [...]
“Pick out any book you want.” These are the words my preschool tutor said to me when I was seven years old and still couldn’t read. My mom had already tried everything: flashcards, bedtime stories and several programs promising increased literacy in young children. But all of them ended with me sitting on the floor still trying to pronounce banana while flashcards and [...]
Question everything is a principle to live by--and to learn by. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) promote inquiry-based education, thrusting students into a hands-on relationship with their education. This is a great power and responsibility, but luckily the students have help. Every school has a secret resource, trained to support students and teachers alike. Who is this mysterious superhero? The school librarian, [...]
In the third grade my understanding of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J. R. R. Tolkien boiled down to a shoebox diorama of Smaug the dragon sitting on his pile of treasure. At nine years old, I had no idea of the enduring success of this epic tale and the trilogy it spawned. Back then I was busy imagining a [...]
It’s 8 a.m. and you’re teaching to a room packed with 60 students. Most of them are hiding in the back with slumped bodies and eyes that you still haven’t made contact with because they’re nearly closed. As you try to engage them in talk that they’re not even going to remember about a war or scientific discovery, some of the students are [...]
Back when I was in middle school, some fancy Texas Instruments 83 calculators were purchased for our math classes. The best thing about these calculators was that they had a bigger screen than other calculators along with a keyboard setting. Naturally, my friends and I spent more time passing notes on our calculators than we did graphing functions. Today, math students at Lincoln [...]
Tablets are used in many classrooms today, as they can put a number of highly effective learning resources literally at students’ fingertips. The versatility and mobility of the device allows it to supplement most educational environments. Tablets can provide access to global content, allowing teachers to show students on a more interactive level the content of their lessons—perhaps a history teacher can pull [...]