LATEST
RESOURCES

How can parents and educators help kids develop the competence and confidence they need to tackle and solve their own problems? This article describes the many different faces of anxiety in the classroom.

The first step in the 7-Day Happiness Challenge is to assess your relationships. These 13 questions were designed in partnership with Dr. Robert Waldinger, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, to help you take stock of the range and strength of your many social ties.

A good teacher knows that establishing strong relationships with students is key not only to helping them succeed but also to supporting their own love for the job. One way to develop a rapport with students is to introduce gratitude practices at school.

Months into the current school year, most American students are still trying to make up for what they lost during the pandemic. This fall, we saw some of the clearest evidence yet of the extent to which the pandemic — and the school closures that came with it — hurt children’s education.

Renshaw and his colleagues have spent the last five years finding ways to help middle and high school students in special education work through the anxiety and depression that gets in the way of schoolwork. In the process, they stemmed a significant source of chronic absenteeism in the district: refusal to go to school.

If we let the statistics alone tell their stories, the future might seem grim for many of the children in Cleveland’s West Boulevard neighborhood, surrounding Almira Elementary School.

The National Education Association estimates there’s a shortage of roughly 300,000 teachers and staff across the U.S. The teacher shortage is particularly pronounced in rural school districts, where the need for special education teachers and STEM teachers is high.

Teachers often give high school students feedback to guide their learning—soliciting feedback about the class from them helps deepen the teacher-student rapport.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give to new teachers is the need to be flexible. A flexible disposition has always been essential in an effective teacher. Teachers adjust, shift, and change practices and ideas to do what is best for students. Enter the month of March 2020, and flexibility mounted to a new level, where teachers were asked to pivot and transform traditional education beyond anyone’s imagination.

The coronavirus pandemic changed everything almost overnight for students and their families. The purpose of this qualitative case study, thus, was to investigate the views of families about the sudden change in education for their middle school children, particularly literacy practices, during the pandemic.

"The DARE tool brings together—in a uniquely broad and practical way—what
is known about district actions that can support racial equity. The tool captures
research-informed, high-leverage aspects of schooling that leaders must address in
order to create systems that build on the strengths of and respond to the needs of
students of color."

You know you’re dealing with an expert when they make an impressive task seem natural and seamless. But don’t be fooled.

Feedback is any response regarding a student’s performance or behavior. It can be verbal, written or gestural. The purpose of feedback in the assessment and learning process is to improve a student’s performance - not put a damper on it. It is essential that the process of providing feedback is a positive, or at least a neutral, learning experience for the student.

Studies continue to show that parent involvement is one important factor in helping students engage in their learning, and parent-teacher communication is a key aspect of promoting parent involvement.

Reasonable people may disagree about whether teachers should have to pass licensing tests of instructional knowledge before getting a job in a classroom. But it’s hard to dispute the idea that, if there is going to be such a test, then the questions should be based on the best evidence we have about how children learn. Right?

In order to work at their highest levels, all members of a school community have to be learning and growing. The adult culture is a critical element. "To get to that place, adults need to be part of a community of colleagues who support their growth. They need to feel safe to be vulnerable, to admit failings or mistakes and to trust that their colleagues are giving feedback in order to help them improve."

Kent Pekel, head of The Search Institute, describes the need for "developmental relationships" in the life of young people and offers some practical strategies for getting to know young people better.

​

Devoting regular time in professional learning communities and faculty meetings to discussing goal-achieving strategies can provide a power morale boost in schools. In particular, discussing long-term plans can stimulate broad faculty collaboration to shape the school. And sharing with students that you’re doing the same thing you ask them to do makes it more likely that they’ll value the activity.

This blog post from Search Institute argues for greater investment in and support of adult-adolescent relationships and reframing what those look like.