Students tend to avoid subjects where they’re not likely to succeed. When you think about it, the reasoning is pretty obvious: failure is difficult and damaging to the ego. That’s why I believe that every student should be exposed to computational thinking early and often. The
I walked into a classroom and noticed an Albert Einstein poster on the wall. This wasn’t a particularly unique poster. It showed a headshot of Albert Einstein with the quote, “imagination is more important than knowledge.” I have seen this poster countless times, but on this
We can’t wait for the summer! Some students and teachers have already tucked away their book bags while others are scrambling to finish that last assignment. All can agree that the end of the school year brings mixed feelings, some sad, some excited, some anxious,
While the Visible Learning research has been spread all over the world and has been transforming schools and the way we teach, we can’t be blind to the questions and criticisms that have also arisen from that spotlight. I’d like to take this opportunity to address
When our children were young, we lived in Austria, which was light years ahead of the U.S. when it came to recycling. We had three bins in our pantry: one for cardboard or paper products, one for glass and the other for tin and metal.
Most of us have experienced the content-area literacy movement through across-the-discipline strategies, often identified by acronyms or clever titles such as “Chunking the Text.” Secondary teachers, however, soon became strategy-fatigued, overwhelmed with what many perceived as a singular strategy to turn them into teachers of
The Challenge Konocti Unified is located in the town of Clearlake, California. Only 8% of Clearlake residents hold a four-year college degree or higher, the median household income for a family of four is $25,000, hovering just over the federal poverty line, and the city
In our book, Building Resilience in Students Impacted by Adverse Childhood Experiences: A Whole-Staff Approach, my co-authors and I propose a multi-tiered framework for supporting students affected by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma. Yet we realize many teachers work in schools that have yet
Like many school counselors, I often imagine the lives of my students years later, transformed by education and the possibilities we opened up for them. A large part of realizing their future lives is introducing them to new concepts and ideas and encouraging them to
I’ve spent all of my career teaching intermediate grades (seven years in 4th grade, one year in 3rd grade, and this is my sixth year in 5th grade). Here’s why I’m obsessed with intermediate teaching! For the most part, the kids are great at following multistep