Being a STEM teacher in 2022 will likely be a new experience every day, even for veterans, writes curriculum designer Anne Jolly. To help out, she suggests ways STEM teachers can care for themselves and ways to sustain kids’ STEM skills, sharing many resources that can help.
Active listening is a key skill for school leaders, especially when faced with the need to mediate complex or volatile issues. Consultants Ron Williamson and Barbara Blackburn describe 5 barriers to effective listening and 10 tips to help every leader become more successful.
Classroom discourse is an opportunity for students to develop voice, advocate positions, and build collective understanding. Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and Stephen Chiger show how teacher Vy Graham structures and prepares for discourse so all her students experience it equitably.
Kasey Short shows how your middle grades school can create a Wellness Fair to highlight that stress is normal, showcase that mental health is a priority, and provide students an opportunity to learn and practice a variety of coping skills. And kids will have fun doing it!
In his farewell reflection upon leaving the classroom, teacher Jeremy Hyler says he will be “working for an organization that believes in making every student successful through the programs they offer and not just selling a product or serving a subset of our students.”
Getting in touch with emotions, especially as a middle schooler, has become a critical component to classroom success. It’s also an essential life skill. Award-winning social studies teacher Jennifer Ingold shares some ways she helps students raise their emotional awareness.
Teachers across the curriculum will welcome this post by nonfiction expert Marlene Correia and Melissa Stewart, author of 180+ nonfiction books for kids. Learn why the five categories of children’s nonfiction they identify not only excite and engage but are what many students say they want to read most.
To help middle graders learn and practice social and emotional skills, teacher and Director of Studies Kasey Short offers ways to incorporate SEL across the content areas, from considering the motivations of historical figures to creating reality-based math word problems.
Using Historical Hypotheses, teachers never tell students what to think but instead “how to better think for themselves.” When students evaluate their own initial hypothesis and closely consider multiple viewpoints, they begin to develop a growth mindset, writes Jennifer Ingold.
Sunday Cummins and Julie Webb lay out the established roles teachers play in the Gradual Release of Responsibility classroom and then look into the complexity of GRR as teachers do a lot behind the scenes to manage the process, adjusting to students’ needs in real time.
