Blog

My first month teaching, I peeked in on the first parent meeting of the year, and a lone parent sat listening to the presentation. There were over 500 students in the school. Eight years later, over 300 families attended that meeting. Our biggest challenge had been getting parents—who often didn’t like school themselves—to see us as a loving and supportive community, so we deliberately fostered an environment in which families could feel comfortable. If a serious discussion about a student...

To better get to know her students, Jaclyn Wehmeier ventures outside of the classroom, to visit each of her third-graders at their homes. Home visits are part of the teaching approach at Christel House Academy South, an Indianapolis charter school that aims to serve students from low-income families in underserved communities. During those home visits, Wehmeier can meet her students’ families and learn more about their backgrounds. Seeing more of her students’ home lives has changed the way...

Starting school can be a worrisome event for a kindergartener, so the Davidson County Schools system has launched a new program to help them feel more comfortable and to understand it is OK to be nervous. The district launched the “One Book, One District” initiative that uses the book “Wemberly Worried” by Kevin Henkes to help students adjust to being in the classroom and dealing with their various emotions. All kindergarten classes in the school system are reading the book to their students...

In recent years, the pendulum of education trends have swung back to emphasize the importance of relationships to learning. Schools are using social and emotional learning curricula to help students develop interpersonal skills and learn ways to solve problems peacefully . But there's still debate around which social and emotional skills are the most important to teach -- such as empathy, e xecutive functioning or persistence -- and some educators feel unprepared to take on a role that seems...

Last spring, Paul Strode gave an unusual survey to his advanced biology students at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado. The first five questions were: Define as best you can: What is a racial group? Define as best you can: What is an ethnic group? Define as best you can: What is meant by the term genetic ancestry? True or False: There is too much overlap between racial groups to use a single biological trait (like skin color) to distinguish one racial group from another. True or...

In an age plagued with addiction, economic disparity and mental illness, where technology is advancing faster every day, professionals say aging educational systems aren’t meeting the needs of Vermont’s growing minds. “We have to re-think everything we do when it comes to educating these kids,” said Mill River Union High School Principal Todd Finn. “We have so much more flexibility with school leadership, and the world is so different for these kids.” Which is why Vermont schools are...

Janine Jackson: Nothing says America 2018 like a spate of stories on how back-to-school shopping includes bulletproof backpacks. Arming teachers and gearing kids up like commandos are presented as more-or-less reasonable responses to concerns about school safety. Any violence in schools is too much, of course, but a conversation about school safety that’s focused on guns and bullets is a narrow and distorted conversation. Recasting our definition of a “safe school environment” could lead us...

Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...

Schools across the country are enlisting dietitians to plant gardens, teach cooking classes and train teachers with nutrition education. According to the Farm to School Census, more than 7,000 school gardens have cropped up across the United States. In addition to reading and writing, kids who attend these schools are being taught how to grow and prepare kale, asparagus and zucchini. In an era when Americans take in 57 percent of calories from ultra-processed foods such as chips, candy and...

“We are more diverse than ever, and different people have different perspectives,” says Maureen Costello, director of Teaching Tolerance at the Southern Poverty Law Center ( SPLC ). The non-profit organization monitors U.S. hate groups and other extremists and also offers programs that help teachers educate children to be active participants in a diverse democracy. “The main job for teachers in this case is to help students discuss controversial issues without turning into enemies,” says...

California school staff would be barred from physically restraining K-12 students or isolating them in “seclusion rooms” unless the student’s behavior creates an imminent physical threat under a bill approved by the Legislature this week. The bill, which now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown, also reinstates a requirement that school districts report data on the use of restraints and seclusion to the California Department of Education. And it prohibits certain restraint techniques that are considered...

Kidsdata announces a comprehensive suite of data, Youth in Schools, including new and updated indicators across more than a dozen topics from the viewpoint of California’s students and school staff. These data are available for state, county, and school district levels, and student-reported data are easily customizable by grade level, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, parent education level and level of school connectedness. Youth in Schools data come from the 2013-2015 California...