In the Classroom

Among the many strategies and intervention programs that exist in education today, peer mentoring can be overlooked in spite of its potential. Those not yet convinced of its value need look no further than a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune profile of Peer Insights, a suburban middle-school program that pairs students...

Getting students to read and write well is a key goal of language arts instruction. But what if teachers paired reading and writing with social-emotional learning (SEL)? Doing so would grant students access to a range of academic and life skills, according to Margaret Wilson of the International Literacy Association...

“Little people have all the feelings that adults have—[just] with way less world experience,” according to Mayra Cruz, principal of a public middle school in Washington, D.C. Cruz’s words are a succinct answer to a question posed in a recent article from The Atlantic: Why is middle school so hard...

In 2019, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg captured the world’s attention with her eloquent environmental activism. But although Thunberg's fight against climate change certainly makes her stand out from the crowd, she is by no means the only youth activist out there. As noted in a CNN list of young environmental...

When struggling with an aspect of our education, many of us instinctively ask a peer for help—either because they’re working on the same thing alongside us, or we know they’ve been where we are and can provide some insight. The benefits of peer-to-peer consults may seem one-sided, as the person...

Here are two quick facts: (1) The nation’s K–12 student population is rapidly becoming more diverse. (2) There is a dire need for teachers of color in classrooms across the United States. First, let's take a closer look at student diversity. As of the 2015–2016 school year, white students are no...

A 2019 study regarding what happens when high school students give pep talks to their peers revealed something surprising: The student giving the talk “often benefits even more” than the one receiving it, according to a review of the report written by Amelia Harper for the online news source Education...

There has been no shortage of attention devoted to teacher turnover rates in K–12 schools across the United States in recent years. Indeed, a simple internet search will reveal dozens of concern-filled articles and blog posts about the rising number of teachers who leave the profession each year, with some...

For students who have special education needs, the classroom can pose a considerable challenge, with undiagnosed or untreated learning disabilities often proving particularly troublesome. An article devoted to this topic in the Hechinger Report online education journal offered some alarming insights—for example, of the thousands of minors arrested each year,...

To the ears of many, project-based learning is just another education buzzword laden with promise but unclear in definition. These days, the phrase is often linked with the rise of personalized approaches to learning, as exemplified in a 2018 blog post by Mike Wolking, a progressive education advocate affiliated with...