My First Class
My parents dropped me at the YMCA in Oshawa. I paused at the doorway of a mansion that once belonged to the founders of General Motors in Canada. I felt…
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Kindergarten Vaccination Rates Drop, Exemptions Rise as Measles Cases Climb, CDC Data Shows
Vaccination coverage among U.S. kindergartners declined across the board during the 2025–2026 school year, while the share of children exempted from required vaccines climbed to its highest level yet, trends…
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Teachers Can Endure Hard Work. They Can’t Endure Meaningless Work.
Throughout history, teachers have endured extraordinary hardship for the sake of their students. Janina Suchodolska, a Polish educator during the Nazi occupation, ran underground schools and hid Jewish children. She…
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How Joe Helped Shift a High School’s Culture
Joe Ferguson did not set out to change a high school. He simply wanted his students to want to come to school every day. As a physical education teacher and…
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You Can Use A.I. for Free…Until You Need It
Artificial intelligence is commonly touted as a way to increase accessibility into various fields: art, reading, coding, math – if we are to trust Sam Altman, the list of LLM…
Keep readingEducation Department Rolls Back Disparate Impact Rules, Sparking Backlash From Civil Rights Groups
The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday, July 23, that it is eliminating a set of long-standing “disparate impact” regulations, rules that have barred educational policies with unintentionally discriminatory effects…
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Gratitude Tour: Steve and Teresa Engebretsen
In 1980, Teresa Bell, while still a senior at Appalachian State in Boone, NC, was hired by Rob Hershey (to whom I’ve already paid tribute) to teach middle school French…
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Untangling the Web: How one classroom learned to make room for everyone
Last winter, I noticed that two students in my room – who ordinarily had played very, very happily together – were showing outward signs that they were frustrated with each other at recess. Teachers and families alike can vouch for the pandemic’s inevitable effect on students’ social skills and social practices, regardless of where they…
Keep readingWe need to urgently ask what if we got A.I. in education wrong?
I see a lot of people on LinkedIn (and other places) writing about how potentially great A.I. is, personalized learning, making learning fun, allowing expression, discovery, and a host of other potential benefits. Some benefits are being realized. And I agree with many posters in principle, as a paying ChatGPT-certified user, a writing-with-A.I. teacher, and…
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Gratitude Tour: Trip Darrin
During my twenty-six years at Blue Ridge School, I worked for four heads of school. Ed McFarlane hired me. He was followed by Dave Bouton, then John O’Reilly. In my final and (I would say) most critical twelve years at BRS, Trip Darrin was Head of School. As I began to ponder how I might…
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‘Wendy isn’t here.’ Bay Area third graders grieve a classmate’s deportation
This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter. Third-grade teacher Diana Ortega was sitting in her school’s lunchroom, scrolling through social media in March when she saw a video of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents forcibly detaining and handcuffing a mother at San Francisco International Airport. Nearby, a young…
Keep readingGeneral Education First: Rethinking inclusion to support every learner
Every student deserves to be known for their strengths before their challenges. Yet for many students receiving special education services, a disability label becomes the first thing others notice. When schools embrace a “general education first” philosophy, they shift the conversation from limitations to possibilities, recognizing that specialized instruction is a support—not an identity. In…
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One Fascinating Fact a Day: How curiosity changed the way my students learned about the human body
“‘Can we have today’s body fact before we start English?’” That became one of the most common questions in my PYP 3 classroom. What started as a five-minute routine unexpectedly grew into the heartbeat of our How the World Works unit and changed the way my students approached learning about the human body. Like many…
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Love Island: The Summer Book Club All Your Female Students are Tuning Into
For the past two summer vacations, I have shamelessly enjoyed tuning in to each new episode of Love Island at exactly 6:00 PM. I make a…
Education Department Unveils ambitious 2026 Regulatory Agenda, targeting DEI, Title IX and college mergers
The Trump administration is moving to rewrite the rules governing American higher education. The Department of Education released its 2026 regulatory agenda Friday, laying out 19 proposed rule…
The Bulletproof Profession: Why we can no longer sacrifice veteran teachers
In the late 1990s, during my teacher-assisting semester at Grand Valley State University, I was placed in an urban middle school near the Kent County jail in Grand…
“Let’s Wait It Out”: What the Abby Zwerner Case Reveals About School Safety
After the dismissal of the trial following the shooting of teacher Abby Zwerner by a six-year-old student, the impulse to focus our attention on our outrage at Assistant…
Sounds Before Sight
The sight word card had one job. It was supposed to be simple. I held up the word. The student looked at it. We practiced it. We said…
Gratitude Tour: Peter Holland
In 2014, Peter Holland thought he’d write a book. Understand that he claims he was never much of a writer, but something meant enough to him that he…