In anticipation of Banned Books Week this week (September 22-28, 2024); the American Library Association has released preliminary data documenting attempts to censor books and materials in public, school, and academic libraries during the first eight months of 2024. Between January 1 and August 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 414 attempts to censor library materials and […]
Instruction & Curriculum
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Don’t Skimp on Social Studies! Write to Learn in History Class!
By Rhonda van Bergen In many elementary classrooms today, literacy has taken center stage as new standards in reading and writing are implemented. Teachers spend significant time teaching English Language Arts (ELA) skills and strategies to prepare students for high-stakes testing in those areas. Unfortunately, content area instruction in science and social studies often takes […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
How to Run a Fantastic Back-to-School Night
Back to school night. It comes every year, and it comes fast. It’s often the first chance you have to meet parents, share your vision of the year with them, and to open up your class showcasing the miracles you perform on a daily basis. It’s also stressful as all get out. But it doesn’t […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Middle School is Like This
Everything is already over before, while, during, or after it’s already begun. Nothing in middle school lasts. Failure, success, shame, anxiety—all of it is over as quickly as it has happened. This is sometimes a curse. You may succeed during your two classes in the morning but still have abysmal failures in lessons, classroom management, […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Good-Bye Biden: The impact on America’s educators
Joe Biden removing himself from the 2024 bid for the President of the United States will come with cheers and jeers. Some people will look at his decision’s global political implications. Others will look at the more intricate issues impacting everyday Americans with this political move. I look well beyond that as a former teacher […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Jay-Z and Roc Nation: Let’s have the conversation about school vouchers
As I listen to one of my favorite songs by the prolific rap artist Jay-Z, I reminisce on how the words in the chorus will forever motivate me as a first-generation college student from New Orleans. “Some how, some way, we gotta make it up the hood, someday.” For nearly thirty years, Jay-Z has been […]
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How the NBA’s Jaylen Brown’s Story… signifies the intentional demise of Black kids in America’s schools
“My teacher said she will look me up in the Cobb county jail in 5 years… Wow!” This was a quote published to Twitter, now X, in 2014. It was posted by a young Black man named Jaylen Brown, who graduated from Wheeler High School in Georgia. He grew up in a diverse community in […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Hey, Tech, Leave Those Kids Alone!
One semester into the school year, the students greeted me with embellished tales of all they had learned in the first three units they covered in 7th-grade math—I didn’t tell them they should’ve worked through five units by that point. With new students and a new school district, I used tech to devise a four-question […]