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Moving away from timed tests
Brian Stack EducationIn a recent Education Week article, Alden S. Blodget asked why we as educators believe that speed reflects intelligence. Blodget reported an alarming upward trend he observed over three decades during his tenure as an assistant head of school: students’ parents pushing for extended test time accommodations — for both school tests and standardized tests. He would receive diagnoses from families looking to get extended time added to their child’s education plan, and he wasn’t always convinced these were accurate. Blodget’s observations led him to a startling realization.
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5 conditioning exercises safe for young athletes
Damon Sayles Sports & FitnessAccording to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), strength training is recommended and marked as safe for children 8 years old and up. However, "strength training" should not be used interchangeably with "weight training." For young athletes, leave the weights alone. But...do not leave the conditioning alone. Injuries in sports happen at times, but a lot of injuries can be avoided with proper conditioning. Here are five exercises for young athletes to help them improve their conditioning — and all five are safe.
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A look at my week as a music teacher
Aileen Miracle EducationLooking for fun songs and activities for your music lessons? In this article, I’ll give you a "peek at my week," detailing one song, game, book, or activity from each of my lessons this week. In first grade, we’ll be practicing long and short-short, which they just learned last week (in preparation for ta and ti-ti, or quarter and eighth notes). At the end of the lesson, students will learn the dance "Highway No. 1," which is one of my favorites!
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The crippling American teacher shortage
Patrick Gleeson EducationA teacher shortage doesn’t look the way you might expect. Your child doesn’t come home from their first day of class and announce there’s not enough teachers at school. Neither does this year’s K-12 classroom necessarily have a dozen more kids than last year’s. In some ways, the teacher shortage is nearly invisible, which is part of the problem. What a teacher shortage does is most simply lower the quality of the available teachers.
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During Bullying Awareness Month, a look at how school districts are tackling…
Bambi Majumdar EducationBullying statistics in U.S. schools are as much a cause for shame as a concern. One in five kids are bullied during their school years, while one in five admits to bullying others. The advent of social media has amplified the problem. Now, bullies can hide behind a screen, encourage others to join in the bullying session anonymously and cause more harm. October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and there is a renewed drive to fight the bullying issue. Districts are introducing new measures to deal with the issue before it becomes an epidemic.
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Surveys: High school graduates need more life skills, less test prep
Sheilamary Koch EducationReal-world skills warrant more emphasis in high school claim students, employers, parents and other adults in three nationwide surveys conducted this June. While 83% of the students surveyed do plan to go to college, they’d like to see less focus on college-entry exams and more on practical skills like personal finance and tax preparation. The surveys, funded by the Kansas City, Missouri-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, polled a demographically diverse sampling of over 2,000 people from across the country.
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Does class size actually matter?
Patrick Gleeson EducationMost parents agree that kids are going to learn better and faster in a smaller class than in a large one. But not everyone agrees that this is so, despite the fact that the largest study on the effect of class size to date demonstrates that "small classes appear to benefit all kinds of students in all kinds of schools." One of the more trenchant critiques appeared in 2018 in the technological and education-oriented THE Journal, which concluded that "class size doesn’t matter," and that in at least one area, mathematics, outcomes improved as class sizes increased.
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Supporting transgender students in schools
Brian Stack EducationIn an Education Week article last month, author Madeline Will reported on what happens when school is a battleground for transgender kids. Will referenced research that "has found that compared to their non-transgender peers, transgender youth are more likely to miss school, have lower grades, and view their school climate negatively." Several years ago, the school board in the district where I work adopted a very progressive policy in an effort to extend equal and fair treatment to all students in all aspects of the district’s affairs, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
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I think my child has a reading disability. What should I do?
Howard Margolis EducationIt’s 6 a.m. on the first day of school. It’s time for Julio to wash up, dress, make sure he packed all his school supplies, and have breakfast. He grumbles and says, "I’m not hungry. I don’t want to go to school. I won’t open a book." As his eyes well up with tears, he murmurs, "I can’t read. The other kids know. They’ll call me stupid." You ask yourself, "Does he have dyslexia? Some other reading disability?" Then you shutter. You fear the future. You’re certain Julio has a reading disability.
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Mark your calendar
Debra Josephson Abrams EducationWhat day is it? Your answer could be anything from Monday through Sunday. But if you ask me, I could easily say, "It’s National Women’s Equality Day! It’s National Dog Day! It’s National Cherry Popsicle Day!" (August 26, as I write this. Of course, there is a National Cat Day, October 29.) Whatever day it is, it’s a good day to explore an adaptable activity that engages as much integrated content as you choose, including language skills, history, government, and civics, cultures, and physics and math as well as critical and creative thinking and analysis, multiple intelligences, and learning styles.
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