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The play debate: Primary and beyond
Sheilamary Koch EducationAsk primary students what their favorite school subject is and most will say, "Recess!" As adults we may laugh at this response and say, "I meant just real subjects." But it's no joke. Play — on the playground, in the classroom and after school — is still essential to children's mental, emotional and physical well-being at this stage of their lives.
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How can we fix America’s teacher shortage?
Cait Harrison EducationThe U.S. is facing a shortage of teachers in its K-12 schools, and the situation doesn't seem to be improving much. Teacher shortages across many districts became a hot topic in 2015, and a new study from the Learning Policy Institute details the causes of the shortage — primarily, teachers leaving the profession and fewer studying to become educators in the first place.
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Why L2 teaching should mirror L1 acquisition
Douglas Magrath EducationLanguage acquisition comes under the field of psycholinguistics: Children learn L1 without any active intervention. It is a natural process. Children also learn languages more quickly than adults, as shown by research in L2 acquisition.
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Digital resources and tools to support vocabulary acquisition
Savanna Flakes EducationI wrote an article in March about best practices for explicitly teaching vocabulary. Robert Marzano's six-step approach to supporting students with vocabulary acquisition and retention is still one of my favorite approaches to teaching vocabulary.
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How can we solve our teacher pay dilemma?
Brian Stack EducationLast month, The Nation's Alissa Quart put the spotlight on teacher salaries in her article, "Teachers are Working for Uber Just to Keep a Foothold in the Middle Class." Quart highlighted Matt Barry, a public high school history teacher in the suburbs of San Jose, California, who at 32 has taken a part-time job with Uber to support his wife Nicole and their soon-to-be-born child.
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Do you promote entrepreneurial spirit in your students?
Danielle Manley EducationThe education system is designed to prepare students for the real world, but with more students than ever before entering the "real world" as entrepreneurs, is our education system still doing its job? Preparing students to become entrepreneurs isn't a one-size-fits-all plan. An entrepreneur can do practically anything — from creating a new technology to opening a yoga studio — so the preparation will vary for each student. However, you can help students get into the right mindset and encourage them to pursue their interests and talents by creating an environment designed to promote exploration, creativity and individual thought.
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A ken for kenning: Identifying and creating imaginative language
Debra Josephson Abrams EducationFor those who read the poetic epic "Beowulf" in excerpts or in its entirety, you'll remember the many kennings in the text. According to the British Library, a third of "Beowulf" is kennings. Kennings are types of figurative and metaphorical compound terms created using mixed imagery, with etymology in Old English, Old Norse and German. Bone-house (body) and whale-road (ocean) are two of the most famous kennings, both from "Beowulf."
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What’s the best reading program for my struggling child?
Howard Margolis EducationParents often ask me, "What's the best reading program for my child? He struggles with reading. It's awful." Unfortunately, this question can't be answered. Why? Programs do not teach reading — teachers do.
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The play debate: Shouldn’t preschoolers work more at school?
Sheilamary Koch EducationPlay embodies a plethora of activities that activate the child's growth on multiple levels — physical, neurological, emotional, intellectual — all simultaneously. The important role each type of play has in the development of a preschool-aged child was addressed in my previous article.
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The debate over NARCAN in our schools
Brian Stack EducationIt is a familiar story that is plaguing America's communities, with a familiar headline that appears to repeat itself over and over again: "Young person dies of apparent drug overdose." The American Society of Addiction Medicine reports that opioids — the class of drugs that include the illicit drug heroin as well as prescription pain relievers such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine and fentanyl — are the root cause for a spike in drug overdose deaths in recent years. Of the more than 47,000 lethal drug overdoses in 2014, more than 29,000 were caused by opioids.
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