Month: March 2023

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting 9-8-8.
The statistics are sobering. In the past year, nearly 1 in 3 teen girls reports seriously considering suicide. One in 5 teens identifying as LGBTQ+ say they attempted suicide in that time. Between 2009 and 2019, depression rates doubled for all teens. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic. The question is: Why now?
“Our brains, our bodies, and our society have been evolving together to shape human development for millennia… Within the last twenty years, the advent of portable technology and social media platforms is changing what took 60,000 years to evolve,” Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association (APA), told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. “We are just beginning to understand how this may impact youth development.”
Prinstein’s 22-page testimony, along with dozens of useful footnotes, offers some muc..

For De’Ana Forbes, it started with crayons, teddy bears, her baby sister and a baseboard-turned-chalkboard in Danville, Virginia.
Though today she’s a social studies teacher at Freedom High, a predominantly Black and brown public school in Woodbridge, Virginia, Forbes has been educating for as long as she can remember.
“Ever since I was 5 I felt like there was something that was in me to teach,” she says. “And not just to impart knowledge, but to nurture, to encourage, to support.”
According to Forbes, that nature is essential to navigating this month as a Black educator.
Black History Month poses a challenge to some.
The tradition–a contemporary evolution of Carter G. Woodson’s “Negro History Week”–could be seen as an opportunity to spotlight the solemn tale of Black American struggles. As such, February could lead way to a hurried, 28-day scramble to discuss all that’s happened to Black folks in America, from the transatlantic slave trade, to the Jim Crow South, to the Civil Rig..

Students’ race and ethnicity affect their chances of earning a college degree, according to several new reports on higher education released in January and February 2023. However, the picture that emerges depends on the lens you use. College degrees are increasing among all racial and ethnic groups, but white and Asian Americans are far more likely to hold a college degree or earn one than Black, Hispanic or Native Americans.
Earning a college degree involves two steps: starting college and finishing college. Before the pandemic, white, Black and Hispanic Americans were enrolling in college at about the same rates, especially when unemployment was high and jobs were hard to find. (Asian Americans enrolled in college at much higher rates.) The bigger distinction is that once a student has started college, the likelihood of making it through the coursework and tuition payments and ultimately earning a degree varies so much by race and ethnicity.
First, let’s begin with enrollment. Th..

School counselor Meredith Draughn starts every day by greeting the students who fill her campus hallways, cup of coffee in hand. There are about 350 of them, and she knows all their names.
“Kids want to feel known and want to feel loved. And greeting them by name is one way we can do that…Research shows that that helps us build a positive culture and a welcoming culture.”
Draughn works at B. Everett Jordan Elementary School in the rural town of Graham, N.C., and she was recently named 2023’s School Counselor of the Year by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA). The selection committee praised Draughn’s data-driven approach and passion for her students.
The award comes at a pivotal time for Draughn: in the middle of the most “normal” school year since the pandemic began. Masking is optional in most schools; quarantine regulations have been loosened; and in May, the Biden administration plans to declare an end to the COVID-19 public health emergency.
But children are still..

Where have all the bookworms gone? Recreational reading has been shown to reduce stress and improve working memory, but fewer children are reading for fun than ever before. In recent surveys by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 16% of 9-year-olds said they never or hardly ever read for fun, compared to 11% in 2012 and 9% in 1984. Among 13-year-olds, that number was 29% in 2020, compared with 22% in 2012 and 8% in 1984.
Authors Grace Lin and Kate Messner believe books give readers the ability to experience new worlds and empathize with others. Together they wrote “Once Upon A Book,” a children’s picture book where the main character Alice is swept away on an adventure through the magic of reading.
“There is a perfect book for everyone,” said Lin. “You just have to find it.” However, there is an art to matching kids with the right book. For parents and teachers who want children to cultivate a love of reading, Messner and Lin provided tips on how to help kids find wonder..