Month: May 2023

A Florida teacher is under investigation by the state’s Department of Education after she showed her students a Disney movie that features a gay character.
Jenna Barbee, who teaches fifth grade in the Hernando County School District, says a student’s mother lodged a complaint with education officials after Barbee showed the film Strange World in her classroom.
Barbee said the movie focuses on humans’ relationship to the environment, which was why she chose to show it to her class after a section on ecosystems, plants and animals. She said a subplot about a boy having a crush on another boy never crossed her mind before screening the film.
“It talks about love to all things, and that’s literally what this movie represents,” Barbee told NPR. “I find it interesting that now I’m getting in trouble for a similar topic.”
Strange World, a PG-rated Disney movie released last year, features actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Gabrielle Union among others and tells the story of three generations of a..

Poetry is a mindfulness practice for award-winning author and poet Clint Smith. But as a young person, Smith felt that poetry “was something that wasn’t for people like [him].” In a recent interview with KQED Forum, Smith said that poetry can feel intimidating when presented as if it’s a “geometric proof” or “a code that [students] are supposed to unlock.” He recommended that teachers instead emphasize that no interpretation is wrong. Online resources, too, can show young learners “that there are poets who are alive” and “reflect the diversity and plurality of the human experience of our society.”
“You don’t have to be published to write a poem,” said Smith. “Poetry is in all of us.” He said it’s important for educators to “make poetry feel like an invitation rather than intimidation.” Below, three poetry teachers from around the country shared how they expand the boundaries of poetry in the classroom.
Music and murals
In Carrie Mattern’s high school classroom in Flint, Michigan, st..

When Alexandra Logue served as the chief academic officer of the City University of New York (CUNY) from 2008 to 2014, she discovered that her 25-college system was spending over $20 million a year on remedial classes. Nationwide, the cost of remedial education exceeded $1 billion annually; many colleges operated separate departments of “developmental education,” higher-education’s euphemistic jargon for non-credit catch-up classes. “Nobody could tell me if we were doing it the right way,” Logue said.
She suspected they weren’t. More than two-thirds of all community college students and 40 percent of undergraduates in four-year colleges had to start with at least one remedial class, according to a statistical report from the U.S. Department of Education. The majority of these students dropped out without degrees.
An experimental psychologist by training, Logue designed an experiment. She compared remedial math classes to the alternative of letting ill-prepared students proceed straig..

Amy Whitewater didn’t start a book club with social emotional learning goals in mind. It came from her own passion for reading. Whitewater taught English language arts for 10 years and later became a school counselor. When she got the idea for a student book club in 2013, she enlisted support from other staff members at her middle school, advertised the club to students, sought community donations and scheduled monthly meetings. She led the charge for six years until leaving for a new job.
Over those years, the club did more than build a culture of reading. Whitewater, who spoke about the club’s success at an American School Counselor Association conference, noticed the social and emotional benefits of the club, including:
Cutting across cliques. Each year, 20 to 30 students joined the book club. “They were kids from all different backgrounds, all different socioeconomic statuses, kids who didn’t always interact with each other,” Whitewater said. “And so it was nice to bring them tog..

How does a revolution start? Sometimes, it’s a simple question. For Sarah Powell, an associate professor of special education at the University of Texas at Austin, the question was this math problem: Donna and Natasha folded 96 paper cranes. Donna folded 25 paper cranes. How many did Natasha fold?
In a study, Powell posed that question to children at the end of third grade, when they should have been able to answer it easily. Instead, most couldn’t solve it. One underlined 11 words in the question but didn’t attempt any math. Another jotted down the number 96 and gave up. A few wrote down random numbers that had nothing to do with the problem. More than half the students added the numbers 96 and 25 together. Only two children out of 15 she showed me got the correct answer: 96-25=71.
“I could send you hundreds of these,” Powell said. “It’s heartbreaking. How did we let it get to this? These are kids that just get passed from one grade level to the next. You shouldn’t let a kid get to ..

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. Data analysis for this story by Thomas Wilburn and Kae Petrin.
After New York City’s public libraries last week averted deep cuts that would have significantly reduced hours, some parents and educators are raising alarm about the state of libraries in the city’s public schools.
For years, advocates have warned that many students do not have access to a library or a certified librarian on their campus. The nation’s largest school system, with 1,600 schools, has roughly 260 certified school librarians, education department officials said.
And according to a Chalkbeat analysis of school budget item lines for librarians, a larger share of high-poverty schools had no librarian on budget. (Other schools may employ librarians whose salaries are paid outside of school budgets, like through a school’s PTA, which may not be reflected in the data.)
It’s an issue that’s developed over years,..

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
In 2019, Minnequa Elementary in Pueblo was on the brink of closing because of low test scores and declining enrollment. Today, the school is off the state’s “watch list,” has the state’s top “green” school rating, and recently won a $50,000 award for exceptional growth in math.
So, how did a school where only 8% of students scored proficient on state math tests in 2019 change course?
Principal Katie Harshman says it was a combination of factors, including a good math curriculum, regular coaching for teachers, constant data analysis, and a shift to having some upper elementary teachers focus only on math, while others teach reading and writing. Using state grants and federal money the school receives because it serves many students from low-income families, Minnequa also tapped outside experts, including the Relay Graduate School of Education and a math consulting group called 2Par..

This post was originally published by Parenting Translator. Sign up for the newsletter and follow Parenting Translator on Instagram.
As parents, our short-term goal is to get our children to listen to us and follow the rules and limits we set for our family. Yet, our long-term goal is to raise children who truly understand why we have created these rules and limits and develop an internal motivation to be kind and do the “right” thing. In other words, we want them to follow rules because they care about being a kind, moral person, not just because they are scared they might get in trouble. In research, this is referred to as internalization. So how do we make sure we are working towards this long-term goal? Could our short-term discipline strategies be interfering with this long-term goal?
A recent study addressed this question. The researchers found that when parents used specific discipline strategies they were more likely to have children who showed early signs of internalization..

From the book “Your Brain on Art” by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross. Copyright © 2023 by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross. Reprinted by arrangement with Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Think of how much is learned in the early years of a life: crawling, walking, talking. These learned skills are sculpting the circuitry of the brain though plasticity. As you get a little older and begin to practice skills, neurons connect and those activities become easier. Practice a song, and soon you know it “by heart,” which, technically speaking, is “by brain.” Learn a dance, and soon you can perform its steps without consciously thinking because the neurons connect to dendrites and over time that builds a habit.
Your unique life circumstances and surroundings also help to form your brain connections. The brains of humans are born immature for a reason. By delaying the maturation and growth of brain circuits, initial learning about the environment and the world ..

Excerpted with permission of the publisher Jossey-Bass, a Wiley brand, from “Teaching Fiercely: Spreading Joy and Justice in Our Schools” by Kass Minor. Copyright © 2023 by Kass Minor. All rights reserved.
It is important to distribute equitable responsibility within the community to nourish teachers with time and space for planning, thinking, reflecting and collaborating. When this labor is centered on one entity, like “school leadership” or “grade team leaders” or even one person like “the principal,” the likelihood that an authentic and intentional thought sanctuary for teachers will come into fruition is minimal. One way to think about this movement is through the concept of “community-up,” meaning that community growth is connective, lateral and moves upward, together.

The cylindrical model shown below is an example of a community-up model, and supports organizing within a school community. I learned about the cylindrical model from Indigenous educator Cinnamon Kills First duri..