I recently read an essay called something similar to Are There Any More Good Kids? The real title struck me as sharp and slightly cheeky, because I assumed it was meant with some amount of irony. But the essay more or less argued that the general population of children are not in fact good…

Teachers spend weeks planning for the first days of school— preparing classroom environments, labeling cubbies, rehearsing arrival routines, and dreaming up community-building activities.  Then the students arrive…

Writing has the ability to energize and engage students, transforming the classroom into a vibrant community of storytellers. While narrative is seen as an expression of creativity, grammar is considered its dry, obligatory companion…

Rosie uses a claw grip with three middle fingers wrapped around a thin pencil like she’s trying to extract a stocky cactus. If you’re an elementary teacher, you know it. There’s also the Biohazard Grip, held delicately near the eraser as though the other end is coated in snot…

Not to be the a-hole who stars with “Did you read that piece in the Atlantic?”, but I just wholly leaped at the title’s lure. “What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat” recounts Noah Hawley being invited to Campfire, Jeff Bezos’s annual ideas retreat, where he spent a few days seeing what…

As I navigated the throng of parents outside my daughter’s new elementary school, a familiar face flickered through the crowd. I swiftly identified her as a mother from the Montessori school where I taught for nearly a decade and where my own children learned to navigate the world…

In theory, critical analysis could be considered the crown jewel of intellectual growth. In practice, it’s often met with a groan and yields work that’s brief, vague, and haunted by the ghost of whatever students would rather be doing…

Quaint are the days when unrealistic beauty standards came mostly from airbrushed magazine covers and Victoria’s Secret Angels ads. From Hollywood’s most elite to teen influencers who’ve made “You guys!” a complete sentence, everyone seems to be inviting us into their bathrooms now...

The trouble with a bad introduction is that it can follow a decent idea for years, like a someone who got too drunk at their first office Christmas party. Baggage aside, it’s hardly a radical idea that fourth graders in different states should share some basic academic expectations…

The last few weeks of school bring the usual accumulation of fairs, dances, fundraisers, and traditions. But joyful and memorable as they are, these well-meaning spring activities have an unintended consequence of pushing learning goals to the sides…

AI is not a neutral helper. It is built on the labor, language, and silences of countless human beings, and to teach its use without teaching its ethics is to send students into the world fluent in shortcuts but illiterate in responsibility. Bias is part of the landscape…

For many educators, AI feels like an intrusion into a sacred space of student voice and integrity. Conversations about its role in the classroom have become pressing as teachers worry about the erosion of authentic writing…