How Do Rising Heat Levels Affect Student Learning and Well-Being?
2022 marked the nation’s third-hottest summer on record, with several states seeing record-breaking temperatures stretch into September, according to Education Week. Schools across the country—in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Denver, and San Diego, among others—closed due to excessive heat. In Columbus, Ohio, teachers went on strike demanding air conditioning in classrooms. Experts claim as climate change…
Teachers Don’t Take More Time off than Other Professionals
Teachers are no more likely than professionals in similar jobs to be absent from work, according to new research that pushes back on the idea that educators frequently skip class, according to Education Week. The findings, in a working paper published in November, suggest that when compared to people in similar jobs, teachers ask for…
Summer School Doldrums: Less than 50% of Eligible Students Attend
Less than half of eligible U.S. students attended summer school last year, despite robust academic programs, according to a newly released Rand survey of K-12 school districts, as reported in Education Slice. In 2023, 81% of schools, supported by COVID-19 relief funds, offered summer programs that provided academic instruction. Every urban district surveyed had academic…
Relax, Catch up on Learning this Summer
A potential benefit of summer learning programs is to give educators an opportunity to test out new approaches to persistent challenges like family engagement, according to Education Week. That’s what Beth Holland argued in an EdWeek account of her research into a summer parent communication intervention: “The smaller student body, brief duration, and flexibilities in…
“Learning Should Be Play” — Students Design 7th Grade Climate Curriculum
The developers of a new climate-centered, open source curriculum focused on land subsidence in California’s Central Valley promise the lessons for 7th graders will be joyful, engaging and rigorous, according to an article in K-12 Dive. That’s because the developers, ages 12-23, are students themselves and have keen insight into what middle schoolers want to…
How Your School Can Retain the Excellent Teachers
At Haileybury, a leading co-educational private school in Melbourne, Australia, fostering a supportive work environment that is ingrained into the school’s culture has been key to both attracting and retaining quality staff, according to The Educator Australia. “Acknowledging that every teacher’s talent and time is valued and respected is an essential leadership trait, as is…
How to Teach Ethical Edtech for Future Innovators
Edtech has fundamentally changed the way the K-12 ecosystem works, providing high-level insights and back-office management benefits for educators, and presenting students with a wealth of information–and entirely new ways to learn it, according to eSchool News. As K-12 students leverage this tech, they must be taught to use it ethically. This is important not…
Cellphone Obsession Spelled the End of My Teaching Career
Two decades ago, no one could have predicted that a device small enough to fit in a student’s back pocket could upend K-12 education, according to Education Week. But in recent years, cellphones have emerged as educators’ No. 1 nemesis. Mitchell Rutherford knows this all too well. The Tucson, Ariz.-based educator, who just completed his…
How to Develop Innovative Solutions to Meet Diverse Student Needs
The demand for special education services is increasing, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, according to eSchool News. Staff who provide those services, however, are becoming fewer and farther between. In 2023, 65 percent of schools across the nation reported difficulty in hiring special educators. Now, schools are exploring new approaches, like teletherapy, that…
K-12 Innovations Must Launch New Versions of Schooling
“Calls to transform U.S. K–12 schools grow more pressing each day. Yet the complex web of relationships and expectations that shape most schools—referred to in innovation theory as their value networks—create formidable barriers to change,” writes Thomas Arnett, a senior research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, in Education Next. “These networks, which for public…
