An effective response to a school, campus, or community emergency requires a thoughtful and coordinated interagency plan to preserve and protect life, as those with both experience and expertise can confirm. Schools and institutions of higher education (IHEs) can prepare for these emergencies by developing an emergency operations plan (EOP).…

In these stressful times, many Parent Teacher Association (PTA) leaders are finding membership recruitment and retention to be particularly challenging. The Black Star Community PTA in Chicago has found some unique methods of getting their community to support students and families, and join PTA. The basis for their efforts is in recognizing the…

What can family members learn about each other from writing together? What sense of community can develop between family members and across families as they write together? What areas of culture and community can be realized as families write together? These are the questions that fostered this current inquiry into a family writing project. Four…

The arts disciplines (visual arts, music, theatre, and dance) merit and require formal study. Policy makers should support studies in the arts as core disciplines, as specified in the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)," the federal legislation that sets policy and appropriations for public education. The arts merit and…

Art museums and other institutions of informal learning can promote multicultural understanding by collaborating with community ethnic groups and designing exhibitions that richly characterize the cultures they represent. Through the lens of educational programming for the exhibition "30 Americans," this article describes how both the Corcoran…

Character educators have a special responsibility to look after children's welfare. At a time when one out of every five children lives below the poverty line, and the United States ranks next to last among the wealthiest nations of the world in looking after the well-being of its children, character educators cannot be silent. Character educators…

The Samuel Brighouse Elementary School, located in Richmond, BC, a city adjacent to Vancouver on the west coast of Canada, is a five-hundred student elementary school. When completed in September 2011, it will replace an existing older school on the same site. This project was identified early on as an opportunity for the Richmond School Board to…

The title of this presentation speaks to the contradictory notion of the "global village" and the great benefits associated with the sharing of knowledge--a key advantage to our shared globalized context. This "Commentary" seeks to articulate some of the lessons being discovered in South Africa related to children, families and…

In this article, the authors present the lessons learned by the teaching community from the September 11 attack and the ongoing war on terror. The ongoing war against terrorism presents some unique challenges to the nation's educators. Classroom teachers must cope with explaining to their students the daily war news and acts of violence. Decisions…

This guide presents some of the best thinking about the difficult and puzzling work of improving student achievement. Taken as whole, it gives a complete picture of what it will take to close the achievement gap. It contains background, findings, and key policy recommendations from a 22-month study conducted by the Washington State School…