A Family Geography Night (FGN) kit can be used to bring families together, teach about the world, give parents the opportunity to share their beliefs, and participate in the educational system while having fun! Geography is an essential element of twenty-first-century education. More than just maps, geography is the interaction of cultures,…

Recruitment and retention challenges are once again leading to teacher shortages across the nation. Especially in urban and rural school districts, low salaries and poor working conditions often contribute to the difficulties of recruiting and keeping teachers, as can the challenges of the work itself. As a consequence, in many schools--especially…

This article proposes a STEM workforce education logic model, tailored to the particular context of the National Science Foundation's Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program. This model aims to help program designers and researchers address challenges particular to designing, implementing, and studying education…

University earth science departments seeking to establish meaningful geoscience outreach programs often pursue large-scale, grant-funded programs. Although this type of outreach is highly successful, it is also extremely costly, and grant funding can be difficult to secure. Here, we present the Geoscience Education Outreach Program (GEOP), a…

In 2011, the Arizona State Legislature adopted a law creating the first education savings account (ESA) in the United States. Following Arizona's lead, several other states, including Florida Tennessee,Mississippi and Nevada, have implemented ESA policies. Typical eligibility requirements include conditions such as a pupil's diagnosed disability,…

As a growing number of young children across the country are using media and interactive technology on a daily basis, the conversation has shifted from whether technology is appropriate to use at all to how it should be used to best support children's early language and literacy development. A new brief released today, Integrating Technology in…

Research shows that exposure to teachers of color has a positive impact on students of all races, and particularly on students of color. Despite these positive effects, only 4% of Pennsylvania's teachers are people of color. This percentage is not only one of the lowest in the nation, but it is also starkly disparate from Pennsylvania's own…

Two cohorts of teachers participated in a professional development program in summer 2016 and 2017 focused on incorporating global perspectives and activities into K-12 classrooms using contemporary technologies. One part of this program required teachers to plan and carry out a global project with an international classroom as a means to…

School psychology in the United States continues to evolve in response to shifts in the country's demographic characteristics, an increasing focus on the importance of child mental health, together with health and education reforms. The landscape of school psychological services in the United States also is shaped through the changing roles and…

The challenges of ensuring the right to education are numerous, especially when working with marginalised populations in fragile contexts. Despite having the legislation, strong constitutional support, and even educational innovations designed to guarantee the right to education, a major gap exists in Colombia between political intentions and the…

Providing quality support for novice teachers as they enter the profession has been an ongoing concern of educator preparation programs. This article describes the efforts of one teacher preparation program in addressing this matter by utilizing Facebook[R] to provide sustained support and professional development for its beginning teachers. We…

This article presents an inside look at concurrent session planning for the AASL 15th national conference. Planning for the AASL National Conference and Exhibition can be compared to accepting one's first school library position: Even with all the knowledge, the job is daunting. To add to the stress, most of those on the committee had never met…

We report a practical home-made microcentrifuge to be used for teaching purposes. It was made using a salad spinner and two polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tubes racks. It can accommodate 2 standard size 96-well plates or 24 strips or up to 192 microfuge tube. The centrifuge is hand-operated and is ideal for short spin down purposes. (Contains 3…

Beginning in 2007, the Literacy Program at the Right Age (Pacto pela Alfabetização na Idade Certa [PAIC]) in Brazil's Ceará state required municipal schools to implement a tiered, whole-school early-grade literacy intervention. This intervention was complemented by other policies to help municipalities improve student achievement. The present…

This article examines the characteristics of self-directed learning as they apply to the Award in Mentoring (AIM), a school-based professional development program with teachers as adult learners. A short introduction to self-directed learning is presented followed by a look at the design of AIM and how AIM addresses some self-directed learning…