Personally and professionally, the author shares experiences with school safety and how the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom may utilize middle grade novels to address gun violence with adolescents. Highlighting five middle grade novels that address school shootings--Katherine Erskine's (2011) "Mockingbird," Emily Barth Isler's…

The purpose of this action research study was to understand and develop school-wide critical literacy practices with middle school teachers. During Cycle 1, students, teachers, and administrators from one school within an urbanized district spoke with the researcher in either interviews or focus groups. Results indicated that in order to implement…

Educators, economists, and sociologists have long discussed how best to measure the value of education in society. Since the Coleman Report was published in 1966, indicating that America's students were falling behind, there has been increased scrutiny on ensuring teachers are effective in the classroom and that students are learning and growing…

This article examines the familiar imperative for educators to cultivate affective attachments between students and reading--to foster love or ward off hate, for books. It considers the interplay of this affective economy with other "economies" of reading long theorized in literacy studies: the moral economy, promoting dominant social…

Although several prior studies portray integration in Jewish high schools, this study presents a unique example from a Jewish middle school, where a team of 7th-grade teachers met over two years to integrate their disciplines. Investigating factors that facilitated and hindered integration, I found that the following factors helped drive…

Standardized test and district benchmark assessment results indicate that middle school students in a rural middle school in central Mississippi are struggling with reading comprehension. Although teachers in a specific school district are equipped with a pacing guide to teach state mandated college and career readiness standards, it is unclear…

This study uses an experimental comparative design to accomplish two primary goals related teachers' perceptions of automated writing evaluation (AWE) performance. First, it quantitatively and qualitatively examines teachers' perceptions of the accuracy and trustworthiness of differentially performing AWE models. Second, it synthesizes interview…

Grammar instruction and its role in writing proficiency have been the subject of long-standing controversy in literacy instruction. While traditional grammar instruction has been proven ineffective, many teachers still implement this approach due to a familiarity with the method or an insecurity in their grammar knowledge. Research instead points…

There is tension in the current curricular landscape, particularly for the field of English language arts (ELA). The majority of ELA teachers do not closely follow a district-adopted curriculum (Kaufman et al., 2020; Opfer et al., 2016). Further, recent studies by RAND found that nearly all teachers report supplementing with instructional…

Educational learning improvement is an important stage of a student's informative experience and is essential for teachers to provide their students with strategies that motivate them to learn. The overview discussed methods used by teachers who taught English to improve learning in middle school. This exploration in providing incentives could…

Throughout the years, special education has changed and evolved to best meet the needs of students on IEPs and with diverse learning needs. Teachers are put at the forefront to help students be successful in the 21st century. One way to meet the various learning needs of students, schools have incorporated the co-teaching model. The co-teaching…

This study investigates the interpretive approaches of three English teachers working in different grade levels with the same poem, Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." The researcher sought to learn what the teachers identified as most valuable about studying poetry in school, what interpretive approaches they employed…

When employees expect evaluation and performance incentives will continue (or begin) in the future, the potential future rewards create an incentive to invest in relevant skills today. Because skills benefit job performance, the effects of evaluation can persist after the rewards end or even anticipate the start of rewards. I provide empirical…

This study explores the project-based learning (PjbL) of middle school teachers by examining their instructional context and the project design and management strategies they used to implement PjbL. The significance of this study is to provide middle school teachers with greater perception, insight, and strategies about how the quality of their…

Although existing research suggests that students benefit on a range of outcomes when they enroll in early algebra classes, policy efforts that accelerate algebra enrollment for large numbers of students often have negative effects. Explanations for this apparent contradiction often emphasize the potential role of teacher and peer effects, which…