Last year educators nationwide met the challenges of hybrid teaching and intensive block scheduling and gained a deeper understanding of the extensive inequities that so many communities face. Educators and students alike were asked to completely rethink schooling as the pandemic laid bare a fundamental question: What should education look like in…

No one teaches a toddler how to walk. No one moves his legs for him. We encourage him to stand, applaud his first step, and tell him it's OK when he falls. Yet when it comes to academic learning, writes Cathy Vatterott, we often fail to appreciate children's inborn desire for mastery or to trust their self-knowledge of how to get there.…

A teacher is doing something right when his high school students--kids with limited English, no less--form groups and begin discussing a lesson on quadratic equations at the start of class, without any teacher direction. Bondie, Gaughran, and Zusho describe "discussion routines" that teachers at International Community High School in the…

Over the past three years, Patricia L. Scriffiny has transformed the grading system in her high school mathematics classroom by replacing the traditional points-based system with a standards-based system. Instead of assigning points for assignments, she lists student progress toward meeting clearly defined course objectives. In this article,…

High school teachers often have difficulty motivating struggling students to complete homework--especially in inner-city schools in which many students are discouraged by stressful living conditions. The authors consulted with successful urban educators who were involved with innovative, small high schools in New York City, and asked what…

Using brain-based research, Douglass Elementary School in Boulder, Colorado, looked at the natural assets that both girls and boys bring to school and realized that its classrooms were generally a better fit for the verbal-emotive, sit-still, take-notes, listen-carefully, multitasking girl. Teachers tended to see the natural assets that boys bring…