In any given community, the public library is one of the most important buildings. The library plays many roles, providing space, resources, and programming, with its doors open to all. In certain cities across the U.S., about three dozen libraries and systems currently have a social worker on staff. This number is growing as communities report the positive effects of having on-staff social workers. Libraries can often be a safe place for children and adults…
The relationship between parent and child is central to building children’s self-motivation and stress tolerance, and how parents respond to kids when they are emotionally distressed can strengthen or strain that relationship. After the release of his bestselling book “The Self-Driven Child,” clinical neuropsychologist William Stixrud got a request: make it even easier for parents to apply the research in the book to motivate teens. So Stixrud and his co-author Ned Johnson wrote “What Do…
Reading is the way some find joy and spend the day unwinding—curling up with a favorite novel, poring over current news, or reading the latest trend in various topics. But for some, reading is a chore, another dreadful assignment to complete, and an anxiety-ridden task particularly when it involves reading in front of others. Reading instruction plays a central role throughout K-12 education, and much time and resources are allocated with the goal of ensuring…
Worried that your children will forget everything they learned over the course of the summer months? You may have more reason than you think. Long summer vacations can break the rhythm of instruction, lead to forgetting, and require a significant amount of review when students return to school in the fall. Students’ overall achievement test scores can drop after one month, on average, over summer vacation. Skills in mathematics and spelling usually take the biggest…
It’s essential for students to like and be a good fit for the school they attend. No matter where students find themselves in their college journeys, they may need help navigating the search and application process to ensure students end up at an institution where they can truly thrive. Nearly a quarter of American college students who start at one four-year institution will transfer to a different one to finish their degree. So, if you’re…
Adults and children of all abilities can have fun in Massachusetts this summer. In addition to having a number of special needs events scheduled, Massachusetts also has accessible spray pools, beaches and parks with ramps, wheelchairs that navigate sand and/or can float in the water, and much more. Check out this list of fun summer special needs events and and resources that are accessible and include everyone! 1. Massachusetts Accessible Pools & Spray Decks. All…
Teachers have faced unprecedented burdens during the coronavirus pandemic — the risks of teaching in person, the challenges of online schooling, and the furor over critical race theory. Now another threat looms on the horizon for a group of former educators in Atlanta: prison. The Atlanta school cheating scandal rose to national attention in 2015 when 11 Black educators were convicted of racketeering and conspiracy for allegedly cheating or enabling cheating on students’ standardized tests.…
Attention, high school juniors: keep the momentum going this summer. You’ve made it this far, and now is not the time to lose steam. Use your time wisely to get ahead. What you do this summer could be the factor that pushes your application from a no or maybe to a yes. Here’s your college to do list for the summer. 1. Draft your college essay. By starting your college essay over the summer, you…
As more than two-thirds of all U.S. colleges and universities continue to make admissions decisions without requiring ACT or SAT scores, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology made news by restoring its admissions testing requirement. Exam supporters jumped on the story, suggesting a wave of similar decisions at other schools. One story declared that the SAT isn’t unfair, society is, as if both couldn’t be true. Such reactions based in the false notion that standardized test…
Banned books aren’t exactly a new concept, but the scope and frequency of them certainly seem to have exploded in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. School systems, teachers, parents, and political activists battle over the specifics of education in America, from the opening of schools and quarantine protocols around the country to the in-class discussion of potentially controversial topics like systemic racism and prejudice. Yet these are all precisely the sort of complex societal…
