Nearly every holiday we celebrate starts with a story. That story gets told throughout the years until it becomes legend, at which point people decide that the legend is worthy of celebration. Somewhere on the way to legendary status, the original story often gets embellished to the point where it becomes difficult to separate truth from legend. Such is the case with the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick. March 17 is here, and it…
Read More »When Millis Public Schools opened its doors for the start of the 2021-22 school year, teachers and staff were looking forward to seeing their students back in real classrooms. “We were so excited that everyone was coming back to begin the school year,” says Bob Mullaney, the superintendent of the suburban Boston school district. But the transition has been more fraught than anticipated due to students’ social and mental health needs. From the beginning, they’ve…
Read More »in High School, Reading
Graphic novels take the text of a story and pair it with corresponding imagery, usually in the form of a comic strip or sequential art. As graphic novel authors have ventured outside of superhero narratives and improved at representing more diverse characters, graphic novel sales have soared. What’s fueling the recent rise in graphic novel popularity? Other than greater representation, many educators are finding that graphic novels are useful resources for struggling readers or students…
Read More »in Teachers, Teaching Your Child Writing Strategies, Writing
Everyone has a story to tell, and everyone has their own unique writing voice. Storytelling is sometimes what excites students the most; it’s an invitation for them to read, observe, dissect, understand, feel, and write. Through writing stories, we learn about our past, current, and future selves. We get an intimate glimpse of our joy, loneliness, sacrifice, anxiety, heartbreak, anger, fear, guilt, surprise, and all the nuanced emotions that make us human. Storytelling is also…
Read More »in Culture, High School
No offense to the worthy gentlemen, but the issue at hand is what to rename Woodrow Wilson High School, the comprehensive high school in Northwest Washington that has long carried the name of a two-term president. Wilson moved into the White House more than a century ago, and as a product of his time, he was also an unrelenting segregationist. Now in 2022, the D.C. Council is moving to change the name. School districts around…
Read More »2021 featured an unprecedented number of weather disasters in the United States, including a deep freeze in Texas, bouts of scorching temperatures in the normally temperate Pacific Northwest, a continuation of severe wildfires in California, and historic flooding in the New York area from Hurricane Ida. Today’s children are likely to live through more severe weather events; one study estimates children who are currently 6 years old will experience, on average, three times the number…
Read More »in COVID-19, Mental Health, Reading
Kids have dealt with a lot in the last year, from having COVID-19 to watching relatives struggle through it and even losing family members. It can be difficult for children to reconcile what adults already know to be one of the most startling parts of grieving: that the world keeps spinning around you, with little interruption or change in what is expected of you despite the fact that your world has forever changed. When it…
Read More »Don’t have the budget for a field trip to The White House or Mount Everest? Take virtual field trips instead with these websites. Tour the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History or journey through The Grapes of Wrath using Google Earth. Keep a travel journal as you visit city after city and read about their cultures and histories. 360 Cities Access the internet’s most expansive collection of high quality 360 degree images and videos. Access…
Read More »Charter schools have become a central part of the national debate over “school choice,” what constitutes public education, and educational equity. Charter school advocates often say that these schools are open to all students. If charter schools can, to any significant degree, choose their students, attempts to compare their performance with public schools in traditional school districts are useless. If they can choose students, claims that they promote educational equity are up for debate. Kevin…
Read More »in SAT Test Prep, SAT tutoring, Standardized Tests, Technology
The SAT is going digital. College Board has announced that beginning in 2023, the digital SAT suite of assessments will be available to all students. They will make the transition to the digital SAT at international test centers in March of 2023 and at U.S. schools and test centers in spring of 2024. Additionally, all PSAT assessments will be administered digitally beginning in the fall of 2023. Here’s what isn’t changing in regards to the…
Read More »