June Activities in the Boston Area

There are many fun activities for families to enjoy in the Boston area in the month of June. Check out our list of June activities and events happening in the Boston area and have a great start to your summer! Zootopia at Franklin Park Zoo When: Saturday, June 1, 2024 6:30 pm – 10:00 pm Where: 1 Franklin Park Rd, Boston, MA, 02121 Age: kids, teens, adults Cost: see website Join Zoo New England for…

Read More »

Teenage Vape Usage and Effects

Although e-cigarettes have been around for more than a decade, vaping rates have skyrocketed in recent years, especially among teens. E-cigarettes are now the most frequently used tobacco product among adolescents — some 2.1 million middle and high school students were e-cigarette users in 2017 — far surpassing traditional combustible cigarettes. Vaping has gotten much more popular among teenagers in the past few years. Teens often vape because vapes come in fun flavors, have sleek…

Read More »

Raising Expectations for Special Education Students

On a Tuesday evening in 2019, about 80 parents and students gathered in Archer High School in Lawrenceville, Georgia. They were there for a night of post-secondary education planning. They reviewed statistics, heard school counselor recommendations, and spoke with college representatives. It’s a common enough scene–many high schools host college and career nights to help students and parents plan for the future, but this one had a twist: it was designed specifically for special education…

Read More »

The Bright Side of Being Raised by a Single Parent

In the Unit­ed States today, more than 23 mil­lion chil­dren live in a single parent family. This total, has risen over the last half cen­tu­ry and cur­rent­ly cov­ers about one in every three kids across Amer­i­ca. A num­ber of long-term demo­graph­ic trends have fueled this increase, includ­ing: mar­ry­ing lat­er, declin­ing mar­riage rates, increas­ing divorce rates and an uptick in babies born to sin­gle mothers. With­in sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­lies, most chil­dren — 14.3 mil­lion — live in…

Read More »

Humanizing Mathematics for Kids

Mathematics is created by humans; math teachers are humans, and math students are humans. And yet many contemporary math classrooms erase humans from the equation. “Often mathematics is talked about as if it were apolitical, objective, and cold. A sterile textbook, a teacher writing on a chalkboard and rarely turning around,” said Sam Shah, a high school math teacher in Brooklyn, New York. For many students, that model of math class is unengaging or anxiety-provoking.…

Read More »

When Students Study Why They Failed

For a few weeks in the spring of 2016, nearly all the eighth grade students at a small public school affiliated with Columbia University agreed to stay late after school to study math. They were preparing for a critical test, the New York State’s Regents examination in algebra. Half of the kids came from families that lived below the poverty line in Harlem and upper Manhattan. They attended a selective middle school and were advanced…

Read More »

Lockdown Drills and Student Mental Health

While active shooter drills have become common practice across much of the country, some experts and parents worry they may do more harm than good, particularly if they involve simulation. One of those critics is Dr. David Schonfeld, director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. He spoke to NPR’s Steve Inskeep about how high-intensity drills can harm students’ mental health, and shared what alternatives he would…

Read More »

Asian & Pacific American Heritage and History

Since 1990, the U.S. government has designated the month of May as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, celebrating the heritage, achievements, and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in the United States. The month of May was chosen to mark the arrival of the first Japanese immigrant to the United States on May 7, 1843, as well as the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869.…

Read More »

Learning from Student Language

Last fall, one of Chanea Bond’s ninth grade students told her that he was going to “SOB” next semester. She was confused. A quick Google search didn’t yield a definition that made sense to Bond. So, she asked her student to clarify. The answer? He was going to ‘stand on business,’ a slang term used to express a person’s promise to take care of their responsibilities. This semester, Bond, who teaches in North Texas, created…

Read More »

10 Reasons Kids Have Trouble Paying Attention

Many children have trouble paying attention in class at some point in their academic career. When this happens, especially with young students, it leaves parents wondering why their child can’t focus—and whether he or she could have a learning difficulty. It’s important to know that not every student who has a hard time focusing in school has a learning difficulty such as ADD or ADHD. In some cases, the concentration issues children have in school…

Read More »