Education

Millions of students across the United States spent their summers in learning and enrichment programs, many of which employed intensive tutoring designed to bring math and reading scores up to grade level.

This article is the first of a two-part series covering key principles to consider when integrating a generative AI creativity tool into your academic setting.

A joyful class is a rigorous class. A rigorous class is a joyful class.

Education wonks have long raised the alarm about how school discipline is applied unequally among students of different racial and ethnic groups, with Black students facing a disproportionate number of office discipline referrals (ODRs). The effects of such practices can reverberate throughout a student’s life, according to the American Psychological Association, leading to worse mental health and lower grades.

Today, a 20-acre stretch of green space known as the “Coy facility” remains an active school campus in East Austin. But soon, Austin Independent School District will convert it into an apartment complex to house teachers and staff who are increasingly getting priced out of the urban Texas district.

Education is an indispensable profession in our world today, as teachers play a pivotal role in equipping students for the challenges of the future, enabling them to be successful at every stage in life. The positive impact of teachers has been extensively substantiated through years of research highlighting that teacher effectiveness is the most important school-based factor related to student achievement and outcomes. As a former teacher, I recognize that having the foundational resources and supports allows for greater effectiveness in the significant work of nurturing student success.

Julie York, a computer science and media teacher at South Portland High School in Maine, was scouring the internet for discussion tools for her class when she found TeachFX. An AI tool that takes recorded audio from a classroom and turns it into data about who talked and for how long, it seemed like a cool way for York to discuss issues of data privacy, consent and bias with her students. But York soon realized that TeachFX was meant for much more.

Researchers estimate that dyslexia affects one in five individuals. Yet, it is often misdiagnosed or missed entirely. Even more common than a misdiagnosis is the likelihood that a student with dyslexia will find themself in a classroom without the resources to become a successful reader. In fact, according to the International Dyslexia Association, only about 5 percent of students who have dyslexia are properly identified and given support.

Most of us know what to expect in a face-to-face classroom: Students sitting in rows, facing instructors and listening to lectures, watching videos displayed on screens up front, or, in smaller classes, participating in lively discussion. Altogether, a modest set of conventional choices we’re all familiar with as students and faculty on campus.

Calculus is a critical on-ramp to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). But getting to those careers means surviving the academic journey.

Clad in a beanie, university sweatshirt and gold-rimmed glasses, a TikToker who goes by Mimi looks directly into the camera and speaks in a gentle tone as she addresses her viewers on the topics that flash in red-highlighted letters at the top of the video: “TW: Climate Anxiety & Doomism.”

This past spring, I overheard one of my fifth graders boast that he would start using ChatGPT to do his homework. I chuckled because I knew him well enough that he wouldn’t follow through. Frankly, I would have been thrilled that he did any homework, even with assistance. I’d already read many stories about ChatGPT in the news, and initially, I wasn’t concerned that the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) would impact my teaching. I assumed we’d work around it, or better yet, incorporate it in meaningful ways.

For students at a new Florida-based charter school, entering the classroom means strapping on a VR headset.

Picture it: Thirty students in your classroom, each at different levels, with varying needs and interests. Yet, there is just one set of learning standards, one big state exam and one of you. The predicament arises when learners struggle to keep pace with a mandatory curriculum, raising questions about the effectiveness of a one-size-fits-all, grade-level approach to education.

Shirley Cruz used to pass an old parking lot on her way to and from work.

My daughter recently called me in a panic. She said, “I’m not getting into Brown!” I wondered what she was talking about. She had just finished her junior year of high school and hadn’t applied to college yet. Then I realized why she was calling. Two days earlier the United States Supreme Court ruled to end affirmative action. On the heels of the ruling, multiple voices, from legal experts to the Biden administration, explained how colleges and universities can still consider how race affects an applicant’s life, but all my Black daughter heard was: “You don’t belong here.”

HOUSTON — On a Tuesday in August, one day before the official start of the school year, the halls of Jefferson Early Learning Center were filled with the tinkling chatter of pre-K students who were escorted by their parents to meet the teachers.

Keith Curry Lance of RSL Research Group has been studying school librarian employment for a long time, roughly 30 years since his first study came out. In that time, he has seen a lot of changes. But when he sat down a decade or so ago to sort out which states had gained librarians overall that year and which had lost, he was shocked to find no states in the “gained” column. That, he said, was a wake-up call.

Since the pandemic, mental health strains on youth have been put in the spotlight.

I have always felt connected to Indigenous peoples. Perhaps it is because I am Mexican American and colonization is a part of my ancestry. Perhaps it is because the virtues of Mexican and Indigenous spiritualities in Texas and Minnesota, where I’ve split my whole life, are so universal that it’s hard to not be drawn to their teachings and practices.

Twice a week, Rofiat Olasunkanmi, 22, heads back to Brooklyn to her alma mater, Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School. Now a senior at New York University, Olasunkanmi helps high school seniors navigate applying to college, a process she personally recalls being dominated by concern about finances and a general sense of anxiety because no one in her family did it in the United States before her.

This story was originally published by The 19th.

As college classes start up this fall, instructors are handing out syllabi and pointing students to official platforms for turning in assignments and participating in class discussions. Meanwhile students are setting up unofficial online channels of their own, where they can ask questions of classmates, gripe about the professor and sometimes share homework and test answers.

There are likely droves of educators who find themselves wishing they could take a peek inside their students’ minds to find out, “What the heck are you thinking?”

EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. — Carrie Rodgers gestures toward the silver medallion sitting atop her fridge, then waves it off.

Usually, when I begin writing an essay, I’m hopeful, or at least determined. Not this time. I’m making myself write this essay, even though it scares me. Writing about bodies – about my body – scares me. Our bodies are so sexualized and commodified that talking about them in school or in relation to school feels almost forbidden.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Math professor Martin Weissman is rethinking how his university teaches calculus.