ELA

Imagine you’re about to give a big presentation to a large audience. Just before you go on stage, your boss hands you a new gadget and tells you to use it. You’ve never seen the gadget before, you have no idea what it does, and you’ve never received any training on how to use it. Your boss assures you that it will make your presentation better, and just before you can respond, the curtain goes up.

If the thought of using the gadget for the first time in front of a large audience gives you any level of anxiety, you now know why many teachers never use the technology their districts provide.

According to EdNews Daily, the projection for educational technology spending in the United States will reach an astounding $38.2 billion this year. And while it may seem as though students will reap all the benefits of having innovative technology so close at hand, there is a giant hurdle that stands directly in their way of accessing it — their teachers.…Read More

During an ordinary life, it often feels like we’re living the same day over and over due to the structured routines we’ve all implemented over time. But when we least expect it, a paradigm shift can take place, and life as we know it can suddenly change forever.

A paradigm shift is anytime an event occurs that changes the way we think and act as we move forward throughout our lives.

Past examples of paradigm shifts include major events like the assassination of JFK or the terrorist attacks on September 11th which drastically altered people’s thoughts on safety, politics, and peace.…Read More

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March of 2020, teachers around the world had to reinvent themselves in a joint effort to avoid a complete halt in educational activities. The challenges they faced over the course of the last year and a half, have generated some key insights about virtual teaching that we need to learn from, and be prepared for, as we return to our brick and mortar schools.

Most academic articles that have been published on this topic during the pandemic argue that in-person classroom interactions are favored over virtual classes. The arguments they offer, however, have more to do with the shortcomings of the software or hardware used than with the many benefits such as the potential for innovation that a solid virtual learning platform offers. Schools should not overlook the added value of offering virtual classes as an option to the traditional classroom.

The power of personalization…Read More

In just a few weeks’ time, kids all over the United States will be returning to in-person school. And while that may seem like a huge relief to parents after dealing with school closures and virtual learning from home since early 2020, it raises a lot of concerns regarding whether or not students should be returning to school en masse while the Covid-19 pandemic is still raging in the US and around the world.

While the numbers continue to change daily, at the time of this writing 1,000+ counties in the US are experiencing the highest level of community transmission with an additional 500+ counties falling into the substantial transmission category according to the Centers For Disease Control.

What this means is that there are more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people in the past 7 days in the high transmission areas and 50-99 new cases per 100,000 people in the substantial transmission areas. And unfortunately, the numbers keep increasing.…Read More

The third school year affected by the COVID-19 pandemic is just a few short weeks away, but the toll it’s taken on teachers since March of 2020 still resides clearly at the forefront of their minds.

From the first few days of initial chaos to the end of the 2020-2021 school year, teachers saw their entire careers change in ways they once thought unimaginable. And the impact this has had on their physical and mental health is still being assessed.

If one had to select a single word to describe everything teachers experienced as a result of the pandemic, it could easily be the word ‘overwhelming.’ The repercussions of COVID-19 literally affected every thought teachers had and every action they took so much so that they began to feel paralyzed by it.…Read More

There’s nothing worse than going to school every day only to become a victim of intense bullying that often takes place within our communities. While bullying in schools certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, and many anti-bullying policies have been put into place to combat it, it still continues to hurt many of children every year.

According to the latest study done by the Institute of Education Sciences, in 2018 alone there were 836,100 instances of victimization by peers at school and 410,200 instances of victimization by peers outside of school for kids between the ages of 12-18. These instances of bullying and cyberbullying included anything from theft to nonfatal violent acts including social/emotional abuse along with physical and sexual violence.

And during the 2019-2020 school year alone, there were 75 school shootings with casualties in both public and private elementary and secondary school districts in the United States with an additional 37 school shootings that did not result in any casualties. …Read More

If creating fascinating lesson plans and delivering them to a highly engaged group of kids was what teaching was really like, teaching would be a whole lot easier than it actually is.

We all see students in television shows and movies sitting in neat little rows, listening attentively to the teacher, and answering questions. But somehow, the directors always fail to capture the huge distractions teachers deal with on a daily basis.

Many people actually think these fictional classrooms resemble something close to the reality. Any teacher with more than a day of experience can assure you this is hardly the case.…Read More