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Ordinary Teenagers, Extraordinary Results: Apprentices at Work
by Nancy Hoffman on January 30, 2012
In a small office lined with desks and computer stations, a dozen teenagers pored over paperwork and deliberated decisions, one young man zipping from table to table in a wheelchair. The young people, 15 to 18 years old, were reading, discussing, and evaluating job applications.
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Setting Off and Sustaining Sparks of Curiosity and Creativity
by Dan Rothstein on January 13, 2012
In the summer of 2010, Newsweek pronounced--on its cover no less--that the United States was suffering from a "Creativity Crisis." The coauthors of the cover story, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, quite ably synthesized cutting-edge research about how to create the conditions for promoting creativity and offered specific ideas on how to address the crisis.
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Assessments That Measure What Matters
by Paul Horwitz on December 12, 2011
My father-in-law was a classical pianist. He immigrated to the United States from Austria in the early forties. His first official act was to apply to the American Federation of Musicians for a union card, which he needed in order to work. To get this card he had to pass a simple test: the examiner pointed to a piano and asked him to play something.
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What Inspired Me to Study Parent and Community Engagement
by Soo Hong on November 29, 2011
As is true for many teachers, I have fond and not-so-fond memories of my first year teaching. It was a year both of trial and error, of extreme joy and disappointment--that led to self-doubting about my effectiveness as a teacher. The first couple months were, at times, terrifying and discouraging.
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Overpaid? A Teacher's Perspective on Compensation
by Jaime L. Hudgins on November 15, 2011
For many Americans who have never worked in a classroom, teaching could look like a cushy profession: days that end at three; long holidays; a work year that's significantly shorter than that in other fields.
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Understanding Diversity: What’s a Parent to Do?
by H. Richard Milner IV on November 8, 2011
There is no question that U.S. society is becoming increasingly diverse. This diversity spans race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, geography, educational background, ability (cognitive, social, physical), religion, and language. Schools across the country are not exempt; they are also increasingly diverse. What is the role of parents in helping students understand diversity in order to live meaningful lives?
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What Inspired Me to Launch the Comic Book Project
by Michael Bitz on October 31, 2011
Open any children's book--Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, take your pick--and you'll experience rich visual imagery combined with literary text. We present these books to young children, knowing that they will adore the pictures, engage in the narratives, seek more books, eventually learn to read, and hopefully love to read. Yet as children get older and enter school systems, the pictures quickly fall by the wayside. We expect students to become "serious" readers, working toward paragraph-based chapter books and the accepted canon of classic literature. For those students, like me, who loved to read at an early age, this entrenched method was a non-issue. For countless others, however, reading was, and still is, a struggle and seemingly insurmountable barrier to success in school.
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“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”: the Deeper Legacy of Steve Jobs
by Dave Saltman on October 12, 2011
It barely registers, if at all, that one can start, and operate, an automobile without knowing the physics and chemistry that run its combustion engine. And it is equally true, and perhaps more significant, that you do not need the car's technical specifications to drive it to your own personal choice of a destination. If that choice turns out to be mistaken, you can potentially drive it elsewhere.
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Ethnicity Matters—and So Do Contexts
by Min Zhou on September 27, 2011
Since 1970, the United States has admitted more than thirty-million immigrants from around the world. While the vast majority of newcomers are of Latin American and Asian origins, they hail from heterogeneous socioeconomic backgrounds, ranging from investors and entrepreneurs to low-skilled laborers and undocumented migrants. As foreign-born populations continue to grow at the turn of the twenty-first century, the new second generation, born and raised in America, has come of age, making an indelible mark in cities across the United States.
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What Inspired Me to Study Social Networks
by Alan J. Daly on September 15, 2011
I grew up in Boston, the first born in a working-class family with Irish roots. My family had all the stereotyped traits of the Irish working class in America: hardworking, gregarious, a commitment to "celebrating" with spirits at a moment's notice, and a dedication to family in the broadest sense of the word.
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