We don’t have to choose between structure and creativity. The best teaching lives in the in-between, where we follow a script, but we fill it with our stories, our students’ voices, and our classroom rhythms.

This collaboration between the Library Learning Commons, a Grade 9 math teacher, and Indigenous Education blossomed into a beautiful place-conscious learning opportunity.

Like many of my students, I too use digital devices in my daily personal life, but the enormous piles of notes and paper combined with the constant fighting with the students to put their gadgets away drove me to reevaluate how I could use those very gadgets to my advantage.

I avidly recall a second grade class that would excitedly huddle around my rocking chair for story time. Students scrambled around sliding chairs to the carpet where I read heartwarming and sometimes zany tales, they reminded me that story time was counted among the most meaningful and cherished moments of a child’s day. Story time is a child’s portal into endless worlds, kingdoms, and dimensions.

Are you interested in improving student engagement with your ELL students? Here’s an idea that I tried at my elementary school that was both fun and successful—a Rubik’s Cube club.

Let’s begin with the realization that what we all inherently understand is indeed true: kids are different today than they were when we were younger. You hear this stated by colleagues and, if you’re like me, from your own mouth quite frequently. The fact is, they are.

I was browsing YouTube for simplified math tutorials one afternoon when I stumbled upon the PBS Kids Math Club—math tutorial videos geared toward teens.

In my classes I use a team-structured, project-based approach to teach history and civics. It’s an approach that covers nearly all the bases.

In my role as a Black counselor in an educational setting, I am tasked with the unspoken responsibility of “handling” Black children.