Do you remember the first time you entered the school library as a child? I do. There were books everywhere.

"Why read when you can watch the movie?" In my eight years as an educator, no other sentiment has been quite so crushing to hear from children.

I’ve started to notice a troubling trend among my students: many of them equate success with fame, followers, or a fat bank account.

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 started my teaching career at a public middle school in Toronto about two decades ago. At that time, I was not comfortable being personally out to my students.

Teaching is a great responsibility. I teach English and believe that the ability to communicate, at a personal and societal level, is what builds strong communities and ensures ownership over one’s future. Thus, it’s important that we teachers spend a lot of time on our craft—deliberating the best ways to teach and make lessons fun, interactive, and relatable to students. Professional development thrives on discipline pedagogy and school departments meet to align goals and assignments and to discuss data assessment.

Can unicycles serve an important educational purpose? Are there good pedagogical reasons for learning to ride them?

In-person instruction has been a common source of stress during what I have dubbed “The Year of COVID,” with instructions on how to teach changing by the second.

As curriculums move away from an emphasis on content to skills, the time is right to use that move as an opportunity to better serve introverts in school.