It is not uncommon for a student to struggle with newly learned material. The question we need to ask is when does it become problematic?

After teaching at an alternative middle school for the past 4 years, the one thing I constantly hear from new students is: “We can move around in your room and not get in trouble?

As an elementary school art teacher, it is my job to engage my students and get them thinking critically about what and how they create.

We ask students questions all day long, but how do we know they are actually helping students learn and, more importantly, getting them to think?

“May it please the court.” For the past 13 years, I’ve heard middle and high school students utter these words in a simulated moot court competition.

Over the years, our ELL students have eagerly shared stories about an important festival that falls over spring break: Nowruz, the Persian New Year.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that rules without relationships lead to rebellion. Yet today, relationships with students seem to be feared instead of embraced. Over the years, quite by accident, I have discovered that this precept from days gone by is critical to classroom rules and to learning itself. Relationships are an essential part of learning, especially relationships between teachers and students.

Students want to read stories that matter to them and, most of all, they want to see themselves reflected within the pages of their beloved comics.

I began the school year in a classroom with eighteen standard desks. Today, I have none. This isn’t a lament about budgetary constraints or overcrowded classrooms; it’s a deliberate choice.