Putting Middle Grades Students on the Graduation Path: A Policy and Practice Brief

Research has shown that, particularly in high-poverty environments, students’ middle grades experiences are critical in launching them toward achievement and attainment or placing them on a path of frustration, failure, and early exit from the only secure path to adult success—finishing high school. Our challenge is to use our considerable knowledge of how the middle

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Recognizing the A in STEM Education

We live in a world where you can’t understand science without technology, which couches most of if its research and development in engineering, which you can’t create without an understanding of the arts and mathematics. I came to this realization while studying the common factors of teaching and learning across the STEM disciplines of science,

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STEM Across the Middle Grades Curriculum

Carl Sagan once said, “We can do science, and with it we can improve our lives.” Yes, science is an action—something we can do—and it is apparent that we in education have forgotten that fact. As a result, our world ranking in science has reached an all-time low. Now with the recent push to improve

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Twitter NE1?

In her Click Here column, Brenda Dyck does a beautiful job of helping us incorporate and navigate technology, but I want to add my voice to hers in support of a particularly powerful tool: Twitter. To be honest, I’m a relatively late convert to its usefulness. Initially, I thought it was major “time suckage” I

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How to Be a Legendary Teacher

Can you imagine teaching middle grades students for more than four decades? As a middle school principal, I had the opportunity to work with just such a teacher. Barry Krizan taught three generations of our community’s young adolescents and has reached “legend” status. This is how Barry did it. Respect and Relationships Create a climate

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