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I meet a lot of parents, teachers and students. All have the same questions about school policies and they want to hear my visions about how schools can improve and how to meet the needs of the students in the best way.
People often ask me what I stand for when it comes to education and school policy and my answer is that schools should be better in finding out the students' interests and what level of knowledge they have. Teachers and the schools should stimulate our kids to feel motivated learning more and wanting to explore things. Going to school and learning things should be fun!
Anything that prevents our children from having this kind of learning environment will create insecure citizens in the future. If we don't give them these opportunities, we can not expect that the kids and their school results will change!
Honestly I do not know how a school based on punishments can lead to good citizens. I don't see how politicians can believe you can get children, teenagers or even ...

I sat with my youngest son during what was supposed to be a student-led conference. I have been through these before when my son was in fourth and then fifth grade, so I knew what to expect. The teachers have the students practice during the school day what they’re going to cover with the parents during the conference. Students select work samples that show how they are doing in each subject, along with tests, and goal sheets that they’ve written for themselves. These items are placed in a binder, and then the child goes through each one explaining to the parent what it is and why he chose it. Now that my son was in sixth grade, I expected more of the same; however, what really happened disturbed me to my very core. After my son covered his part, and I saw that his scores were good (students don’t receive letter grades in this school) Mrs. Judd (all names are pseudonyms) stared at Caleb, my son, and started to confront him with personal issues. She moved in physically close to him, up ...

Education is the primary agent of transformation towards sustainable development, increasing people's capacities to transform their visions for society into reality. Education not only provides scientific and technical skills, it also provides the motivation, and social support for pursuing and applying them. For this reason, society must be deeply concerned that much of current education falls far short of what is required. When we say this, it reflects the very necessities across the cultures that allow everyone become responsible towards quality enhancement.
Improving the quality and revelation of education and reorienting its goals to recognize the importance of sustainable development must be among society's highest priorities. It is not that we talk only about environment but also about every component of life.
We therefore need to clarify the concept of education for sustainable development. It was a major challenge for educators during the last decade. The meanings of ...

Meeting the needs of all the children in your class seems like a daunting task. Because it is. However, classrooms in the 21st century are demanding this style. In fact, our whole society is demanding it. With the viral spread of technology and social media, the change in our language and ways of communicating is changing the way our education system must look.
Don't get me wrong, change is good, technology is good, and yes, social media is good. What's not good about these things is the lack of physical- social interaction skills we practice in order to get through the day. The lack of problem-solving skills we practice because our phone does it for us. Not to mention the "havoc" that we reap on our entire sensory system from all the "screen time" that we log.
What Do 21 Century Learners Look Like?
Over the past ten years of my personal experience as a Reading Interventionist, I have seen the classroom dynamic shift. Ten years ago, there was one, maybe two students that needed to be ...

I've spent a lot of time as a teacher. In fact, I've been in the field actively for over fifteen years. My teaching experience includes every subject you can think of and every age group from Kindergarten right up to adults.
I've served in many different capacities from teacher to supervisor/ vice principalship to mentor of new teachers, behavioral intervention specialist and others ultimately earning tenure.
But what I have not had much experience with is politics. I've truly never had an interest due to the fact that I could see literally every politician lie and cheat to further themselves or their businesses on a local and national level.
So I never had much interest in learning about the arguments of each "side" (of course, as everyone intuitively knows, both the left and right wings belong to the same creature). I couldn't have told you the difference between a liberal and a conservative or anything else.
I'm registered Independent because I don't want to be put in a box and ...