By Elizabeth Jorgensen 

I want to go all semester without talking about grades, without circling boxes on a rubric, and without assignment sheets or daily assessments. But if there are no grades, what drives our daily classroom environment?

Questions. 

Instead of focusing on standards,...

 By Michelle Blanchet

How do we make it okay to talk about things again?

During a recent project, I worked with teachers to deliver problem-solving workshops. The teachers discussed challenges in their local schools and communities, developing potential projects and solutions to address...

By Elizabeth Jorgensen

Do you remember your GPA? Or a specific score you received in elementary, middle, high school, or college? 

Are you recalling that time you failed a chemistry test? Or when you cheated your way to a better score? 

Or maybe that time you were benched from the...

Dr. Kelsie Reed

I have been in several parent-teacher meetings where I could feel a parent's anxiety, frustration, and helplessness.

I remember one particular meeting where I chimed in to mention that while the team was currently discussing weaknesses, these limitations did not sum up...

By Dr. Kelsie Reed

As a school psychologist, I participate in most, if not all, IEP meetings at my assigned schools. I’ve experienced productive meetings, collaborative meetings, one-sided meetings, contentious meetings, argumentative meetings, and everything in between.

The common...

We are proud to announce that Times 10 Publications and the American Consortium for Equity in Education (ACE-Ed) are teaming up to promote and honor change-makers around equity in education. ACE-Ed's Excellence in Equity Awards will honor

leaders, authors, and educators whose tremendous...

By Dr. Kelsie Reed

You can broadly define deficit thinking in schools as a way of blaming the victim.

It involves holding a student, a student's family, or a student’s culture accountable for academic or behavioral difficulties at school. For example, school staff may assume that a student...

By Jessica Cabeen 

I have been in education for over 20 years (and in administration for 15), and this marks my first year in a new administrative role. With all that experience, someone might think it would be a smooth transition to the new school year.

However, within the first week of...

The idea of observing other teachers is nothing new. It’s the way we all first started learning how to teach, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a teacher who hadn’t learned something from sitting in a colleague’s classroom.

Observing each other teach is one of...

By Brian Deters

“I want to wear my mask, but I don’t want people to view me as a liberal!”

A colleague of mine made this statement the day after the district I work in decided to go along with a court restraint on our state’s mask mandate in Illinois last spring. When...