Search

An Ohio educator finds passionate opposition from some surprising corners.

After reading a Teaching Tolerance Facebook post asking how we would be marking the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I started to think about how I would address this in my classroom. My new group of sixth-graders will be 10 and 11 years old. What they know about these events will not be from their memories but from what they have learned from their parents and teachers. And given the proximity of our school district to New York City, it is quite possible that I will have students who lost a family member on that day. However I decide to approach it in the classroom, it isn’t going to be easy.

I held up the front page of our college newspaper and asked my first-year journalism students if any questions came to mind as they looked at the photographs of candidates running for president and vice president of our student government. It’s a multimedia storytelling class and the assignments for the week were about analyzing and taking photographs.

This teacher wanted to empower her female students through literature. She boosted all students’ reading skills and self-confidence in the process.

Spanish teacher Tricia Kelly reflects on one of her favorite teaching days.

“Introducing Gender: Girls, Boys and More!” is a K-2 lesson from Gender Spectrum originally published in The Gender Inclusive School: concrete strategies for creating a safer and more accepting school climate for all students. The lesson offers a set of activities that prompt students to think about what they like (favorite colors, toys, activities) as individual preferences—not due to them being a boy or girl.

When LFJ’s manager for teaching and learning—then a fifth-grade teacher—shared his personal story about the 9/11 attacks with his students, a fascinating, in-depth conversation about narrative writing occurred.

Have you ever found yourself reverting to a “teacher voice” like this blogger? Read how she uses cognitive defusion to help refocus her teaching on her values.

To close an English unit on social activism, this teacher had her students reflect by recognizing and writing about the activist potential in their classmates.