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By Donna St. George, Photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP, The Washington Post, July 6, 2022 The data, collected as the 2021-2022 school year was winding down, also showed that more than 70 percent of schools saw increases in chronic student absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic and about half of schools reported increased acts of disrespect toward teachers and staff. “The survey paints a remarkably coherent picture,” said Kevin Welner, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and...

By Jo Napolitano, Image: UnidosUS , The74, July 11, 2022 After a decade of gains in academics and a marked boost in high school graduation rates and college attendance, Latino students suffered significant setbacks during the pandemic as many attended underfunded schools and had limited internet access at home, a new report shows. Some of these children also struggled with a language barrier — as did their parents — making the switch to remote learning even tougher, according to UnidosUS,...

June was quite a month for learning, connecting, reflecting, and inspiration around issues of transforming the education system. I started the month off by attending the 2022 National Community Schools and Family Engagement Conference here in my hometown of Los Angeles. Over 3,000 attendees from across the country gathered to learn from each other and share their expertise around developing authentic community-driven Community Schools. (If you want to dive deeper into what community schools...

By Steve Snyder, Image: Screenshot from article, The 74, June 30, 2022 After two years of pandemic chaos, classroom disruptions and trauma, this spring has seen school communities across the country rally their way back to something approximating normal. At the center of these efforts are inspiring teachers, school staffers and neighborhood leaders who for years now have put their time and energy into guiding students, families and wider school communities through a time of unprecedented...

By Donna St. George, Photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP, The Washington Post, July 6, 2022 The data, collected as the 2021-2022 school year was winding down, also showed that more than 70 percent of schools saw increases in chronic student absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic and about half of schools reported increased acts of disrespect toward teachers and staff. “The survey paints a remarkably coherent picture,” said Kevin Welner, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and...

Several South Florida high school educators are alarmed that a new state civics initiative designed to prepare students to be “virtuous citizens” is infused with a Christian and conservative ideology after a three-day training session in Broward County last week. Teachers who spoke to the Times/Herald said they don’t object to the state’s new standards for civics, but they do take issue with how the state wants them to be taught. “It was very skewed,” said Barbara Segal, a 12th-grade...

By Mark Keierleber, Photo: Erik Ewers, The 74, June 25, 2022 When brothers Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers set out to film a documentary about the mental health struggles of American youth, they knew they were tackling a pervasive problem unspoken about for far too long. What they didn’t realize were the lessons they’d come to uncover about themselves. Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness , a two-part documentary that premieres Monday on PBS, presents the raw accounts of nearly...

Can we talk about childhood trauma for a sec? More specifically… How it's impacting your students' learning and behavior in the classroom? The reason I bring this up is that before the global pandemic, childhood trauma was already at epidemic-level proportions. That was before Covid... (Yeah, I know.) Since the pandemic, we can estimate that those numbers have skyrocketed. What does this mean for teachers? Well, on one hand you've got more children walking into your classroom under the...

By Katy Knight, Illustration: Siegel Family Endowment, The 74, June 27, 2022 The past two years have demonstrated that schools are much more than places of education. While pandemic-related closures interrupted learning, reduced academic expectations and widened inequality gaps for students, they also carried high consequences for communities at large. When schools shut down, working parents — especially women — who were left without child care suffered career setbacks as they struggled to...

Can we talk about childhood trauma for a sec? More specifically… How it's impacting your students' learning and behavior in the classroom? The reason I bring this up is that before the global pandemic, childhood trauma was already at epidemic-level proportions. That was before Covid... (Yeah, I know.) Since the pandemic, we can estimate that those numbers have skyrocketed. What does this mean for teachers? Well, on one hand you've got more children walking into your classroom under the...

By Linda Jacobson, Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, The 74, June 23, 2022 This summer marks the third time in eight years that the U.S. Department of Education is overhauling its policy on how school districts should handle student discipline. And while the controversy surrounding the issue hasn’t changed, the pandemic offers up a troubling new context: Districts are reporting spikes in student misconduct , violent attacks on school employees and blatant disregard for school rules.

By Javiera Salman, Photo: Terrell Clark/The Hechinger Report, The Hechinger Report, June 9, 2022 C ierra Kaler-Jones wasn’t your traditional dance teacher. When Kaler-Jones taught dance, her students didn’t come just for the dance lessons. Her classes involved lessons on Black history and women’s history, as well as wide-ranging conversations about was happening in the world. Many of Kaler-Jones’ students — most of them Black — weren’t taught about important Black figures or positive history...