Each year, thousands of middle grades preservice teachers assume their places in classrooms across the country, through practica, internships, and student teaching experiences. Over 600 U.S. colleges or universities...

The excitement in the room is palpable. Teams of middle grades students are engaged in a fingerprinting lab to gather evidence for identifying the likely culprit in a forensics project, "Who Kidnapped Thunder?",...

Peer-to-peer sharing is one of our most meaningful and effective kinds of professional development—and it's so easy to do. Whether it's presenting at a meeting or conference, writing an article, or participating...

It's three o'clock in the afternoon on a contractually required professional development meeting day and teachers are beginning to shuffle into a session offered by their school district. The presenter is passionate...

Cultivating, building, and sustaining relationships is not guaranteed in all learning environments; however, just as we help students develop cooperative and communication skills, we can adopt and hone collaborative...

The phrase "Teachers work in isolation," has long been used to describe the working conditions of educational professionals, including most middle level teachers. Educators have found ways to solve this problem by...

This is the information generation. Information about everyone and everything is at our fingertips. New social media sites are created almost daily. Although it seems like we communicate all the time, more often than...

Why is it that on the news every day, they start by saying "good evening" and then proceed to tell us exactly why it isn't? Some of the most powerful statements and questions I've ever heard—like the one...

As we begin to draw the curtain on another school year, many of us take time to rest, to reflect, and to read—books we didn’t have time to check out all year, novels that we heard about but couldn’t...

A challenge teachers face every school year is how to balance their want for professional growth without losing instruction time in the classroom. Often, teachers are left deciding whether to attend professional...