The mother of a seventh grade student at Canonsburg Middle School in Pennsylvania sent the following message to Mrs. Wright, a language arts teacher: Just wanted to let you know how much Alex has been enjoying The...

Woodrow Middle School* recently underwent a renovation project to its 75-year-old building—a renovation that closed the library for a year and reduced the library's collection to bare essentials. Spurred by the...

This study focused on parents' relationships and involvement in their children's lives and the effects on the students' school engagement and school performance. The study used the Wave I data from the National...

Lynn is an eighth grade student struggling through several of her courses; pre-Algebra is her biggest challenge. Until now, she has gotten by with acceptable grades, but this year she has found her classes much more...

"Beuller? Beuller?" Look in on class discussions today and what you'll see (I hope) is a far cry from the classroom of gaping-mouthed, drooling, blank-faced students in the John Hughes 1986 film Ferris Beuller's Day...

At Park Ridge High School one of the texts in our eighth grade language arts curriculum that fulfills a Common Core State Standard is Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. This novel, which students read...

“Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be.” When he wrote those words, could Goethe have foreseen a...

Middle grades teachers whose students are the most engaged in learning and the least disruptive are the teachers who make the most of student grouping. The most effective teachers in our building have four group...

In the middle of the night, I encountered an armed intruder in my home, and while the whole ordeal only lasted 45 seconds until local police arrived and apprehended the suspect, aspects of it are indelibly impressed...

Can you imagine teaching middle grades students for more than four decades? As a middle school principal, I had the opportunity to work with just such a teacher. Barry Krizan taught three generations of our...