It's not our imagination, kids really are different. Today's youth face four constructs that adults either did not experience at all or did not experience in the same way as youth today. Athletics As a parent of...

I nervously entered the room and found a seat in the back. I looked around to find the fastest exit, but I was too late; the teacher walked in, queued the music, and dimmed the lights. "Welcome" she began. "It is a...

As a white, privileged, cisgender, heterosexual male, I can walk into most situations with people of my own race, or with mixed race, gender, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status groups, and not have to be on...

Last night I saw the play Dear Edward Hansen with my 14-year-old eighth grader, Zoey. It's amazing, of course, but one thing that really struck me was the audible sobbing during the show. This is a play about a...

By the time Catie, 14, stormed out of her last class of the day, she felt disconnected from her emotions. She had no idea how deeply she'd been impacted by a minor fight with her mother on the way to school. In...

I walked into a local business yesterday and stood in line waiting my turn. As I stood there, I knew that I recognized the face and the voice of the customer service representative eagerly assisting others. As I...

Recently, I offered a workshop in my district to teachers interested in creating digital portfolios of student work. My initial focus for the presentation was the digital concept of portfolios, but as I made my way...

Reading about the teenage brain is one thing, crawling inside the mind of an adolescent is quite another. As a veteran of adolescence and a current scholar of teenage education, I can now look back at my own...

No need for a bull horn, the students could hear me shouting just fine. My voice was so hoarse after my first year, it sounded like I was constantly coming down with whooping cough. Expectations? Oh, my students were...

The Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) emphasizes the importance of creating a successful school for young adolescents that is inviting, supportive, safe, and joyful in order to support students' emotional...