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...

Jade is a quiet 12-year-old girl who has been in my English classes here in Hong Kong for the past two school years. Because of her in-class demeanor, it took me by surprise when Jade off-handedly mentioned that she...

Through education, teachers influence change in their students' mindsets, which in turn can help students become successful individuals (Yeager & Dweck, 2012). We believe that the best teachers guide, motivate,...

I hail from room 604, where the sign on the door reads "resource room." However, I actually teach sixth grade English language arts class at full capacity in this room, which was designed for small group support...

"Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play." —Heraclitus (554 – 483 BC) As middle school educators, we see a growing population of adolescents who struggle with...