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...

One of the highest forms of respect around the world is to prove to someone that we really know them, and that we see them as worth knowing. We can connect with the grumpiest of individuals when we prove such things,...

It was the summer of 1998. I lived in a two room apartment with my now husband. The shower was in the kitchen. We drove clunker cars, scrounged change for take-out, and let me tell you, we were living our best life....