"Toward Self-Directed Learning in the Secondary Classroom" explores the challenges teachers have faced and continue to face in a pandemic and post-pandemic context while attempting to implement self-directed learning in the secondary classroom. Drawing on contemporary research from around the world as well as candid interviews with…

Although public K-12 student enrollment dropped by 3% nationwide in 2020-21, the school year that marks the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the patterns differ for specific areas and types of schools. This paper describes the COVID-19 and Equity in Education (CEE) Enrollment Explorer tool, which was developed to help policymakers and educators…

Research involving young people is a challenging process that requires managing relationships with diverse individuals and groups, including the young participants and their various gatekeepers. While it is normally assumed that the researcher is in overall control of their research, by using a Foucauldian conception of 'power as effects' that…

In this short reflective piece, we first outline how feelings and emotions (or 'affections') are understood in psychodynamic approaches, and briefly discuss how these may be controlled or 'contained' in organisational contexts. We then reflect on the recent experiences of one of us (Rachael) as a school leader seeking to contain feelings and…

Lily Rosene began her teaching career in 2020 when COVID-19 derailed her career plans and anearby school was desperate for teachers. She entered her first 9th-grade English classroom without a clear understanding of her students or the curriculum. However, she knew reading was important to any English classroom, so she decided to make silent…

Preceding the 2020-21 school year, school districts engaged their communities by sharing pandemic school reopening plans, outlining the learning modalities and support services to be made accessible to students. Existing research has highlighted a connection between a district's primary reopening method and changes in student enrollment--a crucial…

Protecting children and investing in their education and wellbeing can often feel like a battle. The seat that the author now holds at the proverbial education table is crucial in not only developing a well-rounded and well-equipped student body, but it is also in seeing herself as a role model to future leaders--both women and future leaders of…

In the midst of the pandemic, this school district made a significant investment with recovery dollars to expand enrichment opportunities in art, music, and physical education for students in their K-8 schools. The hypothesis was increasing the quality and quantity of these opportunities, the school district would increase student engagement, lead…

This manuscript discusses those challenges unique to community college dual-enrollment programs during the COVID-19 pandemic by highlighting the experiences of the senior leadership team of the College Credit Plus (CCP) program at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. With 69 different high schools offering Sinclair courses, the CCP office…

Returning to studios after COVID-19, student-teacher tensions seem to be higher than ever. Teenagers who spent the beginnings of their young adulthood in isolation clash with instructors who might mistake their stress and insecurity for apathy and laziness. In this article, I examine my personal experience with teaching teenagers and offer…

4-H academics responded to the COVID pandemic by rapidly adapting CDC and other resources for virtual delivery. A statewide epidemiology project was taught to 48 youth with the goal of minimizing fears and confusion, increasing prevention measures, leveraging current topics for education, and bolstering the social-emotional health of youth…

This article provides critical perspectives on education technology integration in a teacher education context in a post-pandemic world. The authors--two early career teachers, one in a pre-school and one in an elementary school, and two elementary teacher education faculty members at a mid-sized public university--use the U.S. Department of…

To make up for pandemic-related learning losses, many U.S. public school districts have increased enrollment in their summer school programs. We assess summer school as a strategy for COVID-19 learning recovery by tracking the academic progress of students who attended summer school in 2022 across eight districts serving 400,000 students. Based on…

In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, we deem of importance the identification of what content is privileged in secondary schools around health and disease. From our point of view, a relevant task is to accompany science teachers in their transit from teaching information to be evoked to teaching knowledge on that content that enables…

Tests and exams are a source of stress for many students. High school teacher Jacob Wells has found that he can alleviate some of that stress by allowing students to weigh in on when their assessments are scheduled. He describes why this has been helpful and shares some of the parameters that have made it feasible.