This essay describes a transformation in my experience as an adjunct teaching underprepared students from one of shame toward a desire to assert the value of this work. Insights from my feminist theological training helped me to affirm the importance of encouraging transformative learning in teaching the academically marginalized and prompted my…

Each fall the author assigns undergraduate teacher education students to design rubrics that they can use to evaluate auditions for reality television shows like "American Idol." The point is to draw students into a critical reflection on assessment literature and practices they have been studying. Through these reflections, the author…

Austin Independent School District (AISD) teacher appraisal results from 2014-2015 were used to identify areas of need for professional development in 2015-2016. Results from the Professional Development and Appraisal System and Professional Pathways for Teachers (PPfT) were included. This executive summary provides highlights from the full report…

Eric Ribbens is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. In this piece, he writes of his observations about the first day of school. After the summer quiet is replaced with noise, motion, smells, and anticipation, students shuffle through the halls again, and all over the building…

It is a commonplace for Catholic schools to claim that they educate the "whole" person in the faith, yet exactly what this means and how to accomplish it is harder to say. Though these matters of holistic formation and Catholic identity are always important, they are especially so at present given ongoing efforts to implement the U.S.…

As social justice educators we operate within an academy that often denies the necessity of activism in our work. In this article the author explores, through one person's story, how hierarchies of knowledge and status work within neoliberal paradigms to marginalize scholar-activists and embodied knowledge, and offers possible paths toward…

Courtney Loynachan was a student in Dr. Lindquist's summer 2014 "Teaching Science in the Elementary School" methods course at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The course included an exploration of the power of writing as a learning tool for science with a particular focus on the use of science notebooks. Throughout the…

Growing up in a poor, dysfunctional family in a violent inner-city neighborhood, Jackson faced daily challenges even getting to the bus stop without being attacked by gang members. When he was bused to a white suburban school in 5th grade, things got even worse. Every black student who was bused in from his neighborhood was placed in remedial…

The Drive to Write program was organized by New Visions for Public Schools (a New York City school support network that helps schools with professional development, data infrastructure, leadership training, certification, and more), and New Visions hopes it will lead to a new standard in writing instruction and student learning. New Visions is…

Dances from African communities are gradually getting incorporated into formal education at pre-tertiary and tertiary levels in the United States. Whereas strides have been made to embrace this artistic and cultural diversity, the instructional methodologies that are applied in teaching these dances are commonly founded on Western pedagogic canons…

In recent debates about curriculum, Young (2008, p. 101) has proposed school learning must involve initiation into the "powerful knowledge" of the disciplines that underpin subject domains, thereby "giving students the tools to think the unthinkable". Opponents query whether such knowledge is available in subjects such as…

Today's classrooms often have a plethora of new ways of reading and writing entering the room, but too often these new ways of "doing" are disregarded and checked at the door. For this reason, one educator shares her journey through the mediated intersections of media, culture, and education. In this piece, she explores how literacy…

Context is everything. Very little in art or in history (or in life) happens in isolation, although works of art and events in history have been studied this way. This is especially true of the arts, which are so intrinsically connected to the cultures from which they emerge. This essential interconnectivity was also the premise behind the design…

This technical supplement provides details for the full report (published separately) which includes two studies that describe the local context for teacher employment decisions. The first examines the local labor market, and the second examines employment for teachers who left Austin Independent School District (AISD). A separate executive…

Many students read for pleasure, but how many, stranded in an expansive library, would willingly reach for a mathematics textbook? One reason this scenario is so inconceivable is that mathematics textbooks are organized less as exercises in storytelling and more as how-to manuals. Unfortunately many mathematics teachers instruct accordingly. This…