Demetrius Fuller developed the HOMies, eight characters who represent eight habits of mind for learners, while he was an art teacher at a Massachusetts elementary school. When students began talking about the HOMies outside their art class, the initiative spread across the school. Linda Nathan, Demetrius Fuller, and Nate Meyers describe the HOMies…

Teaching literacy skills through high-quality trade books that provide diverse cultural perspectives is increasingly difficult due to challenges to teachers' book selections. To meet their professional responsibilities, teachers must select literature they judge effective for developing students' awareness and understanding of others'…

Despite the enthusiasm around social-emotional learning, the vast number of skills, dispositions, and attitudes we hope to infuse into students will overwhelm even the most ambitious schools. However, a single core capacity underlies a great many social-emotional learning outcomes: social perspective taking. Recent research on this process of…

Many schools and out-of-school organizations use social-emotional learning (SEL) programs to boost students' skills. Yet research shows that these programs can be difficult to implement and don't always meet students' needs. In response, Rebecca Bailey, Laura Stickle, Gretchen Brion-Meisels, and Stephanie Jones propose a new approach to SEL…

Teachers need tools and assessments that will prepare students to meet the ambitious goals laid out by the Common Core State Standards. The multiple-choice tests that dominate in history will not prepare students to analyze primary and secondary sources, cite textual evidence to support arguments, consider the influence of an author's perspective,…

Student psychology--how the classroom looks and feels from the perspective of the student--can powerfully affect motivation and learning, and experiments are increasingly showing that even brief interventions to change psychology can boost achievement over months or years. When paired with other structural reforms, social-psychological…

Bloom's Taxonomy usually is depicted as a pyramid with knowledge at the lowest level and evaluation at the top. For the history classroom, however, that arrangement might be upside down. In history, evaluation is often necessary before new knowledge can be learned. (Contains 1 figure.)

Foundations must encourage rigorous debate over objectives, strategies, and outcomes as they become more engaged in policy-focused giving. In doing this, they must make it abundantly clear that they won't blacklist critics. The value of skeptics is that they raise unpleasant issues and make it possible for those inside an organizational bubble to…

If the goal of teaching ethics is to affect behavior and ultimately produce thoughtful, ethical people, then the best process to do this is by embedding ethical practices in student discussions. One teacher demonstrates how she has done this in her classrooms.

Our standard secondary model of adding standardized educational components to passive students has outlived its worth. A more sculptural metaphor may be of assistance: the idea of removing that which is not essential, of finding and bringing forth the essence of those who come before us.

Stereotyping is a poor substitute for getting to know individuals at a more intimate, meaningful level. In this article, the author talks about the myths and stereotypes about Native Americans, and shares his view on the most important considerations that teachers and others might keep in mind when assessing curriculum, developing lesson plans, or…

This article presents a conversation with James Loewen. Loewen is an author, historian, and professor. In a recent conversation with the author, he shared his views on how American Indian topics and events are traditionally taught and offered his insights into what teachers can do to accommodate multiple perspectives in their examination of…