With chapters like “Out of Shape,” “You Can’t Count on It,” and “Probably Wrong,” stand-up comic and former math teacher Matt Parker serves up Humble Pi for math educators and nearly everyone else to enjoy. Michelle Russell can’t wait to share his insights with students.
Future of History / Pandemic Learning
by Sarah Cooper · Published 04/08/2020 · Last modified 07/15/2024
Now that her interaction with students is limited to a two-dimensional screen, Sarah Cooper is experiencing what many middle school teachers must feel each day of virtual learning – she misses the physicality of her kids’ messy, evolving, nonlinear growing-up process.
This is not a casual, read-in-an-afternoon book. It is more like a math master class filled with ways to deepen students’ understanding through a problem-solving approach. Veteran math teacher Michael Hernandez highly recommends its tools and models from start to finish.
The strange new world we find ourselves a part of is perplexing to say the least. Principal Rita Platt expects, like her, you have experienced a wide range of emotions and concerns since schools closed. She offers practical advice and a virtual hug.
Articles / Pandemic Activity / Social Emotional Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 03/29/2020 · Last modified 03/30/2020
For teachers to help students not only survive but also thrive through this frightening pandemic, we need to underscore both their and our fundamental need for kindness and gratitude. Author-educator Dr. Debbie Silver shares the science of anxiety and lots of options to help.
Middle school teacher and dean Bill Ivey shares the story of his 7th graders, gathering online for the first time. “So much going on around us is frighteningly uncertain. How we go about schooling right now is far more important than the what. Familiarity. Flexibility. Agency. Community.”
Science teachers know that some students believe in often-ridiculous theories (the Earth is flat; climate change is a hoax) that are propagated on YouTube and social media. Frank Baker provides a wealth of resources to fight science ignorance with media literacy skills.
Recently Sarah Cooper did two lessons with her eighth grade history and civics students that afterward made her stand back and ask: Why did that work out so well? Here she analyzes the women’s suffrage lessons to uncover the key elements of success for future reflection.
I Will Screw This Up / Pandemic Response
by Dina Strasser · Published 03/23/2020 · Last modified 09/03/2020
At home with her teens, ELA teacher Dina Strasser discovers how to create a compromise between parents who need (and ought to be) “captains of the quarantine ship,” and teens who need to be respected and loved as individuals. Their much-discussed home schedule is a start.
Developing a schoolwide culture of reading, like any change initiative, takes commitment, leadership, collaboration, communication and consistency. Literacy leaders Laura and Evan Robb describe a model middle school that is “full of reading” and share 10 starter ideas.
