Category: Articles

Guest posts by expert educators

Why We Have Smart Tech & Shrinking Brains

Technology in our classrooms isn’t the enemy, writes Dr. Sonya Murray-Darden. Substitution is. Teachers can’t control how seductive the tools become. They can control whether the thinking still happens in the room. When students do the thinking themselves, learning accelerates.

Building a Pipeline for Middle School Leaders

Thanks to an extensive career as a teacher, principal and district leader, Jen Schwanke can testify that the vast majority of middle school educators feel deeply connected to the unique journey of adolescent learners. She believes MS principals should be drawn from that pool.

Collage of Scrabble-like tiles arranged to form a long narrative about a girl who could fly when the wind blew, on a brown wooden background.

Grammar & Reading Are One Subject, Not Two

Understanding how sentences work is a reading skill, not just a writing skill, researchers tell us. When students understand how sentences are built, they read better. So, argues Patty McGee, grammar instruction is in fact reading instruction, and we should treat it that way.

Crumbled white paper shaped like a brain on a grey concrete surface, with algebra formulas sketched on it (e.g., M =, y = mx + b).

Be a Shade of Gray in the Either/Or Math War

Teaching math through inquiry can be excellent. It’s a goal to aspire to. But for many struggling students, jumping straight into pure inquiry without any explicit instruction first can be paralyzing. Juliana Tapper’s Math Wars model helps teachers find the happy (gray) medium.

Handwritten note on a peach background listing qualities (smart, curious, organized) and daily activities (dancing, sociable, singing, reading) as a pen pal introduction.

Writing Middle School Mystery Pen Pal Letters

A “snail mail” pen pal project may seem outmoded for middle schoolers, with their brains wired for the instant gratification of texting and social media. And yet, as Scott Bonito discovered, having a mystery pen pal can make eyes light up and adolescent brains go into overdrive.