Giving Up Homework: Research, Leadership and Change in a Massachusetts School

Lexington, Massachusetts is a leafy suburb 15 miles northwest of Boston. It’s an affluent community of about 30,000 people who take pride in their high-performing public schools: When it comes to MCAS scores, Lexington schools consistently rank near the top in a state that already outperforms the rest of the country.

Despite the success of their schools — or perhaps because of it — parents and teachers recently turned their attention to the social and emotional health of the district’s students. By all measures, academic achievement “was working,” explains Jeff LaBroad, assistant principal of Joseph Estabrook Elementary School, one of Lexington’s six K–5 schools. “The concern became whether students were able to care for themselves as whole people,” he said.

Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea: eNotes Lesson Plan

Ernest Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, long after most literary critics had presumed he was beyond the height of his powers as a writer. His most celebrated novels and short stories — The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” — had all been published in the 1920s and 1930s, and For Whom the Bell Tolls had been published in 1940. His most recent novel, Across the River and into the Trees, had been published in 1950 to punishing reviews. Consequently, critics were not expecting a major work by Hemingway that would restore his literary reputation. The Old Man and the Sea proved them wrong, winning a Pulitzer Prize, and two years after its publication, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

It’s easy to read The Old Man and the Sea as symbolically autobiographical. When Hemingway wrote it, the literary voices of the Lost Generation were fading into history, and new writers were emerging in the post-World War II era.

EdTech Ideas: 7 Ways To Use Your LMS as a Digital Hub

With so much of teaching and learning—not to mention everyday life—happening online these days, it can be hard to keep everything organized. For example, an average teacher may be juggling work and personal email, several instant messaging systems, and three or more social media accounts.

And that's just for daily communication. Once you add in the demands of working in Google Docs and Dropbox for some items and another cloud resource for sharing MS Word suite creations, plus various other programs, managing your data and messaging starts to feel overwhelming.

Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way. Your LMS provides a valuable tool for streamlining your entire digital work life. By creating a single hub where you can find everything you need, you'll free up time and energy to do the work you love instead of toggling between screens and platforms.

Culturally Responsive Teaching: 16 Ways to Integrate It Into Your Classroom

In today's increasingly diverse schools, culturally responsive teaching is a crucial way to make sure all the students in your classroom get the attention they need and the respect they deserve. Culturally responsive teaching acknowledges that different heritages and languages affect students' attitudes and approaches toward learning. It also uses an array of strategies to reach students of different ethnicities and learning styles while validating the importance of different cultures whenever possible in the classroom.

Maintaining a culturally responsive learning environment requires a willingness to learn about other cultures, to question your assumptions, and to experiment with new ways of reaching students. If it feels like hard work, then you're probably doing it right!

Get Moving! 4 Powerful Ways to Incorporate TPR into Spanish Lessons

Need a way to get your students out of their seats?Want to help them prove that they understand every word you’re saying to them in Spanish?

(Okay, maybe not every word—at least not yet. Just the important ones.)

There’s a ton of research to prove that Total Physical Response (TPR) is one of the very best ways to teach Spanish to new language learners, so it’s time to hop on board.

And don’t be fooled: TPR isn’t just for little kids! Here’s how—and why—you should make the most of it in your Spanish lesson plans.

What TPR Is (and What It Isn’t)

The teaching technique of Total Physical Response was developed by Dr. James Asher of San José University. He spent the 1960s and ’70s observing early language development in children. He noticed that children learned language through listening first, and that speaking came afterwards.