A new report by LFA and Grunwald Associates, with support from AT&T, examines how parents perceive the value of mobile devices, how they see their children using mobiles, and what they think of the possibilities for mobile learning.
Safe Great Places
Blog Entries
By Nora Howley, Manager of Programs, NEA Health Information Network
School safety is more than just having a plan. It’s a process that needs to involve the whole school community.
LaPorte Community School Corporation is a rural school district in northwest Indiana. It’s also a great example of a district that has brought everyone to the table to help keep kids safe.
I recently joined Donna Nielsen, a bus driver and NEA member, and Glade Montgomery, the superintendent, on a panel led by Roxanne Dove of NEA’s Education Support Professional Quality Department (ESPQ) at the National Forum on School Improvement. We were there to share what LaPorte is doing right and talk about what other districts can do to protect their students. ...
By Betty Edwards, Chair of the Special Olympics Project UNIFY® National Education Leaders Network
The film “Cipher in the Snow,” a true story written in 1964 by teacher/guidance counselor Jean Mizer, tells the story of an ostracized teenager, Cliff, who has no friends and becomes a withdrawn "cipher" or nonentity. (Cipher is the mathematical notation for zero—something without weight, importance, or value.)
One day, Cliff asks to get off the school bus, collapses, and dies in the snow beside the road. Cliff’s math teacher is asked to write the obituary but realizes that hardly anyone recalls the student. When he tries to get a small group together to attend Cliff’s funeral, he can’t find 10 people who knew the student well enough to feel comfortable going. He vows to never let another student in his class feel unimportant and be unknown.
We wish we could say that this story could not be written today, but that’s not true. Many students in our schools feel insignificant, disengaged, and ...
The following blog post is from Samantha Huffman and was written in response to a recent article about a special needs student who was bound with duct tape during school.
Samantha is a former National Youth Activation Committee member and current senior, studying Elementary Education at Hanover College. Samantha has been a student leader in Project UNIFY for many years.
I recently went to a conference where a young man with cerebral palsy kept bringing up how we needed to focus on students with disabilities being tied down to chairs or restrained and/or harmed in some other way by educators. I kept thinking to myself how this wasn’t important because this would never be allowed to happen in a school in today’s society. I’m a senior Elementary Education major and never once in my four years of classes have we addressed the idea of restraining students because that’s just plain wrong, isn’t it? Well, apparently I was living in some kind of dream world and this young man at the conference was living in the real world. ...
In the work that the Learning First Alliance (LFA) has undertaken over the past months in gathering data on public attitudes and perceptions of public education, one common assumption among the general public becomes clear:
- Student success and teacher effectiveness are related to a single quality - caring
So, the public and educators alike believe that if teachers care about their students and the students with whom they work believe their teacher cares about them as individuals, the likelihood of learning taking place is high. This doesn’t imply that subject level knowledge and pedagogical skill aren’t important, it just states that those two characteristics don’t work effectively if the educator doesn’t care about the students he or she is working with. ...
A new study that tracks the long-term effects of bullying suggests that intervention efforts are well worth attention and investment. While some consider bullying to be a rite of passage - it is certainly a common occurrence – the behavior adversely affects student learning and can account for higher rates of absenteeism. Nationally, 160,000 students miss school on a daily basis due to a fear of being bullied or attacked. ...
The Congressionally mandated Equity and Excellence Commission issued its report on a conference call in February that proposed ways to improve public education for all the nation’s children. The report describes a landscape that those of us who have spent our professional lives in public education are well aware of….that students living in affluent, largely white communities receive a truly world-class education while those who attend schools in high poverty neighborhoods are getting an education that more closely approximates schools in developing nations. The report states the obvious, and what we all know: ...
By Dennis Van Roekel, President of the National Education Association
It starts early. When we are maybe age three or four or five. When we are young and impressionable. Someone close to us opens a book and reads to us about animals that talk, ghosts that live in haunted castles or pirates in search of buried treasure.
And we are hooked. We can't wait for someone to read us another story that causes our imaginations to run wild. If you've ever shared a book with a child, you know the joy and excitement this small act can bring. It's almost comical how some children want to hear the same story over and over and over — they are so spellbound by it.
Research shows that children who are read to at home have a higher success rate in school and frequently develop stronger reading skills. Reading is the foundation of education.
Unfortunately, too many children have no one to read to them. The National Center for Education Statistics tells us that almost 50 percent of children ages three to five do not get read to on a daily basis. This is staggering.
We at the National Education Association (NEA) are working to change this. We offer a number of resources to help educators improve reading instruction and to help parents develop reading skills in their children. And each year we host Read Across America, an initiative that celebrates reading and literacy and encourages more adults to ...
The Commission on Equity and Excellence had a Congressional mandate to provide advice to Secretary Duncan on the disparities in meaningful educational opportunities and to recommend ways in which federal policies can address such disparities. They just released a report titled “For Each and Every Child,” after a two year work period. The distinguished members of the panel, with diverse professional backgrounds and different political ideologies, focused on the inequality in our nation’s public school system as the primary driver behind two achievement gaps, the internal domestic gap and the international gap. Their conclusions and recommendations won’t surprise education professionals, but the report serves as a well-timed call to action for the struggles facing African American students, particularly males, during Black History Month. The opportunity gap also exists for a significant number of Hispanic and Native American students. ...
Congress is in session; the President delivers the State of the Union address; and education groups convene in DC to showcase excellence, visit policymakers, and advocate for 21st century skills. Over the past several weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to attend meetings here in the nation’s capital that spotlight strategies for strengthening our public schools and celebrate those that are successful in supporting student achievement. It’s clear that there’s not only lots of work to be done, but that many dedicated citizens are working to improve the lives of all our children. It’s also clear to me that the work is complicated and the challenges varied and localized. ...
Updated 12/17/12 & 12/18/12
All children deserve to be safe at school. But sometimes, as on December 14, 2012, the unthinkable happens. The deepest sympathies of the entire education community go out to those in Newtown, Connecticut, as they deal with a horrendous tragedy.
As American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said on the day of the incident, "The entire AFT community is shaken to its core by this massacre of young children and the educators and school employees who care for and nurture them. … We grieve for them all, and our prayers are with the Sandy Hook Elementary School community and all of Newtown, as well as the AFT nurses caring for victims at Danbury Hospital, following this heinous act.” Read the complete statement…
The Association for Middle Level Education grieved the tragedy, pointing out that "As educators, we care deeply about our students, and while we struggle to make sense of such an event, students struggle as well. It is particularly important to help students as they process the emotions generated by a traumatic event. ... We need to help calm their fears and bring back a sense of security and help parents and caregivers understand the importance of attending to their children with respect to the fears and anxieties that such a situation invokes." Read the complete statement...
National Association of Elementary School Principals Executive Director Gail Connelly mourned the tragic loss of life resulting from the shooting at the school, including that of the principal, Dawn Hochsprung, who was a member of NAESP. As she pointed out, “Elementary schools are meant to be safe havens that nurture and support our nation’s children, which makes ...
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A VISION FOR GREAT SCHOOLS
On this website, educators, parents and policymakers from coast to coast are sharing what's already working in public schools--and sparking a national conversation about how to make it work for children in every school. Join the conversation!
