Pat Yongpradit is the director of education at Code.org. He leads all education efforts, including professional development and curriculum creation, and he builds relationships with school districts. Pat joined "Educational Horizons" to talk about why it is important to teach computer science--even for non-computer science teachers. This…

It's the season for the job hunt, whether one is looking for their first job or taking the next step along their career path. This article presents first-person accounts to see how teachers balance the rewards and challenges of working in different types of schools. Tamica Lewis, a third-grade teacher, states that faculty at her school is…

Mary Mobley teaches English and Michael Chambers teaches world history at Manor New Technology High School, a STEM school, in Manor, Texas. In this article, they talk about how they used "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins to teach their students about forms of government between World War I and World War II, and "Edutopia"…

The author of this article, a middle school science teacher, reflects on her teaching profession and how she connected to other teachers which helped fuel her students' love of learning. She describes her traditional teaching practice and the facilities of her school's middle science laboratory facilities. She explains how social media…

Alfie Kohn (http://www.alfiekohn.org) writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. "Time" described him as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." He is the author of 12 books, including "The Schools Our Children Deserve, The Case…

The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, also known as the Missouri Facebook Law, forbids exclusive or private conversations between teachers and students on Facebook. A judge has granted an injunction against it, but this issue has sparked a debate among teachers about whether they should be Facebook friends with current students and in what ways…

English teachers have always had a hard time getting kids to read books, but in recent years the problem has spread and taken new directions. The rejection of books by teens and young adults has become a common feature. One by one, recent studies and surveys have charted the decline. With the advent of the Digital Age, teens have more diversions…

The GO-GIRL Program is a unique project, characterized by its ability to bring together pivotal elements within a youth-intervention program and foster collaboration between university and local communities in large and moderate-size urban areas through service learning. Designed to bolster the social-skill development, educational outcomes, and…

Losing one's mother naturally makes a person reflect on the really important things. The author was reminded that when faced with the Great Question, which even the best schools cannot handle competently, all other questions can seem trivial, and it's tempting to back away from them. But the "lesser" questions schools mishandle can have a terrible…

The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has measured various types of high school graduation, completion, and dropout rates for decades. In 2006, NCES was directed by senior managers in the Education Department to reduce use of its standard graduation and completion rate measures and instead promote the…

The goal of this article is raising awareness of several issues recently brought to the authors' attention. Among them are concerns that rubrics are a pervasive assessment tool in current educational settings. The authors posit how the pervasive use of rubrics broaches concerns about teachers' grading practices with rubrics and students'…

Achievement gaps concern educators at all levels today. Educators recognize the threats these gaps pose to education quality and equity, and they are working hard to close them--but an equally threatening gap in education with consequences just as serious is largely ignored. It influences every educational-improvement effort and seriously…

Over the past decade, the Gurian Institute has trained more than forty thousand teachers in more than two thousand schools and districts, both coed and single-sex. The institute's trainers have worked with public and private schools, Montessori schools, and a variety of charter and independent schools in fifteen countries; it has therefore been…

The author draws on personal experience and leadership literature to develop this story about learning from misconceptions. Specifically, comparisons are drawn between the author's historical misconceptions and common beliefs about the nature and administration of schools. The article uses the dispelled historical fallacies as a vehicle for…

Rather than regard frequent and subjective testing as a negative, it should prove more beneficial for educators to offer students an opportunity to acquire life skills that will carry them through any test-taking situation. Offering students the skills necessary to succeed not only in the classroom but also through testing is where accountability…