In a school of 1,000 students, up to 100 will be gay, lesbian, or bisexual; 10 will be transgender; and one will be intersex (biologically neither male nor female). If their lives are average, 87 of them will be verbally harassed, 40 of them will be physically harassed, and 19 will be physically assaulted in the next year because of their sexual…

Teacher education programs can't prepare educators for everything that they might encounter on the job. Regardless of where they earn their degree--and even if they have had solid student teaching experiences before they claim their credential--new teachers are bound to face unexpected, upsetting, occasionally funny, and sometimes awkward…

This article examines the contribution of the No Child Left Behind Act. The authors believe that the "other means" that can substantially advance equal educational opportunity are to provide "meaningful educational opportunities" for all children in each of the schools that they attend. In this article, the authors discuss meaningful educational…

Interest in improving the quality of professional development in this age of educational reform has intensified as a growing body of research suggests that teaching practices matter in terms of student achievement. Some have argued for embedding professional development in the context of teachers' work in order to transform both teaching practices…

Wonderful schools do not simply have to be imagined. Phenomenal examples of education going right for children exist in the United States. These schools are serving all populations of children and families. What becomes clear, even with schools that appear quite different from one another, is that common themes emerge across effective schools and…

In this article, the author examines the added value of strengths-based interventions in response to her college president's challenge that an educator should not be simply out for a talk in teaching. She redesigned her dissertation experiment to measure the impact of strengths-based teaching in two classrooms of Introduction to Public Speaking…

Safety in the schools involves much more than metal detectors and disaster plans. Although such catastrophe preparation is necessary, we often overlook less obvious beliefs and practices that put children's everyday safety at risk. According to the well-known pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton and the child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan (2000), all…

A painstaking investigative report by the Washington Post describes pre-massacre Columbine as filled with social vinegar. The high school was dominated by a "cult of the athlete." In this distorted environment, a coterie of favored jocks, who wore white hats to set themselves apart, consistently bullied, hazed, and sexually harassed their…

Everywhere we read about efforts to revitalize schools. Such initiatives include restructuring governance by centralizing the power to make decisions, introducing a mandated curriculum for all teachers to follow, and reinforcing an accountability process with a strong focus on test scores. All these school-improvement proposals rely on a belief…

In this article, the author recounts her experience, through three practices: collaboration, inquiry, and reflection, when she first encountered the practice of Critical Friends Groups (CFGs) and describes how she creates a CFG-inspired learning environment. As a middle-school principal, she has found that the three practices--collaboration,…

Nietzsche overlooks some possibilities. Something may not kill us, yet leave us sickly or crippled. But he is right, too. It may make us stronger. It is ancient wisdom that we grow through facing adversity: ad astra per aspera?to the stars through adversity. We know, too, that too much of something good may do us harm. One can overstudy, or…

As far as schools are concerned, there are three kinds of safety: physical, emotional, and intellectual. Excellence demands all three, while "good enough" schools are simply physically safe. How can parents and others determine whether a school is physically safe? It's always good to find out how many students were suspended at a particular…

Boredom and violence are not disconnected, and kids who aren't engaged in what they must spend more than twelve years doing, day after day, are at risk. But are schools safe even in more favored neighborhoods? Not in the deeper sense of safe. Not only are children verbally and physically abused in many public schools in minor ways--in ways that…

If schools are unsafe, they are made so, in part, by those people, young and old, who appear to value neither living things nor material objects. Moreover, they are made so by young people, research reveals, who, although bullying their classmates and teachers, nonetheless often fail to meet the commonly held stereotype of the bully. It is…

A "crazy curriculum" is often found in the best schools where students pass the required tests and go on more engaging learning. Common features of this type of curriculum are as follows: project based, team based, use of basic skills in context, and use of presentations. (Contains 10 references.) (JOW)