Times are tense for schools. While they want their students to be well prepared for the coming years of the 21st century, there is an almost ceaseless anxiety caused by unrelenting news and data illustrating how children can get hurt--physically or emotionally. Beyond underscoring the challenges of providing physical safety, data also reveal the…

This article notes that building bridges between school and home is not easy for anyone--even those who understand the value of such efforts. For all parents, the struggle lies in figuring out how open to be with the school. At some point, every parent wonders how much personal information needs to be revealed and whether or not that revelation…

In this article Richard Barbieri asserts that the biggest danger to our own safety and well-being, and that of our children, comes not from adult predators, environmental hazards, or the class bully, but from traits common to us all. The enemy is us, and not least because we too often jump to such strategies as clobbering. Writers from such varied…

Contemporary culture has wrought profound changes--especially in the lives of children. In today's world, more than ever, schools need to think about what it takes to educate children to be psychologically healthy and of good character, to give them the tools that will enable them to find meaning in their lives both in school and after they…

As a coauthor (with psychologists Michael Thompson and Lawrence Cohen) of "Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children," Catherine O'Neill Grace has spent much of the past few years researching the lives of children in the microcosm of schools. Lately, she has been wondering if the same social cruelty,…

Nationwide, the Great Recession arrived as independent schools entered various stages of strategic planning, building projects, fund-raising drives, enrollment efforts, and programmatic reforms--and all schools needed to consider how best to proceed. In order to understand the actual effects of the economic downturn, the authors undertook a…

The author presents his thoughts on what constitutes a great and effective teacher based on his personal experience of 42 years in the education field. He lists what he believes are 25 traits of great teachers. These traits include the knowledge of how students think and what motivates them; the ability to network and collaborate with other…

In this article, Bob Macioci, dean of student affairs at Cushing Academy in Massachusetts, describes the effort to elevate and align character education curriculum with the school's larger mission by the establishment of the Virtue Project, a program that challenges a select group of student leaders to promote and encourage both the intrinsic…

The authors of this article describe the Personal Awareness and Wellness Seminar (PAWS) program, which they developed at Ashley Hall (South Carolina), an all-girls K-12 school. PAWS is designed to incorporate three main areas of school and personal life: academic management and study skills, general wellness and life skills, and the college search…

All schools have the capacity to become great schools. All they need is the focus and leadership to create the proper conditions for the board, school leadership team, staff, and constituents to do so. In this article, the author presents 25 elements that are central to great independent schools. These include: Create and perpetuate an intentional…

The search for solutions to protect the rainforest, while offering local farmers a sustainable means of making a living, started at The Forman School as a search to fully engage its students in learning. The Forman School is an independent college preparatory school for students with language-based learning differences (LD). This article discusses…

Independence Day School is a small college preparatory school serving grades 9-12, in rural Illinois. As part of its commitment to creating a safe school for all students, it adopted a "safe zone" classrooms policy. The policy states that classrooms where conversation about homosexuality is permitted are marked with inverted pink…

In this article the author demonstrates the importance of school safety audits and describes what schools should focus on in a safety audit. Ultimately, each school should determine its own safety audit strategy based on its unique circumstances, including the type of community within which it is located, the age of the students it serves, and the…

On the morning of December 16, 1965, in Des Moines, Iowa, a 13-year-old junior high school student named Beth Tinker got dressed and went to school. She wore a black armband to protest the war in Vietnam. The school promptly suspended her for wearing a symbol of political dissent. So began one of the nation's most celebrated cases involving…

The article is a reprint of an address delivered by the author to students at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts, in Fall 2012. It addresses the author's belief in the important role of schools in promoting gender equality, the gender gap in educational attainment, and the social construction of gender. The author stresses the importance…