As a flexible instructional tool, cue cards offer support for students with and without disabilities. By providing different amounts of support, they also can be used to differentiate instruction in a variety of subject areas and grade levels. This article describes various strategies for using cue cards and includes examples from K-12 classrooms.

Building a culturally responsive learning community begins with global awareness and cultural responsiveness. Preservice and PreK-12 practicing teachers can use the interactive questions showcased here to enhance their intercultural competence by drawing on the knowledge, skills, and experiences of international faculty and colleagues.

State and national standards, taken as is, can limit the potential of the curriculum and skilled teachers. The ideas presented here suggest ways in which we might better scrutinize standards for their potential richness and limitations in order to enrich our instruction.

New accreditation standards for teacher preparation programs call for more seamless and effective connections between methods courses, clinical experiences, and school-based mentoring. Intentional clinical experiences and intermediate instructional strategies can foster collaboration between teacher preparation programs and teacher leaders in K-12…

A disconnect exists between teaching and research; and it has become easy, if not automatic, for K-12 teachers to be enthusiastic about teaching and less supportive of research. As a student teacher, the first author found herself adopting the stereotype that research is associated with the sciences and is less pertinent to K-12 education. She…

The United States Department of Education (USED) granted 11 states waivers (eight full waivers and three conditional waivers) to provide what the USED termed "flexibility" from meeting some of the requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Much of the flexibility relieves schools from the Adequate Yearly Progress mandate that requires…

The current test-driven accountability movement, codified in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 ([NCLB] 2002), was a misguided idea that will have the effect not of improving the education of children and youth, but of indicting the public school system of the United States. To improve education in the United States, politicians, policy makers,…

Often, for preservice students, teacher education programs consist of a series of disjointed experiences that fail to make a connection with their fieldwork and student teaching. For example, preservice teachers typically read about how to incorporate specific teaching methods, classroom management strategies, and assessment tools into their…

In today's diverse classrooms and age of accountability, teachers need to use efficient, research-based instructional approaches that engage all students, promote interest and variety in learning and teaching, and provide immediate and continuous informal assessment data. This article presents a rationale for using active involvement techniques,…

What's democracy got to do with teaching? To answer this question, the author recollects the personal experiences through which she came to understand the connections between democracy and teaching. Sustaining democracy requires its citizens--teachers, parents, and students, in the case of schooling--to fight for it intelligently. The way teachers…

English Language Learners (ELLs)--students whose second language is English and who are not fully proficient in English--constitute the fastest growing portion of the K-12 student population. Because many of these students tend to do poorly in school, teachers are encouraged to regularly use research-based practices to improve these students'…

In this article, the author shares his thoughts about who he is as a teacher and what his goals as a teacher turn out to be. The author describes his role as researcher, teacher, and educator. He begins with his take on mathematics teaching and learning, because the question of which mathematics educators teach and how they teach it is really…

In June 2009, the U.S. Department of Education released a meta-analysis of online learning studies that detailed strong support for online learning. The authors of this report, however, cautioned that online students' increased interaction--as well as differences in curriculum and pedagogy--did not allow a direct comparison between online and…

Well-known historical accounts of questioning used in the education process trace back to Socrates. One of the best examples of his use of questioning is found in Plato's classic work "The Republic" (2003). Today, teachers still use questions as one way to help students develop productive thinking skills and to understand concepts and topics.…

The author of this article argues that, just as Americans were shocked into action, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, by strengthening STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in the educational curriculum, Americans must be shocked again. The nation must address the failure of its leaders to provide adequate funding…