Leadership is everyone's responsibility-even first graders. The most important contribution that any educator can make in an era of unrelenting change is identifying and developing aspiring leaders. Elementary school teachers can embed leadership development opportunities into the classroom to foster leadership dispositions and skills…

As the responsibilities and challenges of special education teachers at the secondary level increase, their roles are expanding to include mentor, coach, and facilitator for other teachers. In these roles, they lend their expertise and skills to become the new teacher leaders for today's inclusive secondary classroom settings.

In high school English classrooms where English language learners may be at risk of academic failure, Culturally Responsive Teaching can help educators build an inclusive community in which all students can improve their literacy skills.

Preservice teacher education candidates identified personal and professional benefits of participating in a service-learning project helping a food pantry, culminating in a 48-hour fast. At the end of the project, student reflections revealed that the service-learning component influenced participants' preconceptions about hunger.

Co-teaching is a common practice in many P-12 schools today. An emerging trend, however, is the use of this practice in teacher preparation as one way of enhancing the development of student teachers. With the increase in teacher accountability and the heightened scrutiny of teacher evaluation, co-teaching is a strategy that can be incorporated…

Continued physical well-being is important, especially within the aging teacher ranks. The story of one veteran exercise instructor emphasizes fitness and weaves best classroom practices throughout the narrative.

This narrative considers how well equipped today's teacher education students and faculty are to meet the demands of the new Common Core State Standards. Data from the Teacher Education Accreditation Council's national evaluation of teacher education programs gives a mixed picture that, while mostly encouraging, also reveals that some…

Out-of-school, community demographic and family-level variables have an important influence on student achievement as measured by large-scale standardized tests. Studies described here demonstrated that about half of the test score is accounted for by variables outside the control of teachers and school administrators. The results from these…

Asthma is a leading cause of school absenteeism in the United States, especially in poor and minority communities, where prevalence and hospitalization rates are significantly higher than average. A community health approach can help poorer school districts hire full-time nurses and access other health resources.

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…

Five literature selections with detailed instructional strategies offer practicing and preservice teachers lessons to help students think deeply about traditional male stereotypes, gender role development, and acceptance of individual differences. Incorporating gender variant books and techniques into early childhood and elementary teacher…

Even though theme is cited in two of the 10 Common Core Standards for Reading Literature, little is written on how to teach it. Determining theme while reading a story is a critical element of reading literature, yet some children simply struggle. The instructional strategies presented here are designed to hone students' theme awareness and…

Even in a standards-based curriculum, teachers can apply constructivist practices such as structured learning teams. In this environment, students become invested in the learning aims, triggering the desire in students to awaken, get information, interpret, remix, share, and design scenarios.

Child wellness needs to be understood holistically so that children and youth from high-poverty environments can succeed in schooling and life. Teachers who foster advocacy in themselves are well equipped to teach students to take ownership of their own well-being. Such advocacy can enrich the classroom curriculum and mitigate the negative effects…

This article describes ways that e-books, a common form of technology, can be used to differentiate instruction, enhance literacy learning, and support Common Core State English Language Arts (ELA) Standards at the fifth-grade level. However, the strategies described can easily be adapted to suit a wide range of grade levels and instructional…