Seeds of Hope

Kamau and Zuzu Find a Way
As we enter the dark time of year and who knows what other kinds of dark times we may be facing, we are looking for stories of hope—and finding them.

The Gems: Revolutionize Your Teaching of Writing

Margo Sorenson
The stack of stu­dent papers lurks on the cor­ner of your desk, just wait­ing to be marked and grad­ed. Yes, the rubrics and grad­ing stan­dards will be applied con­sci­en­tious­ly, paper after paper. Your stu­dents wait, some in dread, some in hope­ful antic­i­pa­tion, for your final judg­ments on their papers. But wait — there’s anoth­er way to eval­u­ate stu­dent writ­ing — one that I read many years ago in the Eng­lish Jour­nal.… more

I’m Gonna Push Through!

Have you felt like you couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t attempt some­thing you real­ly want to do? Maybe you’ve done a good job of con­vinc­ing your­self you’re not up to mak­ing your goal. This is the book for you, your class­room, your book club, your dance troupe, your fam­i­ly … lit­er­al­ly every­one who needs pos­i­tive encouragement. As the author and edu­ca­tor Jas­myn Wright shares, “I’ve taught in low-income and under­priv­i­leged com­mu­ni­ties, so I knew that my stu­dents need­ed more than the bare min­i­mum to excel.”… more

It’s the Little Things That Lift Us Up
When the Big Things Bring Us Down

Maurna Rome
Recent­ly I had “one of those days” in room 212. A day that brought me to tears and had my heart aching. Dri­ving away from school on a Fri­day after­noon I knew my fun week­end plans would be inter­rupt­ed now and again by thoughts of my kids and some of the tough stuff going on. The same kind of tough stuff every sin­gle teacher has to deal with on occa­sion.… more