Students are often required to create work in a vacuum, handing in papers to an inauthentic audience for the purpose of receiving a grade. As a result, students often neglect to consider the effects that their work can have on others. In this article, the author highlights an art project from her middle school in Kings Park, New York, that…

When teachers wonder "What should I do?" in response to challenging student behaviors, the answers are not as simple as they might seem. What teachers can do also depends, at least in part, on external demands (e.g., discipline codes, principal expectations, time pressures on teaching content and testing) that can either facilitate or…

Why is hope such an important concept for schools to consider? Research has clearly demonstrated that more hopeful students perform better in school and in life than less hopeful students. Hopeful thought reflects the belief that one can find pathways to desired goals and become motivated to use those pathways. As a result, hope drives the…

Drawing on a research base developed over many years in education, Carnegie is testing a set of strategies to help students persist and succeed academically. This kind of persistence, what the researchers and faculty who developed the Pathways call "productive persistence," is a key driver of Quantway® and Statway®. Broadly defined,…

Scarce resources mean employees cannot afford to lose a moment of their day to repetitive or useless tasks. This author accompanied learners from a large financial institution in New York City and describes in this article how a productivity workshop can make a difference. The workshop leader, Jason W. Womack, suggested the following "quick…

When a beloved school closes, community emotions run high. De Witt and Moccia, administrators in the Averill Park School District in upstate New York, describe how their district navigated through parents' anger and practical matters in closing a small neighborhood elementary school and transferring all its students to another school. With a group…

For a growing group of educators, the online role-playing game World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is a place to go to relax, network, and discover potential learning strategies-- and slay a few monsters if they get in the way. The online role-playing game World of…

A Functional Behavioral Assessment (FBA) is mandated when schools deal with students presenting problems that lead to suspension or exclusion. The authors present a strength-based model for FBAs developed in a New York school for students with emotional and behavior problems. The Circle of Courage needs for Belonging, Mastery, Independence, and…

There are numerous factors associated with not finishing high school. The purpose of this student was to shed new light on one of them, grade retention, as seen through the eyes of retained dropouts themselves. Respondents describe three interrelated phenomena that characterized their trajectory from being retained-in-grade to subsequent premature…