Did you know that a significant portion of the calories we consume in America comes from highly processed foods? These foods often contain ingredients that our bodies don’t even recognize as real food. It’s quite alarming how prevalent these ultra-processed…
The food you put in your mouth does more than nourish your body. It tremendously impacts brain health. Learning, mood, memory and reasoning skills are all impacted by diet. There are basic core eating principles to follow to optimize brain…
If you are a teacher who was already operating a student-centered classroom, your shift to remote learner/teaching environments has probably gone a little smoother than you may have expected for both you and your students. Layered Curriculum shifts much of…
Older siblings can have a huge influence on middle school students. A middle school student with an older brother or sister of high school age will be very much influenced by that sibling. But the way in which they are…
The field of nutritional psychology is in its infancy, but the research is significant enough for schools to take some notice. Nutritional psychology is a relatively new field of health psychology which studies the way nutrition and diet impact…
Anxiety levels may be at an all-time high among schoolchildren. The 24-hour news cycle, social media, and the rash of gun violence in schools has led to genuine fear and anxiety among many of our students. We may not be…
Increasingly we are seeing a trend around the country for schools to reduce the number of paraprofessionals and classroom aides and reallocate those monies into other areas. I hear calls of alarm from many parents and community members who see…
Most of us are aware of the abundance of research that supports the educational advantages of student-centered classrooms. Teachers have the mental vision of what a student-centered classroom should look like, but the realization that a student-centered classroom requires a…
I have been in several classrooms over the past few months where teachers were dealing with children who had extremely disruptive behaviors. These were not only preventing the child from learning, but they were also disrupting the entire classroom. In all…
Use a “sandwich” approach when giving feedback to students. Start with what they did right. Acknowledge their work, their effort, their improvement thus far. Identify their strengths. Finish your feedback with the same. And in between, you can let them…
