Blogs on Student Engagement

Let me start with this: We need poetry. We really do. Poetry promotes literacy, builds community, and fosters emotional resilience. It can cross boundaries that little else can. April is National Poetry Month. Bring some poetry into your hearts, homes, classrooms and schools. Here are five reasons why we need poetry in our schools.

April is the best month to celebrate jazz, a uniquely American art form. First, April is Jazz Appreciation Month. But the celebration doesn't stop there. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival runs from April 6 to May 5, and International Jazz Day is on April 30.

As the school year nears its close, jazz might be the perfect remedy to calm your restless students, and fortunately, there's some wonderful jazz teaching resources online. Here are a few of our favorites:

Teachers mean well. By teachers, I mean you.

You mean well.

After all, you're here, aren't you -- looking for resources to become a better teacher or administrator? And you're in education to begin with -- that's a selfless and Sisyphean pursuit in itself. You want what's best for the future of mankind, so you decided to teach. Went to college, learned about Vygotsky and Piaget, and here you are on Edutopia, finding out what makes learners tick.

Children are more than one test, once a year, in one sitting. It seems as if many schools and districts have lapsed into a deep state of amnesia of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- a possible lingering hangover from NCLB. So here's a radical assertion: When assessing and teaching children, the time has more than come for education to embrace the whole child. This approach calls for schools and educators to curtail the deficit model and replace it with the abundance model.