How would you reimagine education? Last week, I attended a Reimagining Education Summit with innovators from multiple sectors (K-12 education, tech, higher education, government, youth development, makers, and more) sponsored by the US Department of Education and the MacArthur Foundation dedicated to exploring this question.

Summer is here! But along with warmer weather, trips to the pool and the Fourth of July, comes a not-so-fun reality... the summer slide.

Too often students scowl at the idea of summer learning, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, summer is the perfect time to dive into some fun, engaging learning activities.

Virtual field trips, check. Fiction writing, check. A summer of making, check. For parents, we’ve rounded up some outside-the-box resources, as well as reading, math and writing activities, that will help counteract summer slide.

Summer heat, eating hot dogs, and cheering for home runs -- it's baseball season once again. Watching a game and rooting for your favorite team is fun, but there's so much more to baseball. It has the ability to get kids off the couch and moving around outside. It holds even greater potential as a way of modeling healthy lifestyles for youth. Through this popular and beloved game, we can identify lessons for children to take with them both on and off the field, and then implement strategies to teach these lessons.

Like you, I've been doing a lot of thinking and wondering about text complexity. As a first grade teacher, I'm pondering what that concept means for young readers and guided reading instruction. How do we support readers as they gradually climb a staircase of texts that leads them to those with greater complexity? My research-guided experience says, "Let’s take it one step at a time!"