Aug 29

This Simple Behavior is Proven to Lead to Greater Student Success

August 29th, 2017 by Austin Butler

Almost all of us can sympathize with the crushing sensation of getting a failing grade at one point or another. Whether it's on a spelling quiz in elementary school or an essay for a college class, the sight of an “F” at the top of your paper can be equally demoralizing. What sets people apart, however, comes from how one...

Aug 22

Project Based Learning: Expectations vs. Reality

August 22nd, 2017 by Austin Butler

What happens with most of the work that students do in school? From my experience, most of it ended up crumpled at the bottom of my book bag. What relevance it had with the assignment last week, the subject as a whole, or my personal life was pretty much lost on me. Homework was homework, and if I wanted to...

Aug 8

How to Implement Design Thinking in Your Classroom

August 8th, 2017 by Austin Butler

Today, many people who’ve grown accustomed to rideshare apps, such as Uber, can’t imagine going back to the days of riding in taxis. In hindsight, taxis seem incredibly inconvenient to many. You have to stand on a street corner to find one, drivers prefer you to pay in cash, and you have no way of knowing if they are trustworthy before...

Aug 2

Physics for Babies? Starting Kids Early on the Hard Subjects

August 2nd, 2017 by Austin Butler

Colin Carlson graduated from the University of Connecticut with a degree in ecology and environmental biology when he was 15. At age 16 he had earned his Master’s degree in the same subjects, and by 22 he completed his Ph.D. from the University California, Berkeley. He wants to use his degrees to study parasites and the impact that climate change...

Jul 25

Teaching Students Communication Skills

July 25th, 2017 by Austin Butler

We all have that one colleague that writes emails the same way they speak. If they've had a bad day, you can read it loud and clear in their latest email. It's even worse when it comes to the really important emails. Like that time when they submitted a request to the school's administrator on behalf of your department. It...

Jul 18

How Your Students Can Benefit from Computational Thinking

July 18th, 2017 by Austin Butler

With each subject we learn, we also learn a different way of approaching problems. Studying English, we learn to look for the subtext, what lies below the obvious. In Math, we learn to rationally break down problems. In Social Studies, we learn to make connections between a collection of situations and events. Each and every one of these disciplines is...

Jul 11

Finnish Schools Ditch Traditional Subjects

July 11th, 2017 by Austin Butler

In most schools academic subjects are neatly packed into distinct times and spaces that are entirely separate from one another. Students go from Math to English and from English to Science as if these fields of study were entirely unrelated. But that’s not really the way things are in real life, are they? Every subject is related. In Finland, which...

Jun 27

How to Incorporate Current Events into the Classroom

June 27th, 2017 by Austin Butler

Even if you haven’t sat down with a newspaper in years, most adults will agree that it’s important to stay abreast of what’s happening in the world. Whether you get your news from TV, radio, online publications, or even social media, most of us have a time and place every day where we catch up on the news. For students,...

Jun 20

How to Teach Students Public Speaking Skills

June 20th, 2017 by Austin Butler

Studies have found that most people would put public speaking before death in a list of their biggest fears. That means that at a funeral, most people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy! Whether public speaking produces anxiety for you or not, it is a life skill that is invaluable in college and the workplace, and...

Jun 13

How to Teach Students to Find Their Own Answers

June 13th, 2017 by Austin Butler

At some point or another, most people have experienced the satisfaction of teaching yourself something you didn’t know how to do before. Whether it’s changing a flat tire for the first time or learning a new function in Excel, there is something exciting about teaching yourself something new. Not only that, but problem-solving is a valuable skill in students’ future...