Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday! Time for the last News Roundup of 2024.

Edutopia just published their “2024 in Review,” a collection of stories that highlight what they considered important when it comes to young learners. Here are nine of their 2024 most compelling ideas and passionate debates that sparked important, memorable discussions among educators:

“I’m a teacher, not a therapist – In August, we wrote about teaching elementary students self-regulation – and the article took off, quickly gathering over 100,000 views and 350 comments from readers across our social media channels. Teaching young students self-regulation skills, our audience overwhelmingly agreed, is important – and yet we detected a note of irritation: ‘Stop putting the onus on teachers to be therapists,’ wrote Krista Diederich on X crisply. Our job is to ‘teach content.’”

…

Is it now?

“Resistance to AI in classrooms grows – By now, AI is so ubiquitous that many say banning it in schools is merely delaying the inevitable. ‘AI is not going away,’ commented educator Amber Kirby, expressing a common sentiment – and the best thing teachers can do is teach students how to use it to ‘develop their skills and strengths.’”

“Not so fast, said high school English teacher Chanea Bond, who declared to her nearly 60,000 followers on X that she planned to enforce a strict no-AI policy in her classroom. Widely available tools like ChatGPT, she said, were robbing kids of the time and space to develop the skills that are foundational to literacy. ‘In order to do my job, I need to read YOUR writing. I need to know YOUR voice,’ she asserted, before putting her foot down and letting students know they would receive zeros on assignments produced using AI.”

…

I think Amber over Chanea on this one.

“A new chapter in the reading wars – What on earth is happening in K-12 education if college students can’t read a whole book?”

“That’s the uncomfortable question many asked after a viral Atlantic article claimed that college students can’t handle the books typically assigned in undergrad classes.”

“The article touched a nerve in the Edutopia community. Kids like to read ‘when they’re allowed time to connect with books and stories’ and ‘if time and proper instruction are provided,’ commented English teacher Steve Nuzum and AP lit teacher Amanda Austermann, respectively.”

“Instead, we tend to ‘drill passages and ask multiple choice questions that are often irrelevant to the things adults hope to get from reading,’ all in service to standardized tests that ‘don’t assess the ability to read and understand long, complex works,’ Nuzum explained.”

…

Traditional schools don’t know how to build a love of reading in their students, and it’s been like that for a very long time.

“You do love your seating options – It’s fair to say that our audience is obsessed with classroom design.”

“This year, a simple strategy for classroom seating – arranging desks in L-shaped groups – written by Jay Schauer, a retired biology teacher from Oregon, lit up our channels, with hundreds of teachers commenting and thousands more reading and saving the article.”

…

You can redesign a classroom to your heart’s delight. But it’s still a classroom. When are we going to start designing learning outside of the classroom and out of the school?

“Teachers cheer as states take aim at cell phones – This year, we polled teachers nationwide to ask if cell phones should be banned from classrooms. Nearly 5,000 educators responded – and 3,816…gave a resounding yes!”

…

I wonder how many thought it was important for young learners to learn to use their cell phones, and other types of technology, to learn how to learn?

“Are teens really that fragile? – This year, there was a flicker of hope about teen mental health when, per recent CDC data, the percentage of students who reported consistently feeling sad or hopeless declined from 42% to 40% – a modest but promising downtick after a decade of alarming upward trends. A 2024 survey from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation found 55% of Gen Z students say they’re ‘thriving in their lives,’ up from 53% in 2023.”

…

But still, 4 out of 10 of our kids feel sad or hopeless. That’s a problem.

“Teaching can be a pain in the bladder – When we asked our readers how schools support teachers when nature calls, close to 1,000 comments came pouring in (pun intended) – and the picture is dire.”

“’I don’t drink water before 1 P.M.,’ wrote Beth Schoellkopf on Facebook. ‘My school’s solution is…hold it,’ aajh15 posted. ‘We can’t even go during passing time because we are required to be in our doorways greeting students,’ Unchecked, educators told us, it can become a serious health issue: ‘Teachers for ten years, and I have destroyed my pelvic floor,’ writes its_sage_chaos. ‘I can’t hold it anymore.’”

…

Maybe instead of focusing on anytime, anywhere learning we should start with achieving anytime, anywhere peeing?

I’ll be away until January 2^nd. Til then, Happy Holidays to you and yours. 2025 is just around the corner! SVB