The Conversation – ��Ӱ��

Why School Police Officers May Not Be the Most Effective Way to Prevent Violence

Monic Behnken — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 17:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

In 1975, only . Today, 44% do. A large reason for the increase is the , which led to the creation of the federal Community Oriented Policing Services to oversee funds for the hiring of police in schools. Another reason is the in 1999. From the federal government down to individual districts, the idea that schools need police officers to keep kids safe is prevalent.

However, research shows that police officers in schools , including school shootings. In fact, their presence can .

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

Here are five reasons police in schools, also known as school resource officers, actually make students less safe in school:

1. They don’t address the root problems

State legislators that advocate for police in schools believe that by – increasing police presence, adding metal detectors, requiring clear backpacks and mandating active-shooter safety drills – .

Academic research supports a different strategy. Most school shooters are prior to committing assault. Many of these students struggle to make friends, experience challenges in their home lives and have .

School police officers cannot fix societal problems. Instead, researchers and that districts invest in the people who are , like social workers and therapists.

2. Their role is not well defined

The role of school police officers, as well as their training, varies from school to school. This means that some may have a more positive impact on students than others.

Research shows that school resource officers are effective at detecting on campus and addressing related to gang activity in schools. But officers do not lower instances of like vandalism and schoolyard fights.

School police officers play various roles on campus, but research shows that they are at helping students when they focus on specific types of crime occurring in the school or building relationships with the students who are known to commit them. When they , their effectiveness decreases.

3. They do not increase students’ feelings of safety

Most students either or don’t mind that one is present. In fact, most students report liking the officer at their school.

However, students report that the presence of school resource officers . Students report feeling safe in the beginning of the year with officers in the building but feel as the year goes on. The more contact students have with an officer, for any reason, the they begin to feel. Researchers suggest a possible reason why is because they start to worry that their own behavior can result in harsh punishment.

This can lead to other negative consequences, like , and .

Students who frequently encounter school police officers can begin to develop subconscious feelings that their school is unsafe, . Even students who don’t directly interact with the officers, but witness other students get arrested, can begin to feel .

4. They contribute to the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’

Research shows that the presence of school police officers that a school will report common forms of student misbehavior, like cafeteria fights and vandalism, to law enforcement agencies – contributing to what is known as the “” by criminalizing such conduct.

For example, schools that use on-campus police for law enforcement and other duties, like mentoring, are than schools without police. Schools that use officers primarily for student discipline and crime response report to police than similar schools that don’t use school police.

Supporters of school police officers may argue that reporting crimes keeps students safer. However, for some students, the consequences can be devastating and lifelong. For example, in one study, with on-campus police officers recorded 38% fewer violent offenses than schools without police. But they were also more likely to respond to student misconduct with harsher disciplinary practices such as school suspension, transfers to alternative learning environments, expulsions and referrals to police. Studies often find that these exclusionary responses are mostly experienced by .

5. They sometimes infringe on students’ rights

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that students do not “ to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

However, research is clear about the threats to students’ rights that school police officers can pose. These include , and violations of rights of .

Schools that plan to keep their police officers can follow these guidelines to ensure they are more effective in actually helping students:

Build strong relationships between school administrators and school police officers, which can .
Clearly of school police officers.
Work as a team with officers and other experts, like social workers and therapists. Simply having a school resource officer .
Train officers in .
Integrate officers into school and district leadership roles by and providing them with the same professional development as teachers.

As the nation’s schools continue to grapple with how to keep students safe, a careful review of the research shows that school police officers may not be the answer.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Opinion: Why Being Forced to Precisely Follow a Curriculum Harms Teachers and Students

Cara Elizabeth Furman — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 17:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

In teaching, “fidelity” refers to for how to teach a lesson or respond to student behavior. For example, following a curriculum to fidelity might mean a teacher is required to , use a certain , or teach from a designated page in a guidebook on a specific day.

In the past 20 years, teachers have experienced . Simultaneously, the idea of teaching to fidelity . Today, policymakers commonly suggest that fidelity is . While prevalent across the country, this kind of micromanaging is more common in urban and that .

I’m a former elementary school teacher and I now study . This includes how they observe their students and try to help them – regardless of whether their decisions align with a prescribed curriculum.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

In a recent study, I interviewed 12 teachers, primarily in rural towns in the Northeast, about . They discussed how they came up with responses based on best practices they had learned in school from resources such as books and videos. They also spoke of techniques they learned in professional development workshops.

Of the nine who worked in public schools or publicly funded child care centers, however, all but one of the teachers were influenced by pressure to follow a curriculum to fidelity. This pressure came from administrators in the form of threats of punishments and even job loss, as well as from colleagues who questioned when they taught a curriculum differently.

My study echoes demonstrating that with teachers’ capacity to best serve students. It also prompts many qualified teachers to .

How fidelity affects teachers

The term “fidelity” and refers to the precise execution of a protocol in an experiment to ensure results are reliable. However, a classroom is not a lab, and students are not experiments.

As a result, teachers and teacher educators have and the .

One participant in my study, a fourth grade public school teacher, described an oppressive environment at her school: “They were really driving the curriculum down our throats. We need to meet this at this date. And everyone should be at this lesson at this date.”

This counteracted what she was taught in college – every student is different, and every classroom is different. Not all teachers will be on the same lesson on the same day.

A kindergarten teacher in the study also described being “boxed” in and forced into a mold.

Students face the consequences of following a curriculum to fidelity. For example, this kindergarten teacher described how when she was teaching preschool her students who lived in a rural area did not understand references to crossing busy city streets in a book she was required to read as part of the curriculum. She brought her students outside to the parking lot to practice street crossing and listen to the noises of local traffic. This was not part of the curriculum. Had the teacher followed the curriculum to a tee, the students may not have been able to grasp the lesson from the book.

When teachers are trusted and given greater flexibility, . They also feel more supported. The fourth grade teacher in my study began to feel she could better meet the needs of her students only when she changed schools and principals.

Of her new placement: “My administrator is always saying, ‘If there’s anything that you feel your students need, then do it. If it doesn’t completely align with the expensive curriculum we’ve invested in, that’s okay,’” she said. “It’s been a weight lifted off my shoulders.”

A new path forward

Research shows that flexibility in teaching methods and curricula allows teachers and students to participate more fully in the learning process – and even .

Instead of mandating that teachers stick to the curriculum word for word, schools can implement these more flexible approaches:

1. Trust teachers. Asked why they want to teach, prospective and current teachers say they . Working with teachers should begin with the belief in their good intentions.

2. Follow the evidence. Learning is complex, and educators’ knowledge of how students learn evolves as new research comes out. When following a specific curriculum to fidelity, teachers are sometimes required to use methods that are . In fact, teachers have been even when that the curriculum is interfering with student learning.

3. Allow teachers to tweak curriculum to meet their students’ needs and experiences. For example, in most instructional materials, . Effective and ethical teaching requires that teachers into their lessons, meaning they may have to make changes to a curriculum.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Opinion: Sci-fi Films Can Show Students the Power Societies Have to Shape our Lives

Harry F. Dahms — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 16:01:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

Title of course:

Sociology, Science Fiction Film, and Artificial Intelligence

What prompted the idea for the course?

A colleague in the sociology department used to teach a course using a film genre from the 1940s and 1950s that presented a bleak view of modern societies. I liked the idea of using film in my classes, but I was interested in another film genre. I chose science fiction films to encourage sociology students to adopt a constructive view of the future. I also wanted them to see the parallels between the underlying messages in these films and many concepts in sociology.

What does the course explore?

Since the and sociology have examined how .

Science fiction often looks at potentially dangerous contemporary trends and envisions a future in which society and human civilization are threatened. Sociologists also focus on unsettling trends: , , , or . Science fiction imagines the impact of these trends on the social structures of the future. In contrast, sociologists focus on the roles that economics, the different ways of structuring a society and technology play in .

Why is this course relevant now?

The goal of this course is to help students understand that societies are more than groups of people. Societies are alive and try to survive on their own terms and are sometimes at odds with the interests of the people who live in them.

In many science fiction films, such as “,” “,” “” and “,” protagonists discover that the societies they live in depend on hidden systems of control. In “The Matrix” series, the protagonist, Neo, learns that what he believes is real is actually a simulation shared by all humans. The shared illusion keeps them captive and inert while their electrical impulses are used to power sentient machines. Often, the systems of control in these films contradict and even exploit the values and norms the protagonists embrace. The hero in “Oblivion,” for example, believes his work is saving humankind; in fact, he is being used by alien technology that is draining the planet of its resources.

Sociologists study how factors in modern society such as economic systems and technologies such as AI shape our lives. Like the protagonists in a sci-fi film, sociologists attempt to understand the underlying systems of control. In both fiction and fact, these systems exist independently of the people who are part of the system. Those in the system are typically unaware of its existence and are unable to create or control it.

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

While many people believe they act of their own accord, their actions and choices are shaped by factors they can’t direct. What individuals do is based, in part, on social and economic patterns, such as whether the society they live in is religious or secular. Actions and beliefs are also influenced by psychological and biological factors, such as the way individuals were raised in childhood and the effect of their sex or race. People are inclined to look for solutions to 21st-century problems in traditional ideas, practices and institutions – including systems of government – that may have originated decades or centuries ago. These methods are ill-suited to confronting newly emerging challenges. For example, countries may want to tackle climate change, a , but are usually limited by national policies, which are ineffective.

What materials does the course feature?

The primary text for understanding science fiction is “” by writer and philosopher Darko Suvin, a former professor of literature at McGill University. The course also features essays, articles and film clips that connect sociology, science fiction films and AI, including my own articles, and .

What will the course prepare students to do?

Students will learn to interpret science fiction films constructively, as allegories about their place in a rapidly changing world. They will recognize that understanding sociology – that is, the study of human behavior and the structure of society – can help us avoid the mistakes of the past and embrace the future without fear.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Love for Cats Lures Students into this Course, Which Uses Feline Research to Teach Science

Jonathan Losos — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 13:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course:

“The Science of Cats”

What prompted the idea for the course?

who has spent my career studying the evolution of small lizards in the Caribbean. I’m also a lifelong cat lover, but it never occurred to me to do anything scientific with house cats. They’re hard to study – ever tried to follow your cat around to see what they’re doing? And in contrast to amply studied lions, tigers and other wild felines, I was under the impression that there wasn’t any interesting research being conducted on the domestic representative of the cat clan, Felis catus.

Twelve years ago, I learned that I was completely wrong. Thanks to John Bradshaw’s book “” and the BBC’s “,” I discovered that were using the same cutting-edge methods – GPS tracking, genome sequencing, isotopic analysis – to study domestic cats that I use to study lizards and other researchers use with all manner of other creatures.

Thus was born my class on the science of cats. I’d lure students in with their love of felines and then, when they weren’t looking, I’d teach them how scientists study biodiversity – ecology, evolution, genetics and behavior.

What does the course explore?

In essence, the course is about the past, present and future of cats: where they came from, why they do what they do, what the future may hold. And, critically, how we know what we know – that is, how scientists address these sorts of questions.

The course concludes with students writing an original paper or making a mini-documentary. These projects have spanned a vast range of topics in biology and beyond, such as the impact of cats on bird populations, sexism and the crazy cat lady trope, the health effects pro and con of living with felines, the role of hybridization as a creative or constraining force in evolution, the top-down role of larger predators like coyotes and dingoes in controlling cat numbers, and the prospects for new genetic technologies to create allergen-free cats or to curb free-roaming cat populations.

Unexpectedly, the students weren’t the only ones who ended up writing about cats: The class and its themes inspired me to write my own book, “.”

Cats’ fur patterns can illustrate a genetics lesson. (Getty Images)

Why is this course relevant now?

Society needs more biodiversity scientists to understand our rapidly changing world. Cats pose scientific questions of broad interest, and they may serve as a gateway introduction to the world of biological research.

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

Important research on the natural world does not require traveling to remote corners of the world. Research on common animals in local surroundings – even household pets – can make important advances in basic and applied knowledge.

What materials does the course feature?

In addition to reading research papers, we took field trips that were both eye-opening and fun. We went out at the crack of dawn to join a homeless-cat advocate feeding unowned felines in a rundown part of town. We also learned about cats in ancient times from an Egyptologist, traveled to a cat show to marvel at the diversity of cat breeds, observed wild felines at the Saint Louis Zoo and examined cats in art at university museums.

What will the course prepare students to do?

Cat research is the vehicle for students to see the applicability of scientific ideas to animals they know and care for greatly. The course not only requires students to synthesize knowledge from many different fields, but also gets them to think about real-world contemporary debates, such as what to do about outdoor cats and the ethics of breeding.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

AI Pioneers Want Bots to Replace Human Teachers – Here’s Why That’s Unlikely

Annette Vee — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 12:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in which artificial intelligence bots can be made into subject matter experts that are “deeply passionate, great at teaching, infinitely patient and fluent in all of the world’s languages.” Through this vision, the bots would be available to “personally tutor all 8 billion of us on demand.”

The embodiment of that idea is his latest venture, , which is merely the newest prominent example of how tech entrepreneurs are seeking to use AI to revolutionize education.

Karpathy believes AI can solve a long-standing challenge: the who are also subject experts.

And he’s not alone. OpenAI CEO , Khan Academy , venture capitalist and University of California, Berkeley computer scientist also dream of bots becoming , and perhaps even replacements for human teachers.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

As a researcher focused on AI and , I’ve seen many cases of high-tech “solutions” for teaching problems that fizzled. AI certainly may enhance aspects of education, but history shows that bots probably won’t be an effective substitute for humans. That’s because students have long shown resistance to machines, however sophisticated, and a natural preference to connect with and be inspired by fellow humans.

The costly challenge of teaching writing to the masses

As the director of the at the University of Pittsburgh, I oversee instruction for some 7,000 students a year. Programs like mine have long wrestled with how to teach writing efficiently and effectively to so many people at once.

The best answer so far is to keep class sizes . Research shows that in smaller classes because they are more engaged.

Yet small classes require more instructors, and that can get .

Resuscitating dead scholars

Enter AI. Imagine, Karpathy , that the great theoretical physicist , who has been dead for over 35 years, could be brought back to life as a bot to tutor students.

For Karpathy, an ideal learning experience would be working through physics material “together with Feynman, who is there to guide you every step of the way.” Feynman, renowned for his accessible way of presenting theoretical physics, could work with an unlimited number of students at the same time.

In this vision, human teachers still design course materials, but they are supported by an AI teaching assistant. This teacher-AI team “could run an entire curriculum of courses on a common platform,” Karpathy wrote. “If we are successful, it will be easy for anyone to learn anything,” whether it be a lot of people learning about one subject, or one person learning about many subjects.

Other efforts to personalize learning fall short

Yet technologies for personal learning aren’t new. Exactly 100 years ago, at the 1924 meeting of the American Psychological Association, inventor Sidney Pressey unveiled an “automatic teacher” that asked multiple-choice questions.

In the 1950s, the psychologist designed “teaching machines.” If a student answered a question correctly, the machine advanced to ask about the problem’s next step. If not, the student stayed on that step of the problem until they solved it.

In both cases, students received positive feedback for correct answers. This gave them confidence as well as skills in the subject. The problem was that students didn’t learn much – they also found these nonhuman approaches boring, education writer Audrey Watters documents in “.”

More recently, the world of education of “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs. These classes, which delivered video and quizzes, were heralded by The New York Times and others for their . Again, students lost interest and logged off.

Other web-based efforts have popped up, including course platforms like Coursera and Outlier. But the same problem persists: There’s no genuine interactivity to keep students engaged. One of the latest casualties in online learning was 2U, which acquired leading MOOC company edX in 2021 and in July 2024 filed for bankruptcy restructuring to reduce its . The culprit: falling demand for services.

Now comes the proliferation of AI-fueled platforms. Khanmigo deploys AI tutors to, as Sal Khan , “personalize and customize coaching, as well as adapt to an individual’s needs while hovering beside our learners as they work.”

The educational publisher Pearson, too, . More than 1,000 universities .

AI in education isn’t just coming; it’s here. The question is how effective it will be.

Drawbacks in AI learning

Some tech leaders believe bots can customize teaching and replace human teachers and tutors, but they’re likely to face the same problem as these earlier attempts: Students may not like it.

There are important reasons why, too. Students are unlikely to be inspired and excited the way they can be by a live instructor. Students in crisis often for help. Would they do the same with a bot? And what would the bot do if they did? We don’t know yet.

A lack of data privacy and security can also be a deterrent. These platforms collect volumes of information on students and their academic performance that can be misused or sold. Legislation may try to prevent this, but , out of reach of U.S. law.

Finally, there are concerns even if AI tutors and teachers become popular. If a bot teaches millions of students at once, we may lose diversity of thought. Where does originality come from when everyone receives the same teachings, especially if “academic success” relies on regurgitating what the AI instructor says?

The idea of an AI tutor in every pocket sounds exciting. I would love to learn physics from Richard Feynman or writing from Maya Angelou or astronomy from Carl Sagan. But history reminds us to be cautious and keep a close eye on whether students are actually learning. The promises of personalized learning are no guarantee for positive results.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Opinion: This Course Uses ‘Climate Fiction’ to Teach About the Perils of a Warming Planet

Debra J. Rosenthal — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 18:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of Course:

“Climate Change Literature”

What prompted the idea for the course?

After reading many fiction books that featured themes of climate change, I felt compelled to create a course that would allow students to do the same. The idea was to have students learn about our planetary crisis by exploring how it’s portrayed in literature.

At John Carroll University, students are required to take paired courses that are tethered together from two different departments. I approached a colleague who teaches a biology course about climate science to see if he wanted to link his course to mine. Students must co-enroll in both of our courses during the same semester. The combined courses give students both a scientific and literary view of climate change. In my colleague’s class, students learn about and the like. Then, in my class, they study how fiction writers and poets incorporate concerns about the effects of rising temperatures into their work.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

What materials does the course feature?

The major work of fiction we read is Barbara Kingsolver’s novel “,” about a low-income family in Appalachia. Millions of monarch butterflies become confused by warming temperatures and accidentally overwinter on the family farm, setting off much conflict. We also read lots of poetry and short fiction with themes of the impacts of . We read some fiction by Kim Stanley Robinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Tommy Orange, Olivia Clare, Jess Walter and more. Poets include Matthew Olzmann, Nickole Brown, Ross Gay, Dante Di Stefano and Craig Santos Perez.

What does the course explore?

By reading climate fiction and poetry, students learn how overreliance on fossil fuels overlaps with issues of , and . We explore narrative voice, structure, imagery, plot, dialogue, style and other textual concerns in creative works influenced by living in the – or the period, according to some scientists, when human activity began to significantly affect the planet’s climate and ecosystems. is thought by some climate change experts to have . Through classroom discussion, we share the collective experience of engaging with characters who navigate a threatened world.

To integrate the biology and English classes, the students’ final projects are pitches for a Hollywood movie that portrays a changed world due to planetary heating while also getting the science right. The assignment is harder than it sounds: Students must understand the harmful results of carbon emissions and craft a compelling story.

Why is this course relevant now?

Climate change is an existential crisis . Many students do not study Earth science in high school; their first, and possibly only, exposure to evidence-based climate change happens in college. Authors address consequences such as warming temperatures, ocean acidification, desertification and sea-level rise. Thus, literature has become an essential tool to construct meaning in an age of climate disruption.

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

Literature helps us feel the immediacy of what’s at stake in a climate-changed world. The storytelling in fiction and poetry teaches us much that scientific and policy reports, charts, graphs and forecasts cannot. While data can predict rising sea levels, for example, a short story such as shows us how it feels to live in a submerged town where residents’ feet are always wet. Climate researchers predict the increasing desertification of the American Southwest. Through readers experience what it looks like to see towns abandoned due to the lack of water, and golf courses where sand traps no longer exist because the entire course has turned to sand.

What will the course prepare students to do?

Analyzing fiction and poetry sharpens students’ critical interpretive skills and prepares them to think originally and creatively as they enter a workforce altered and threatened by climate change. For example, pre-health majors will see the impacts of climate change on the human body. Business majors will need to know how to operate when extreme weather and disrupted supply chains affect the bottom line.

Our two paired courses combine science and literature to equip students with expansive ways of asking questions about their role in the world.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

3 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Help Students Learn – and Not Cheat

Kui Xie and Eric M. Anderman — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 12:00:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

Since ChatGPT can engage in conversation and generate essays, computer codes, charts and graphs that closely resemble those created by humans, . A across the country have decided to block access to ChatGPT on computers and networks.

As professors of and , we’ve found that the is their academic motivation. For example, sometimes students are just motivated to get a high grade, whereas other times they are motivated to learn all that they can about a topic.

The decision to cheat or not, therefore, often relates to how academic assignments and tests are constructed and assessed, not on the availability of technological shortcuts. When they have the opportunity to rewrite an essay or retake a test if they don’t do well initially, students are .

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

We believe teachers can use ChatGPT to increase their students’ motivation for learning and actually prevent cheating. Here are three strategies for doing that.

1. Treat ChatGPT as a learning partner

Our research demonstrates that students are when assignments are designed in ways that encourage them to outperform their classmates. In contrast, students are when teachers assign academic tasks that prompt them to work collaboratively and to focus on mastering content instead of getting a good grade.

Treating ChatGPT as a learning partner can help teachers shift the focus among their students from competition and performance to collaboration and mastery.

For example, a science teacher can assign students to work with ChatGPT to design a hydroponic vegetable garden. In this scenario, students could engage with ChatGPT to discuss the growing requirements for vegetables, brainstorm design ideas for a hydroponic system and analyze pros and cons of the design.

These activities are designed to promote mastery of content as they focus on the processes of learning rather than just the final grade.

2. Use ChatGPT to boost confidence

Research shows that when students feel confident that they can successfully do the work assigned to them, they are . And an important way to boost students’ confidence is to provide them with .

ChatGPT can facilitate such experiences by offering students individualized support and breaking down complex problems into smaller challenges or tasks.

For example, suppose students are asked to attempt to design a hypothetical vehicle that can use gasoline more efficiently than a traditional car. Students who struggle with the project – and might be inclined to cheat – can use ChatGPT to break down the larger problem into smaller tasks. ChatGPT might suggest they first develop an overall concept for the vehicle before determining the size and weight of the vehicle and deciding what type of fuel will be used. Teachers could also ask students to compare the steps suggested by ChatGPT with steps that are recommended by other sources.

3. Prompt ChatGPT to give supportive feedback

It is well documented that supports students’ positive emotions, including self-confidence.

ChatGPT can be directed to deliver feedback using positive, empathetic and encouraging language. For example, if a student completes a math problem incorrectly, instead of merely telling the student “You are wrong and the correct answer is …,” ChatGPT may initiate a conversation with the student. Here’s a real response generated by ChatGPT: “Your answer is not correct, but it’s completely normal to encounter occasional errors or misconceptions along the way. Don’t be discouraged by this small setback; you’re on the right track! I’m here to support you and answer any questions you may have. You’re doing great!”

This will help students feel supported and understood while receiving feedback for improvement. Teachers can easily show students how to direct ChatGPT to provide them such feedback.

We believe that when teachers use ChatGPT and other AI chatbots thoughtfully – and also encourage students to use these tools responsibly in their schoolwork – students have an incentive to learn more and cheat less.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Children in the Workforce: Several States Are Softening Child Labor Restrictions

John A. Fliter and Betsy Wood — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 13:15:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

A movement to weaken American child labor protections at the state level began in 2022. By June 2023, had enacted this kind of legislation, and lawmakers in at least another eight states had introduced similar measures.

The laws generally make it easier for kids from 14 to 17 years old to work longer and later – and in occupations that were previously off-limits for minors.

When Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on May 26, 2023, the Republican leader said the measure would “allow young adults to develop their skills in the workforce.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

of , we find the arguments Reynolds and other like-minded politicians are using today to justify undoing child labor protections echo older justifications made decades ago.

Many conservatives and business leaders have long argued, based on a combination of ideological and economic grounds, that federal child labor rules aren’t necessary. Some object to the . Cultural conservatives say and that . Many conservatives also say that teens, fewer of whom , could help fill empty jobs in tight labor markets.

Opponents of child labor observe that when kids under 18 work long hours or do strenuous jobs, it can disrupt childhood development, interfere with their schooling and . Expanding child labor can encourage kids to drop out of school and and work-related illnesses.

Long-brewing battle

Child labor protections, such as making many kinds of employment for children under 14 illegal and restricting the hours that teens under 18 can spend working, are guaranteed by the . U.S. law also does not treat 16- and 17-year-olds as adults. The federal government deems many occupations to be too hazardous for anyone under 18.

Until that law took effect, the lack of a federal standard always toward keeping kids in school and out of mines, factories and other sometimes hazardous workplaces.

Three years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld it in the ruling, which toppled a .

Challenges began during the Reagan administration

There were no child labor laws for the next four decades. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan sought to ease federal protections to allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work longer hours in fast-food and retail establishments and to pay young workers less than the minimum wage. of Democrats, labor unions, teachers, parents and child development groups blocked the proposed changes.

By the late 1980s, . Some industry groups tried to loosen restrictions in the 1990s, but .

A more ambitious attempt to roll back child labor laws in the early 2000s, led by a homeschooling group, , but conservatives continued to call for similar changes.

When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was vying to become a 2012 Republican presidential nominee, he made headlines by calling “truly stupid.” He suggested kids could work as janitors in schools.

Today, the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based think tank, is drafting state legislation to strip child labor protections, . Its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, has been helping push these bills through state legislatures, including in Arkansas and Missouri.

Iowa and Arkansas

In our view, Iowa has the most radical new law designed to roll back child labor protections. It allows children as young as 14 to work in meat coolers and industrial laundries, and teens 15 and older can work on .

Teens as young as 16 can now serve alcohol in Iowa restaurants, as long as two adults are present.

U.S. argue that several provisions of Iowa’s new law violate national child labor standards. However, the department for combating such violations.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed her state’s in March. It eliminated work permits for 14- and 15-year-olds.

Previously, employers had to keep a work certificate on file that required proof of age, a description of the work and schedule – and the written consent of a parent or guardian.

Arkansas has scrapped those safeguards against child labor exploitation. We find it puzzling that supporters touted the bill as enhancing because the law removes any formal role for parents in balancing their kids’ education and employment.

Federal vs. state laws

You may wonder how states can undermine federal child labor laws. Doesn’t federal law preempt state laws?

Both govern the employment of minors, and all states have . Federal laws set a floor of regulations in youth employment that cover maximum hours, minimum ages, wages and protections from hazardous jobs.

If states pass tougher laws, as many have, the stricter standards govern workplace practices. School attendance requirements vary by state, but once someone turns 18, they’re no longer covered by the .

Federal law, for example, does not require minors to obtain work permits or employment certificates, but .

With the , these efforts to weaken child labor laws are being led by Republicans.

To be sure, some states are still attempting to strengthen child labor protections.

Democrats in that would allow injured children to sue employers for child labor violations. on June 7, 2023.

Having child labor laws on the books at both the federal and state levels is only half the battle. is another matter. Many violations in recent years have involved without their parents, only to wind up working long hours, sometimes in dangerous jobs, at young ages.

Construction sites?

Other states are trying to weaken protections. want to allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work until 9 p.m. during the school year with their parents’ permission, even though federal regulations don’t allow teens that age to work past 7 p.m.

Some states are considering legislation that directly conflicts with federal child . For example, a bill Republican Minnesota state Sen. Rich Draheim introduced would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work .

from politicians, child advocacy groups, education associations, labor unions and the public has defeated some of these efforts.

that would have eliminated work permits for minors, but they withdrew it without a vote. And Republican to extend working hours for children 14 and under from 7 p.m. to 9 pm. It was withdrawn as well.

In Wisconsin, in 2022 that would have let teens work longer and later. In 2023, some Wisconsin lawmakers are trying again. They want to let .

Taking aim at federal rules

There are some national efforts to weaken – or strengthen – child labor rules as well.

Rep. , a South Dakota Republican, seeks to revise federal regulations to permit 14- and 15-year-olds to work until 9 p.m. on school nights and up to 24 hours per week during the school year. We don’t expect his bill to pass in today’s divided Congress.

in the House and the Senate to with parental supervision.

And yet there’s also support in Congress to increase penalties for child labor violations. Currently, the maximum such fine is $15,138 per child. and would increase the penalty to nearly 10 times that amount if enacted.

And several measures to strengthen , .

With so many states seeking weaker child labor protections, we believe a federal-state showdown over the question of whether young people in the United States belong in the workforce is inevitable.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Kids Cartoon Characters That Use AI to Customize Responses Help Children Learn

Ying Xu — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 16:01:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

The is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

When the main character of a kids TV show can both listen and respond to viewers by using advances in artificial intelligence, from the program. That’s what my colleagues and I found in a series of peer-reviewed studies.

We are partnering with to incorporate conversational AI like Siri or Alexa into a popular science show for preschool-aged children called “.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

In the interactive version we created, the main character, a curious bunny named Elinor, poses questions to children. She then listens to their responses and replies with feedback specific to their answers, or provides additional clues when needed.

For example, in an episode about liquid thickness – or viscosity – Elinor and her friends try to get ketchup out of a bottle by shaking and squeezing it, but the ketchup remains stuck inside. Elinor turns to the viewer and asks, “Why do you think the ketchup isn’t coming out?” Many of the kids in our study simply reiterated the problem by saying, “It’s stuck,” without answering why. In this case, Elinor follows up by asking, “Yeah, I wonder why the ketchup is stuck inside the bottle. Do you think it’s too goopy, or it’s too runny?”

We carried out several studies to . In one that we presented at the , we divided 240 children into three groups of 80. The first group watched the “Elinor Wonders Why” episodes in the interactive format we created. The second group watched the original broadcast without any questions or responses from Elinor. The third group watched a semi-interactive version similar to “,” where the main character asks a question, pauses as if she is listening and provides generic feedback. After the children watched the episodes, we assessed their understanding of the science concepts that were presented, including aerodynamics and reptile shedding.

We found that children who watched the fully interactive episodes answered 63% of the assessment questions correctly, compared with 56% for those who watched the noninteractive version. Children who watched the semi-interactive version performed in between, correctly answering 61% of the questions.

We also examined children’s responses to Elinor’s questions during video watching. We found that children watching the semi-interactive version quickly lost interest in responding to Elinor’s questions after they realized she could not comprehend their answers.

Why it matters

Children in the U.S. spend an average of nearly two hours per day watching TV or online videos, according to . While platforms like PBS Kids provide free educational TV programs, the educational benefits can be limited by the lack of interaction with the content. The semi-interactive technique currently used in shows like “Dora the Explorer” and “” is still in wide use, but our evidence shows it is less effective than the AI-based interactive programs because of the absence of responsive feedback from characters.

Recent advances in AI, particularly in speech technologies and interpreting language spoken by real humans, make it possible to enable true interactions between child viewers and children’s TV show characters. This could make watching TV a more active and engaging way for kids to learn science.

What other research is being done

AI is being integrated into a range of media products, including , and . Meanwhile, advances in AI technology will likely increase its accuracy in processing children’s speech, and therefore enable more natural interactions between children and AI. At the same time, researchers are also studying the to ensure that content that is developed is both educational and safe.

What’s next

We are currently exploring the possibility of developing children’s TV show characters that can process bilingual children’s mixed usage of English and their native language during interactions. A who speak Spanish and English is in progress.

We also have plans to integrate AI into more PBS Kids shows, including an upcoming series called “,” which highlights creative problem-solving for children ages 4-8.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

AI & Schools: 4 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Help Students

W. Ian O'Byrne — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 12:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

As artificial intelligence systems play a bigger role in everyday life, they’re changing the world of education, too.

, and all come with both risks and opportunities.

I am a , and here are four ways I believe these kinds of systems can be used to help students learn.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

1. Differentiated instruction

Teachers are taught to identify the learning goals of all students in a class and adapt instruction for the specific needs of individual students. But with 20 or more students in a classroom, fully customized lessons aren’t always realistic. Everyone learns differently.

how a student proceeds through an assigned task, how much time they take and whether they are successful. If the student is struggling, the system can offer help; if the student is succeeding, the system can present more difficult tasks to keep the activity challenging.

This type of is often difficult for an educator or school to do for a single student, let alone an entire class or campus. have been shown to quickly and dynamically make changes to the learning environment, content, and tasks to help individuals learn more and quickly improve.

For instance, researchers at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University . The system can to understand mathematical rules and adapt its approach to problems it has never seen before. The system can also identify areas where it had to make multiple attempts before arriving at the correct answer, flag those for teachers as places human students may get confused, and highlight methods the system used to more efficiently arrive at the right answer.

2. Intelligent textbooks

Researchers at Stanford have been developing and testing a prototype of what’s called an “intelligent textbook,” titled “.” It is an iPad app that monitors students’ focus and attention while they read by paying attention to how students interact with the app. The interactive text includes definitions of key words accessible by touch or click and allows students to highlight and annotate while reading.

The textbook can also suggest questions about the content and areas for future inquiry that are customized for each individual. It can change the reading level of the text and also include supplemental photos, videos and materials to help students understand what they’re studying.

3. Improved assessment

Educational assessment focuses on how an educator knows whether a student is learning what is being taught. Traditional assessments – essays, multiple-choice tests, short-answer questions – are . Artificial intelligence has the potential to change that by identifying patterns in learning that may not be apparent to individual teachers or administrators.

For instance, the language-learning company to create and score tests of English proficiency for universities, companies and government agencies. The tests start with a series of standard questions, but based on how the student does with those, the system will select harder or easier questions to more quickly identify a student’s exact abilities and weaknesses.

Another assessment project, , staffed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, MIT and Florida State University, creates educational games for parents to play with their children while teaching them to read. Some of the games have adults and children role-play as characters based on real-life scenarios.

These games can help parents and teachers efficiently determine whether children are reading at their appropriate grade level and if they are not.

4. Personalized learning

occurs when the students’ interests and goals guide learning. The teacher is more of a facilitator, while the what, why and how of learning are mostly dictated by the student. tailored to each student’s individual interests.

can quickly identify when a student is struggling and then provide more or different support to help them succeed. As the student shows that they have mastered the content or skill, the AI tool provides more difficult tasks and materials to .

Chatbots have been . Many individuals interact with a chatbot when they ask Alexa or Siri a question. In education, chatbots with artificial intelligence systems can guide students with personalized, just-in-time feedback or assistance. These chatbots can answer questions about course content or structure. This helps students keep track of their own learning while .

Much like an automated playlist of musical or video recommendations, can generate tailored assessment questions, detect misunderstandings and . These AI technologies have the potential to help learners today and in the future.

, Associate Professor of Literacy Education,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Opinion: Is Wikipedia a Good Source? 2 College Librarians Explain the Online Encyclopedia

Bridget Retzloff and Katy Kelly — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 13:00:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

What comes to mind when you think of Wikipedia?

Maybe you think of clicking link after link to learn about a topic, followed by another topic and then another. Or maybe you’ve heard a teacher or librarian tell you that what you read on Wikipedia isn’t reliable.

As and , we know people have concerns about using Wikipedia in academic work. And yet, in interacting with undergraduate and graduate students doing various kinds of research, we also see how Wikipedia can be an important source for background information, topic development and locating further information.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

What exactly is Wikipedia?

, which is a free online encyclopedia run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation and written collaboratively by its users.

and for contributing to the site. The five pillars establish Wikipedia as a free online encyclopedia, with articles that are accurate and cite reliable sources, and editors – called Wikipedians – who avoid bias and treat one another with respect.

build upon the five pillars by establishing best practices for writing and editing on Wikipedia. Common issues that go against the guidelines, for example, include and , which refers to editing an article in an intentionally malicious, offensive or libelous way.

Here are what we see as the main pros and cons to college students using Wikipedia as a source of information in their research and assignments, though anyone can consider these tips when using Wikipedia.

Wikipedia’s strengths

1. Basic information on virtually any topic

In addition to being free and readily available, Wikipedia’s standardized and hyperlinks to other articles enable readers to quickly track down the basics on their topic – the who, what, when, where and why.

In our experience, many students come to the library with a chosen topic – for example, voting rights during Reconstruction – but little knowledge about it. Before searching for the scholarly articles and books typically needed to complete their assignment, students benefit from knowing keywords and concepts related to their topic. This ensures they can try a variety of words and phrases in the catalog and databases as part of their search strategy.

2. Notes and references encourage readers to go deeper

The is a real browsing behavior of endlessly hopping from topic to topic, which is a testament to the site’s easy navigation. Students can find valuable information such as important scholars on the topic by scrolling to the “Notes” and “References” sections of the Wikipedia page. Here they can find out who authored the various sources used in the article, as well as the citation information needed to locate additional books and articles.

Students create and edit Wikipedia articles on underrepresented women artists at an edit-a-thon at Queens College in New York City. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)

3. Students can be editors

Students can write content, share information and properly cite scholarly sources on Wikipedia by becoming an editor. Quick-acting editors can become the first to add changes to an article . Those of us with access to scholarly sources, both in print and online through libraries, by sharing information that might otherwise be behind a paywall.

are events at which people gather to edit articles on topics of interest or that might otherwise be ignored. American universities have hosted edit-a-thons on , and .

Some as an alternative to the traditional research paper. This practice engages students in digital literacy and teaches them .

Wikipedia’s drawbacks

1. Systemic and gender bias

The crowdsourced nature of Wikipedia can lead to the exclusion of some voices and topics. Although anyone can edit, not everyone does.

On the issue of , Wikipedia acknowledges that most contributors are male, few biographies are about women, and topics of interest to women receive less coverage. This dynamic can be observed in other areas of underrepresentation, especially race and ethnicity. Nearly , which leads to missing topics, perspectives and sources.

2. Citation requirements can exclude important sources

Wikipedia requires that information included in an article was . While this is often an important element to confirm something is true or correct, it can be limiting for topics that have not received coverage in newspapers or scholarly journals. For some topics, such as Indigenous peoples of Canada, an may be an important source, but it could not be cited in a Wikipedia article.

3. Not all cited sources are open-access

Some sources may be behind paywalls, and since citations , academic publishers have a vested interest in their publications’ being cited, whether or not they are freely available. However, college students can use their school’s library to get full text access to the sources they discover in Wikipedia articles.

4. Articles change frequently

While timely updates are an advantage of Wikipedia, the impermanence of articles can make them difficult to rely on for information. Students can keep track of the date they find a piece of information on Wikipedia as it might not be the same when they return. The “Talk” page of a Wikipedia entry provides a discussion of changes to the article, and the can be used to view previous versions.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Opinion: 6-Year-Old Who Shot Virginia Teacher Among Youngest School Shooters in History

David Riedman — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 15:00:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

Barely a week into the new year, a at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, becoming one of the youngest school shooters in the nation’s history. While , his teacher remains hospitalized with serious injuries. David Riedman, creator of the , discusses the relative rarity of school shooters under age 10 and the likely aftermath of the event.

How rare is it to have a school shooter this young?

This is the 17th shooting involving a student under the age of 10 at a school since 1970 – the first year for which my database keeps track. Most of these shootings were not intentional. But in 1975, a 9-year-old student at the Pitcher School in Detroit was in a fight with a 13-year-old, left campus, got a rifle from his house and came back to the school and shot the student in the head, killing him.

In 2000, a , in their classroom at Buell Elementary School in Michigan while their teacher lined up other students in the hallway. The shooting .

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

How do kids this young typically get guns?

In most school shootings, the gun is taken from the student’s home or from the house of a friend or relative. In the 2000 shooting at Buell Elementary, the student’s uncle pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was for leaving a firearm in an easily accessible place.

The 6-year-old shooter did not face charges due to his age.

What stands out about this recent case?

The most striking part of this shooting is that it appears to be . While many details remain unknown, it is likely that the student had the gun with him the entire day, possibly multiple days, before shooting his teacher. In many states, the legal system assumes that young children are not capable of the thought and planning that goes into committing a violent crime. In Virginia, the to charge someone with a felony is 14 years old.

Do schools need to start searching first graders?

Despite the attention that they generated, school shootings at any age are relatively rare. There have been 17 shootings involving kids under 10 publicly reported across a 52-year period. attend schools every year, and fewer than 300 of them shoot someone on campus.

When most guns that end up in schools come from the home, I’d argue it is the responsibility of parents, relatives and older siblings to make sure that every firearm is locked, secured and accounted for.

The use of metal detectors has been shown to and are only effective with constant maintenance, training, staffing and screening procedures. Some of the incidents involving children have resulted from adults putting a firearm in the kid’s bag and the child firing it when they find the gun at school.

What’s next for this boy?

This remains unclear, and due to juvenile privacy laws, we may never know. The 6-year-old who killed his classmate at Buell Elementary in 2000 was not charged with a crime. In 2021 in Rigby, Idaho, a 12-year-old girl shot three people during a planned attack at Rigby Middle School. Based on her written plan, this young girl intended to . She is until she turns 19 – and possibly until age 21 if she is not deemed fully rehabilitated – following a guilty plea to three counts of first-degree murder.

What’s next for the school?

While much attention is focused on the shooter and teacher, a classroom full of first graders witnessed their classmate shoot the teacher. She was , which means that it was likely a gruesome scene. These students will all need extensive counseling to understand and deal with this trauma. For the other students, teachers and parents, this is also a traumatic experience, and many students may no longer want to go to school.

What does this case suggest for school safety in the US broadly?

There were 302 shootings in school property in 2022, more than in any other year since 1970. Since 2017, the number of shootings each year has significantly increased. This pattern matches the across the country. It is important to remember that most shootings at schools are committed by current or former students, not outsiders breaking into the building. Because of this, school security plans need to include all levels of schools and shootings by all ages of students.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Opinion: School Attendance Problems Are Complex, and Our Solutions Need to be as Well

Jess Whitley and Beth Saggers — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 13:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

Over the past few years, the pandemic prompted school closures and remote learning that drew to issues of students missing school — what researchers call “non-attendance.”

Millions of students across the world missing varying amounts of school raises concerns about students’ learning loss and mental health — and also about long-term implications, particularly for those for poor educational outcomes.

But school non-attendance is not a new issue. problems in many countries such as Canada, the United States and Australia for a long time. There have always been students who missed school.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

School attendance problems are complex and often very challenging to address. And for responses to be effective in getting students to school more often, they .

Not a Hollywood picture

Popular culture is filled with examples of teenagers skipping classes — like , this is framed by humor and a gleeful sense of freedom. But Ferris Bueller went back to school the next day without any major impact on his life. This isn’t the case for many.

Evidence shows worse outcomes for students who miss a lot of school, including lower , lower graduation rates, higher rates of , mental and and lower employment.

And certain life circumstances, such as poverty, of chronic school attendance issues.

Chronic school attendance problems are usually missing more than 10% of school days.

School attendance in countries like Canada and Australia until between 16 and 18 years of age, depending on the province or territory.

There are legal penalties for families whose children are chronically absent from school as well as for students themselves, and possible involvement of child protection services.

Many reasons students are absent, disengaged

There are why students miss school.

Some because they are disengaged, others because of significant anxiety or mental health and well-being concerns.

Some are absent because of frequent experiences of harassment, bullying and .

Others miss school because they have family responsibilities such as younger siblings, or because of . Students may experience problems, and these may vary over time.

students face, from family responsibilities to barriers related to racism or inadequate support for disabilities.

Complex, flexible approaches needed

There has been more in recent years of the recognition of the complex, multilayered and flexible approaches necessary to improve school attendance. There have also been efforts to think about school attendance as more than just “present” or “absent.” Are students participating? Are they included? Are they engaged? Are they learning?

Many initiatives are still based on simplistic ideas of school attendance and punitive approaches that really .

These fail to address the issues experienced by students that create the attendance problem in the first place. And these approaches often further most at risk of school attendance problems.

There are four key points or “ABCDs” for schools, families and communities to consider:

1. Academics and well-being

Well-being supports, including and addictions services, lunch programs, identity-based clubs, and opportunities for movement and physical activity are all important in promoting school attendance.

But if a child can’t read, or an adolescent is struggling to learn algebraic equations and falling behind their peers, well-being initiatives aren’t enough. An to support academic success and well-being for students is essential.

2. Building relationships

A sense of belonging and connectedness is critical to engagement, learning and attendance for students. Students need to feel like they matter to someone at school — someone who notices when they’re not there but who also welcomes them when they are.

Relationships need to be purposefully fostered between and among students, staff, families and communities. , peer buddies, leadership opportunities, community experiential projects or are some examples of ways to support relationship building.

3. Climate of school

A supportive and positive is key for students, staff, families and communities. Schools can provide opportunities for shared decision-making, autonomy, support and valuing of student and family identities and strengths.

Extra-curriculars and high expectations need to be in place alongside supports to meet these. Families can be welcomed in a range of ways that reflect the needs of communities. and harassment, including anti-racist, homophobic and anti-Indigenous abuse, needs to be addressed.

4. Data needed

Data is important for understanding attendance — who is at school, who is not. And if not, what are the reasons? In shifting responses to attendance, schools can consider also shifting the ways they collect, use and report on data. For example, an to identify student attendance patterns can help to proactively support students and families before chronic issues arise.

Considering traditional attendance counts alongside school climate data, student records, academic profiles and student well-being indicators can tell a fuller story, and lead to more effective ways of getting students to school — and keeping them there.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

Opinion: Taylor Swift 101: This College Links Her Music to Works By Shakespeare & Plath

Elizabeth Scala — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 16:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

This article originally appeared at The Conversation, where is an occasional series highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course:

“The Taylor Swift Songbook”

What prompted the idea for the course?

This class is part of a group of introductory English offerings that focus on basic methods of literary analysis and research. It fulfills different requirements for potential English majors and the general student population, so I am always looking for news ways to engage them.

For a few years, I taught it as a Harry Potter course. I introduced students to classic British literature by exploring the Romantic and medieval literary traditions present in the novel.

But earlier this year, I realized I was bored. I had been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift with my college-aged daughter, who had been home for a year during the pandemic. Swift had recently released “.”

Listening to her track “” was my epiphany. ��ɾ��ڳ�’s vivid imagery and emotionally gripping detail had all the markings of a great narrative poem. She writes the song in a way that mirrors the recursions of memory. Her verses become increasingly strong and build upon each other once she starts remembering the past. At the same time, the song’s imagery moves from fall to winter as she reflects upon the relationship’s beginning and frosty end.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

What does the course explore?

This course pairs Taylor Swift songs with a number of poems, along with a play, a novel and a film.

The semester began with the pairing of ��ɾ��ڳ�’s songs with Renaissance love poetry. One class analyzing the metaphors, similes and colors in the song “Red” turned, a week or so later, into an exploration of Shakespeare’s use of similar colors in his famous sonnet 73: “.”

From “Red”:

Loving him was blue like I’d never known

Missing him was dark gray, all alone …

But loving him was red

Shakespeare, meanwhile, begins his sonnet 73 with “That time of year thou mayst in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang,” before pointing to the oranges of autumn’s “sunset [that] fadeth in the west” and “the glowing of such fire / That on the ashes of his youth doth lie.”

Where Swift moves from cool tones to “burning red,” Shakespeare moves through increasingly warm tones: from yellow, to orange, to red. But both move toward an intensity of color and heat.

Some couplings are obvious. For instance, ��ɾ��ڳ�’s “” mentions the title characters of Shakespeare’s “” – “Romeo save me, I’ve been feeling so alone.”

Others might come as more of a surprise: I paired Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel “,” which Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, with ��ɾ��ڳ�’s song “.”

Centering on a scandalous woman named Rebecca – or Rebekah, in ��ɾ��ڳ�’s song – the song, novel and film explore the relations of mad women and madwomen, the tenuous line between anger and craziness. It’s a theme Swift hits on in a number of songs, from her 2019 track “” to 2020’s “,” which I paired with Sylvia Plath’s poem “.”

Why is this course relevant now?

I think this course tapped into the zeitgeist in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I first dreamed it up. Of course, ��ɾ��ڳ�’s music is popular, and she has long had a devoted following. But the October 2022 release of her album “” has only made the course seem more relevant to students’ interests. As a class, we spent time exploring the ways tracks on “Midnights” revisited themes and writing strategies that appeared in ��ɾ��ڳ�’s earlier songs.

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

Taylor Swift often talks about how much she loves to read. (Raymond Hall/GC Images/Getty Images)

Analyzing ��ɾ��ڳ�’s writing will hopefully help my students recognize how certain poetic and literary devices operate in older texts – as much as those same books and poems from the past help them appreciate ��ɾ��ڳ�’s art at a deeper level. They seem especially eager to engage with older materials, like Renaissance seduction poetry and black and white film, when they can see traces of the same artistic techniques in the music videos and songs they watch and listen to today.

��ɾ��ڳ�’s is attached to an English and American literary past in both obvious and more subtle ways. , Swift deploys forms – like metaphors, conceits and structures – that are part of a shared literary heritage that students might otherwise find old-fashioned and irrelevant.

Far from diminishing the value of ��ɾ��ڳ�’s writing, tracing its connection to the literary greats shores up her authority as a creative artist. Swift, like all artists, is part of a , and she calls upon it to create new works.

What materials does the course feature?

“,” Adam Bradley, 2019
“,” Alfred Hitchcock, 1940
“,” Taylor Swift, 2020

What will the course prepare students to do?

This course has rather modest ambitions. It prepares careful and critical readers, as well as articulate writers and researchers.

It pays attention to what language denotes at the surface and what it carries around with it in its connotations and associations. It teaches students about those features, using the Oxford English Dictionary as a research tool to probe linguistic origin, register and usage beyond what a term literally means.

While delivering New York University’s 2022 commencement speech, to embrace their enthusiasms and be unafraid to explore their interests.

Finding a way to tap into students’ enthusiasm for Swift, and tie her songwriting to literary methodologies, is my version of following her lead.

Unusual Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

How College in Prison is Leading Professors to Rethink How They Teach

Mneesha Gellman — Sat, 26 Nov 2022 16:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

When it comes to education in prison, policy and research often focus on or improves the of those who are serving time.

But as I point out in my new edited volume, “,” education in prison is doing more than changing the lives of those who have been locked up as punishment for crimes – it is also changing the lives of those doing the teaching.

As director of a and as a and who teaches in both colleges and prisons, I know that the experience of teaching in a correctional facility makes educators question and reexamine much of what we do.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

My book collects experiences of college professors who teach in prison. A common thread is that we all went into education behind the wall thinking about ourselves to some extent as experts but have since critically reflected on what we know through interactions with incarcerated students and the institutions that hold them.

Rewriting the book

One semester in 2020, I volunteered to tutor for a class on something that occurs frequently behind prison walls: conflict and negotiation. The class featured two books that are considered essential to the field. The first is “,” a 2014 text that invites readers to reflect on how conflict has played out in their personal lives. The second is “,” a 2011 text described by its publisher as a “universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting angry – or getting taken.”

“You know, I know these are very important books and all, but this isn’t really what would work in here,” one incarcerated student said after a few class meetings, gesturing to the prison walls. “Here, you can’t talk openly about your feelings like the authors want us to, and the rules of relating to people are different.”

I responded that his observation was astute, and that knowing both sets of rules – and how to switch between them – could be profoundly useful. For example, I theorized, I imagine he behaves differently during yard time than on a phone call with a family member on the outside. If the textbooks about conflict on the outside didn’t adequately address how to handle conflict in prison, I suggested he write an equivalent book for conflict negotiation in prison.

“Maybe I should,” he chuckled, and looked around to his classmates. “Maybe we should.”

The experience showed me how even though there are textbooks that are considered “universal,” that universality may not always extend itself to correctional institutions.

A new understanding of status

As a full professor and chair of the sociology department at Clark University, a small, private university in Worcester, Massachusetts, is used to being accorded a certain degree of respect for her professional accomplishments and credentials. But none of those things mattered once she passed through the gates of medium-security prisons for men located in Massachusetts.

“Status that I might have as a scholar, full professor, department chair … is rendered invisible as we enter prison,” Tenenbaum writes. When passing through security, “I have been abruptly instructed to obey commands and my questions are ignored.”

Encounters with correctional officers are frequently unnerving for educators, particularly at the entrance gates.

“I find myself in the position of needing to second-guess what I may (or may not) have done wrong and defer to people who are considerably younger than I am,” Tenenbaum continues. “There were times that I followed rules only to be scolded when the rules appeared to be differently interpreted from one day to the next. To be in the subordinate role of a power dynamic is a humbling experience. … It takes having expectations defied to realize that they even existed.”

Whether the rules are about clothing faculty members are allowed to wear or the number of pieces of paper we can carry in, the decisions are frequently about power. In her chapter, Tenenbaum writes that having had her status questioned has led to a new sense of humility and altered the power dynamics in her professional world. She does not take it for granted that her expertise is currency for respect.

Modeling apology

When an incarcerated student told Bill Littlefield, a retired English professor, that the novel “Frankenstein” had no relevance to his experience or life, Littlefield’s first reaction was to push back.

“‘Good writing is always relevant,’ I said, ever the professor,” writes Littlefield. Littlefield tutors and teaches at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Concord and Northeastern Correctional Center. He is also author of the newly released book “,” as well as popular host of WBUR’s sports radio show “.”

“He said he would read it, certainly … even though he knew that the story of the lonely, ultimately vengeful monster created by the gentleman scientist’s preposterous, insane overreach would have nothing to say to him,” Littlefield writes. “I argued that he was wrong.”

But in the week that followed, Littlefield said he came to see his own reaction as a mistake and an act of arrogance.

“When we met again, I made a point of apologizing to the student, in front of his classmates,” Littlefield writes. “I told him that I’d realized it was no business of mine to tell him what was relevant to his life. If he did the reading, he’d decide for himself.” The student thanked him.

More college in prison

As college programs in prison , I fully expect that in the coming years there will be more and more college professors being transformed by the powerful experience of teaching behind bars. This is especially so given that Congress has on federal financial aid, namely, Pell Grants, for people who are incarcerated.

In 2022, there are 374 prison education programs run by 420 institutions of higher education operating in 520 facilities, according to the maintained by the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison.

Collectively, college programs in prison have been shown to that a person who participates in them will return to prison after being released. But as I show in my book, the programs are also dramatically changing the perspective of the college professors who teach them.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons License. Read the .

Why Teachers Give Up on Struggling Students Who Don’t Do Their Homework

Jessica Calarco and Ilana Horn — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 12:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

Whenever “Gina,” a fifth grader at a suburban public school on the East Coast, did her math homework, she never had to worry about whether she could get help from her mom.

“I help her a lot with homework,” Gina’s mother, a married, mid-level manager for a health care company, explained to us during an interview for a study we did about versus those who do not.

“I try to maybe re-explain things, like, things she might not understand,” Gina’s mom continued. “Like, if she’s struggling, I try to teach her a different way. I understand that Gina is a very visual child but also needs to hear things, too. I know that when I’m reading it, and I’m writing it, and I’m saying it to her, she comprehends it better.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

One of us is a who looks at how . The other is a who examines based on their work.

We were curious about how teachers reward students who complete their homework and penalize and criticize those who don’t – and whether there was any link between those things and family income.

By analyzing student report cards and interviewing teachers, students and parents, we found that teachers gave good grades for homework effort and other rewards to students from middle-class families like Gina, who happen to have college-educated parents who take an active role in helping their children complete their homework.

But when it comes to students such as “Jesse,” who attends the same school as Gina and is the child of a poor, single mother of two, we found that teachers had a more bleak outlook.

The names “Jesse” and “Gina” are pseudonyms to protect the children’s identities. Jesse can’t count on his mom to help with his homework because she struggled in school herself.

“I had many difficulties in school,” Jesse’s mom told us for the same study. “I had behavior issues, attention-deficit. And so after seventh grade, they sent me to an alternative high school, which I thought was the worst thing in the world. We literally did, like, first and second grade work. So my education was horrible.”

Jesse’s mother admitted she still can’t figure out division to this day.

“[My son will] ask me a question, and I’ll go look at it and it’s like algebra, in fifth grade. And I’m like: ‘What’s this?’” Jesse’s mom said. “So it’s really hard. Sometimes you just feel stupid. Because he’s in fifth grade. And I’m like, I should be able to help my son with his homework in fifth grade.”

Unlike Gina’s parents, who are married and own their own home in a middle-class neighborhood, Jesse’s mom isn’t married and rents a place in a mobile home community. She had Jesse when she was a teenager and was raising Jesse and his brother mostly on her own, though with some help from her parents. Her son is eligible for free lunch.

An issue of equity

As a matter of fairness, we think teachers should take these kinds of economic and social disparities into account in how they teach and grade students. But what we found in the schools we observed is that they usually don’t, and instead they seemed to accept inequality as destiny. Consider, for instance, what a fourth grade teacher – one of 22 teachers we interviewed and observed during the study – told us about students and homework.

“I feel like there’s a pocket here – a lower income pocket,” one teacher said. “And that trickles down to less support at home, homework not being done, stuff not being returned and signed. It should be almost 50-50 between home and school. If they don’t have the support at home, there’s only so far I can take them. If they’re not going to go home and do their homework, there’s just not much I can do.”

While educators recognize the different levels of resources that students have at home, they continue to assign homework that is too difficult for students to complete independently, and reward students who complete the homework anyway.

Middle-class students often enjoy many advantages that other students don’t when it comes to getting help at home with their homework. (Kentaroo Tryman/Getty Images)

Consider, for example, how one seventh grade teacher described his approach to homework: “I post the answers to the homework for every course online. The kids do the homework, and they’re supposed to check it and figure out if they need extra help. The kids who do that, there is an amazing correlation between that and positive grades. The kids who don’t do that are bombing.

“I need to drill that to parents that they need to check homework with their student, get it checked to see if it’s right or wrong and then ask me questions. I don’t want to use class time to go over homework.”

The problem is that the benefits of homework are not uniformly distributed. Rather, research shows that students from high-income families make bigger achievement gains through homework than students from low-income families.

This relationship has been found in both and , and it suggests that homework may contribute to disparities in students’ performance in school.

Tougher struggles

On top of uneven academic benefits, research also reveals that making sense of the math homework assigned in U.S schools is often more difficult for parents who have , parents who . It is also difficult for parents who .

Meanwhile, students from more-privileged families are disproportionately more likely to have a or a available after school to help with homework, as well as parents who . And they are also more likely to have parents who on their behalf.

False ideas about merit

In the schools we observed, teachers interpreted homework inequalities through what social scientists call . The myth suggests that all students in the U.S. have the same opportunities to succeed in school and that any differences in students’ outcomes are the result of different levels of effort. Teachers in our study said things that are in line with this belief.

For instance, one third grade teacher told us: “We’re dealing with some really struggling kids. There are parents that I’ve never even met. They don’t come to conferences. There’s been no communication whatsoever. … I’ll write notes home or emails; they never respond. There are kids who never do their homework, and clearly the parents are OK with that.

“When you don’t have that support from home, what can you do? They can’t study by themselves. So if they don’t have parents that are going to help them out with that, then that’s tough on them, and it shows.”

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

School Shootings are Already at a Record in 2022 – with Months Still to Go

James Densley and David Riedman and Jillian Peterson — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 12:00:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

As a Michigan teen students in a December 2021 attack, America was learning of yet another school shooting. This time, it was a performance arts high school in St. Louis, where a former student opened fire, others before dying in a shootout with police.

The fact that yet another school shooting took place within hours of a gunman in a separate case appearing in court underscores how often these events take place in the U.S. As criminologists who have to log all school shootings in the U.S., we know that deadly school gun violence in America in now a regular occurrence – with incidents only becoming more frequent and deadlier.

Our records show that seven more people died in between 2018 and 2022 – a total of 52 – than in the previous 18 years combined since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

Since the February 2018 in Florida, moreover, more than at U.S. schools on and in classrooms, hallways, cafeterias and parking lots.

Many of these shootings were not the mass killing events that schools typically drill for. Rather, they were an extension of .

More frequent and deadlier

There have been shootings at U.S. schools almost , but in 2021 there were a record 250 shooting incidents – including any occurrence of a , be it related to suicides, accidental shootings, gang-related violence or incidents at after-hours school events.

That’s double the annual number of shooting incidents recorded in the previous three years – in both 2018 and 2019, 119 shootings were logged, and there were 114 incidents in 2020.

With more than two months left, 2022 is already the worst year on record. As of Oct. 24, there have been – passing the 250 total for all of 2021.

Many of these incidents have been simple disputes turned deadly because teenagers came to school angry and armed. At East High in Des Moines, Iowa, in March 2022, for example, six teens allegedly fired 42 shots in an incident that took place during school dismissal time. The and critically injured two female bystanders. The district attorney described the case as one of the most their office has ever conducted, partly because six handguns were used.

At Miami Gardens High in Florida that same month, two teens sprayed more than 100 rounds with a rifle and handgun modified for fully automatic fire. They targeted a student standing in front of the school, but bullets penetrated the building, sitting inside.

A similar situation in October. A lunchtime dispute among students allegedly turned into a targeted shooting after a football scrimmage. are believed to have fired 60 shots at five classmates leaving the game, killing a 15-year-old.

In each of these cases, multiple student shooters fired dozens of shots.

The tally for 2022 also includes incidents involving lone shooters.

In April, a and six semiautomatic rifles fired from a fifth-floor window overlooking the Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C. at dismissal. A , parent, school security officer and bystander were wounded before the shooter died by suicide.

Threats, hoaxes and false alarms

The increase in shootings in and around school buildings has many parents, students and teachers on edge. An October 2022 Pew Research survey found that report being “very worried” or “extremely worried” about a shooting at their child’s school.

Aside from the near daily occurrences of actual school shootings, there are also the near misses and false alarms that only add to the heightened sense of threat.

In September, a potential attack was averted in Houston when police got a tip that a and shoot students who were trapped inside. The following day near Dallas, another tip sent police scrambling to stop a vehicle on the way to a high school homecoming football game. and planned to commit a mass shooting at the stadium, it is alleged.

There have also been of false reports of shootings this year. Hoaxes, , even a viral have sent schools across the nation into lockdown. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of these threats are , but police have no choice but to respond.

People are so much on edge that a at one California school in September led to an active shooter response from police. The sound of a in August caused thousands of people to flee an Arkansas high school football stadium for fear of being shot. A caused a code red lockdown and parents to rush to a Florida high school.

A better way?

The rising annual tally of school shootings has occurred despite enhanced school security in the . Metal detectors, clear backpacks, bulletproof chalkboards, lockdown apps, automatic door locks and cameras have not stopped the rise in school shootings. In fact, the May 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, provides a case study in across the school safety enterprise.

Federal passed in the wake of Uvalde will provide districts with money to hire additional school social workers, or pay for better communication mechanisms in school buildings to address the of violence missed in .

It is aimed at better identifying and helping at-risk students before they turn to violence. However, another area that needs attention is students’ ready access to firearms.

Some school shooters, , are young adults old enough to get their guns legally from gun stores, prompting questions over whether some states need to reconsider a minimum age for firearms sales.

Meanwhile, most , making safe storage of firearms a public health priority.

But many children get their guns from the streets. Preventing weapons from getting into the hands of potential school shooters will require police and policymakers to devote resources toward cracking down on straw purchasers – those who buy firearms for someone else – and getting stolen weapons, and guns modified with to make them fully automatic off the streets.

Such measures could be what it takes to stop the tragic normalization of school shootings.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

These High School ‘Classics’ Have Been Taught For Generations – Are They on Their Way Out?

Andrew Newman — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 12:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published in

If you went to high school in the United States anytime since the 1960s, you were likely assigned some of the following books: Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” “Julius Caesar” and “Macbeth”; John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”; Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”; and William Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies.”

For many former students, these books and other so-called “classics” represent high school English. But despite the efforts of reformers, both and , the most frequently assigned titles have never represented America’s diverse student body.

Why did these books become classics in the U.S.? How have they withstood challenges to their status? And will they continue to dominate high school reading lists? Or will they be replaced by a different set of books that will become classics for students in the 21st century?

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ��Ӱ�� Newsletter

The high school canon

The set of books that is taught again and again, broadly across the country, is referred to by literature scholars and English teachers as “the canon.”

The high school canon has been shaped by many factors. Shakespeare’s plays, especially “Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar,” have been taught consistently , when the curriculum was determined by college entrance requirements. Others, like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, were ushered into the classroom by current events – in the case of Lee’s book, . Some books just seem especially suited for classroom teaching: “Of Mice and Men” has a straightforward plot, easily identifiable themes and is under 100 pages long.

Titles become “traditional” when they are passed down through generations. As the education historian Jonna Perrillo observes, of having their children study the same books that they once did.

The last period of significant change to the canon was during the 1960s and 1970s, when the largest generation of the 20th century, the baby boomers, went to high school. For instance, in 1963, at Evanston Township High School in Illinois revealed that “To Kill a Mockingbird,” first published in 1960, was by far the “most enjoyed book,” followed by two books that had been published in the 1950s, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies.” None of these books were yet traditional, yet they became so for the next generation.

A comparison of national surveys conducted in 1963 and 1988 shows how several books that were introduced to the classroom when the boomers were students had become classics when boomers were teachers.

During the 1960s and 1970s, teachers even reframed “Romeo and Juliet” as a contemporary work. Lesson plans from the era referred to its adaptations into “” – a musical that – and Franco Zefferelli’s of Shakespeare’s story of star-crossed lovers. It became the perfect hook for ninth graders in a study of Shakespeare that would conclude in 12th grade with “Macbeth.”

Efforts to diversify

English education professor that, since the 1960s, “leaders in the profession of English teaching have tried to broaden the curriculum to include more selections by women and minority authors.” But in the late 1980s, according to his findings, the high school “top ten” still included only one book by a woman – Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” – and none by minority authors.

At that time, a was underway about whether America was a “melting pot” in which many cultures became one, or a colorful “mosaic” in which many cultures coexisted. Proponents of the latter view argued for a multicultural canon, but they were ultimately unable to establish one. A 2011 survey of Southern schools by Joyce Stallworth and Louel C. Gibbons, published in “English Leadership Quarterly,” found that the five most frequently taught books were all traditional selections: “The Great Gatsby,” “Romeo and Juliet,” Homer’s “The Odyssey,” Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

One explanation for this persistence is that the canon is not simply a list: It takes form as stacks of copies on shelves in the storage area known as the “book room.” Changes to the inventory require time, money and effort. Depending on the district, replacing a classic . And it would create more work for teachers who are already maxed out.

“Too many teachers, probably myself included, teach from the traditional canon,” a teacher told Stallworth and Gibbons. “We are overworked and underpaid and struggle to find the time to develop quality lessons for new books.”

The end of an era?

Esau McCauley, the author of “Reading While Black,” describes the list of classics by white authors as the “.” At least two factors suggest that its dominance over the curriculum is coming to an end.

First, the battles over which books should be taught have become more intense than ever. On the one hand, progressives like the teachers of the growing call for the inclusion of books by – and they question the status of the classics. On the other hand, conservatives have challenged or successfully banned the teaching of many new books that deal with gender and sexuality or race.

Conservatives have sought to ban books written by Toni Morrison. (Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images)

PEN America, a nonprofit organization that fights for free expression for writers, reports “” in book bans. The outcome might be a literature curriculum that more resembles the political divisions in this country. Much more than in the past, students in conservative and progressive districts might read very different books.

Second, English Language Arts education itself is changing. State standards, such as those , no longer make the teaching of literature the primary focus of English class. Instead, there is a new emphasis on “.” And while preceding generations of teachers voiced concerns about the distractions of and then , books may have an even smaller share of students’ attention in .

“We no longer live in a print-dominant, text-only world,” the National Council of Teachers of English proclaims in . The group calls for English teachers to put less emphasis on books in order to train students to use and analyze a variety of media. Accordingly, students across the country may not only have fewer books in common, but they also may be reading fewer books altogether.

Why teach literature?

Over generations, English teachers have voiced many reasons to teach books, and the canon in particular: to instill a , foster , build and cultivate . These goals have little to do with the skills emphasized by contemporary academic standards. But if literature is going to continue to be an important part of American education, it is important to talk not only about what books to teach, but the reasons why.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The Conversation – ����Ӱ��

Why School Police Officers May Not Be the Most Effective Way to Prevent Violence

1. They don’t address the root problems

2. Their role is not well defined

3. They do not increase students’ feelings of safety

4. They contribute to the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’

5. They sometimes infringe on students’ rights

Opinion: Why Being Forced to Precisely Follow a Curriculum Harms Teachers and Students

How fidelity affects teachers

A new path forward

Opinion: Sci-fi Films Can Show Students the Power Societies Have to Shape our Lives

Title of course:

What prompted the idea for the course?

What does the course explore?

Why is this course relevant now?

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

What materials does the course feature?

What will the course prepare students to do?

Love for Cats Lures Students into this Course, Which Uses Feline Research to Teach Science

Title of course:

What prompted the idea for the course?

What does the course explore?

Why is this course relevant now?

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

What materials does the course feature?

What will the course prepare students to do?

AI Pioneers Want Bots to Replace Human Teachers – Here’s Why That’s Unlikely

The costly challenge of teaching writing to the masses

Resuscitating dead scholars

Other efforts to personalize learning fall short

Drawbacks in AI learning

Opinion: This Course Uses ‘Climate Fiction’ to Teach About the Perils of a Warming Planet

Title of Course:

What prompted the idea for the course?

What materials does the course feature?

What does the course explore?

Why is this course relevant now?

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

What will the course prepare students to do?

3 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Help Students Learn – and Not Cheat

1. Treat ChatGPT as a learning partner

2. Use ChatGPT to boost confidence

3. Prompt ChatGPT to give supportive feedback

Children in the Workforce: Several States Are Softening Child Labor Restrictions

Long-brewing battle

Challenges began during the Reagan administration

Iowa and Arkansas

Federal vs. state laws

Construction sites?

Taking aim at federal rules

Kids Cartoon Characters That Use AI to Customize Responses Help Children Learn

The big idea

Why it matters

What other research is being done

What’s next

AI & Schools: 4 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Help Students

1. Differentiated instruction

2. Intelligent textbooks

3. Improved assessment

4. Personalized learning

Opinion: Is Wikipedia a Good Source? 2 College Librarians Explain the Online Encyclopedia

What exactly is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia’s strengths

Wikipedia’s drawbacks

Opinion: 6-Year-Old Who Shot Virginia Teacher Among Youngest School Shooters in History

How rare is it to have a school shooter this young?

How do kids this young typically get guns?

What stands out about this recent case?

Do schools need to start searching first graders?

What’s next for this boy?

What’s next for the school?

What does this case suggest for school safety in the US broadly?

Opinion: School Attendance Problems Are Complex, and Our Solutions Need to be as Well

Not a Hollywood picture

Many reasons students are absent, disengaged

Complex, flexible approaches needed

1. Academics and well-being

2. Building relationships

3. Climate of school

4. Data needed

The Conversation – ��Ӱ��