When students reach high school math, play typically disappears from the curriculum. But Kathy Sun is discovering new ways to bring play into high school math.  A student’s math identity is usually focused on procedural proficiency rather than a broader view of mathematical contributions and community, said Sun, a researcher and professor at Santa Clara University. Playfully engaging students in math concepts is not just a fun teaching strategy, but gets at the core of deepening mathematical understanding and connections, she continued. Dan Finkel, a math curriculum writer and former math ..read more

It was one of the most significant days in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 17, 1954, the nine justices unanimously ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that schools segregated by race did not provide an equal education. Students could no longer be barred from a school because of the color of their skin. To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Brown decision, I wanted to look at how far we’ve come in integrating our schools and how far we still have to go.  Two sociologists, Sean Reardon at Stanford University and Ann Owens at the University of Southern California, have te ..read more

When Roseann “Chic” Canfora arrived at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1968, she says she was constantly being given leaflets by anti-war activists on campus — and throwing them away. U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was dragging on and deeply unpopular with a growing number of Americans. Over time, Canfora became one of them. “It wasn’t until I was personally touched, losing friends in that war and seeing the draft that would now take my brothers to that war, that I stopped throwing the anti-war leaflets away and I paid attention,” she recalls in an interview with NPR. She says she sees si ..read more

It’s rare to get a first-person perspective on living with a condition called schizoaffective disorder. But Michael Vargas Arango, who was diagnosed as a teenager, wanted the world to know that it’s not something to be afraid of. “I’m not dangerous. I’m not crazy. And I’m not delusional,” he says in his podcast, The Monsters We Create. “I’m just one more guy, with a mental health condition, living with it.” His emotional and deeply personal entry was chosen by our judges, from among 10 finalists. As the grand prize winner of this year’s NPR College Podcast Challenge, he’ll receive a $5,000 sch ..read more

Late last year, in the days before the Slovakian parliamentary elections, two viral audio clips threatened to derail the campaign of a pro-Western, liberal party leader named Michal Šimečka. The first was a clip of Šimečka announcing he wanted to double the price of beer, which, in a nation known for its love of lagers and pilsners, is not exactly a popular policy position. In a second clip, Šimečka can be heard telling a journalist about his intentions to commit fraud and rig the election. Talk about career suicide, especially for someone known as a champion of liberal democracy. There was, h ..read more

Having a purpose comes with benefits, according to Heather Malin, a consultant and former director of research at the Stanford Center on Adolescence. When students identify a greater purpose in what they learn at school, their academic performance, persistence and social belonging rise, Malin said during a talk at the recent Learning and The Brain: Teaching Engaged Brains conference. The most purposeful people have many intentions, she said. “They seem to get boundless energy from having a lot of meaningful intentions for their lives.” So how can schools tap into the power of purpose? Malin po ..read more

Writing lesson plans has traditionally been a big part of a teacher’s job. But this doesn’t mean they should be starting from a blank slate. Ideally, teachers are supposed to base their lessons on the textbooks, worksheets and digital materials that school leaders have spent a lot of time reviewing and selecting.  But a recent national survey of more than 1,000 math teachers reveals that many are rejecting the materials they should be using and cobbling together their own. “A surprising number of math teachers, particularly at the high school level, simply said we don’t use the district o ..read more

Ignorance and apathy are not a winning combination when facing down an existential threat. But that’s exactly what Susie Jaramillo, of Encantos Media, found when her team was conducting focus groups with tweens. They were working on their just-released educational video series on climate change, “This Is Cooler.” “There’s misconceptions around what is actually causing climate change,” she said. “There are so many false narratives: Kids think it’s litter, pollution or a hole in the ozone layer. Zero knowledge in terms of solutions and zero awareness in terms of the jobs that are available.” Onl ..read more

Jo Boaler is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education with a devoted following of teachers who cheer her call to make math education more exciting. But despite all her fans, she has sparked controversy at nearly every stage of her career. Critics say she misrepresents research to make her case and her ideas actually impede students. Now, with a new book coming out in May, provocatively titled “MATH-ish,” Boaler is fighting back.  “This is a whole effort to shut me down, my research and my writing,” said Boaler. “I see it as a form of knowledge suppression.” Academic fights ..read more

Last April, an email went out to families in the Troy School District outside Detroit. Signed by unnamed “concerned Troy parents,” it said that a district proposal for its middle schools to end “basic” and “honors” math classes for sixth and seventh graders was part of a longer-term district plan to completely abolish honors classes in all of its schools. Superintendent Richard Machesky and his team were stunned. The district was indeed proposing to merge separate sixth- and seventh-grade math tracks into what it said would be a single, rigorous pathway emphasizing pre-algebra skills. In eight ..read more