I'm curious how other educators and tutors feel about this.

I've been working with a middle school math student whose family wanted her to accelerate in math. The goal was for her to eventually complete Algebra I and Geometry before high school.

At the end of last school year, the school initially recommended against her taking an advanced math course over the summer.

Her overall math grade was a C, and her state assessment score was just a few points below the benchmark.

I understood their concerns. I've taught math for years, and I know how important those foundational skills are, especially before Algebra I.

But I was also working with this student regularly. I was seeing her improve, and her family was willing to provide the additional academic support she needed.

So we kept asking questions about what options were available.

Eventually, the school agreed to let her take the advanced course over the summer, with the understanding that she needed an A or B to move into Advanced 7th Grade Math.

Well, she finished the first semester with a 97% and the second with a 94%.

She's now taking Advanced 7th Grade Math in person.

We're currently working toward the next step, which is getting her into Algebra I through FLVS in January. Of course, there are additional requirements involving her classroom grade, state assessment, and teacher recommendation.

I'm not against academic requirements. I actually think they are important.

But here's where I struggle.

If we had simply accepted the original recommendation, this student wouldn't have had the opportunity to demonstrate what she was capable of accomplishing.

And I wonder how many other students are in similar situations but don't have parents or tutors who know what questions to ask.

I also think schools and families would benefit from having clearer conversations about acceleration requirements earlier in the school year, rather than waiting until enrollment deadlines are approaching.

I'm curious:

How much weight should previous grades and standardized test scores carry when deciding whether a student is ready for more advanced coursework?

And for those of you who teach middle school math, how do you balance protecting foundational skills with giving students opportunities to challenge themselves?

I'd really like to hear other perspectives, especially from teachers, tutors, and school counselors.

Question about grading repeated formatting errors:

Say a student makes the exact same notation mistake throughout an entire test (e.g., forgetting to write = 0 during solving steps). The error is real and deserves a deduction. Proper notation is a core learning goal in itself, yet it does not prevent the student from solving the problem correctly or showing solid mastery of the other concepts tested.

If a test covers 10 concepts with 1-mark questions, deducting 0.5 marks on every item cuts the student's overall score in half. This single repeated mistake quickly outweighs the other distinct concepts the test was designed to measure.

Would it make sense to penalize it once globally, deducting for the repeated notation error as its own distinct category weighted equally to a single concept, rather than penalizing it on every individual item?

As someone outside the classroom looking to understand sound assessment design, how do educators normally handle this without inflating the weight of one repeated flaw?

I just turned 18 last month and idk I started talking to this guy and he’s made me really wanna actually have a future I guess and I’ve deadass just been like struggling so bad mentally for awhile, likes 4th grade so I just don’t know what really to do, I’ve been isolated this whole time too I don’t go out and do anything ever I don’t have a job I never really talked to anyone but one person online and now I’m just trying to fix everything abt myself. I don’t even know like really anything at all so I don’t want to go to some ged adult classes I want to like learn on my own or online but I don’t think my mom would ever let me so that’s why I’m doing it alone idk I’m just like scared I guess

Hey everyone! 👋 We're EUobserver, an independent European newsroom.

We recently published an opinion piece looking at youth protests in France, Spain and Albania, and one thing connects these very different situations: young people are increasingly questioning whether education still offers a realistic path towards financial independence.

In France, students have protested over teacher shortages and school conditions. In Spain, even young people who finish their education and find work can struggle to afford housing. And in Albania, concerns about education costs and future opportunities have contributed to student frustration.

Of course, education has value far beyond earning a salary. But it's difficult to ignore the gap between what young people are encouraged to work towards and what awaits them afterwards.

Do you think education still offers the same opportunities for social mobility that it did for previous generations?

And what could schools, universities and policymakers do differently? Let us know what you're thinking in the comments :)

When I taught high school mathematics and science in 2023, my best technique for teaching students complex concepts was building visual analogies. If my student was learning how to complete the square, I'd have them use the Feynman Technique to understand the process conceptually, but then I'd have them create a visual analogy in their mind's eye that represented the concept.

If we didn’t create the visual analogy, the information would be gone by next class.

I found that without storing their conceptual learning in an imagined picture, the student would be able to explain how to complete the square in lesson 5 and the knowledge would fade by lesson 6.

Visual analogies to represent abstract concepts solves a massive problem: it actually stores the information somewhere in the student's brain. When I taught through visual analogies and had the students build them in their heads, the student would still remember the concept by the unit test.

So if the student still remembered the concept, why does this post have this title?

It's because visual analogies exchange being able to retain some version of what they learned for the price of thinking in the shadow of concepts.

Let's take an example from when I taught a 1 off history course and had to communicate the following concept: in 2008, Chinese authors wrote declinist commentary about the United States' economic crisis, which emphasized the comparative growth between China and the US.

When I taught this to my student, I knew I had to use a analogical picture. I had worked with this student for months at this point, and knew that without some image, even if they understood the concept now, the information would soon fade .

So I gave them this mnemonic: picture a cliff. At the top, you see authors wearing shirts with the Chinese flag, pointing down and throwing pages. Next to them was a big pile of money. At the bottom of the cliff, people wearing the United States flag on their shirts are looking sad. When I gave them that mnemonic image, their face lit up, and they said, "Oh, I get it now."

This is a moment in my teaching that I'm both proud of and deeply upset by.

The pride is that, for a moment, my teaching allowed Hannah to “see” the concept, which is magical. It was something she could work with and manipulate.

On the other side, that image is not the concept I wanted her to learn, and that image is what she stored.

To demonstrate what I mean, here’s what happened two weeks later; many of you who’ve used visual analogies will recognize it.

The subject came up again, and under free recall, I asked what the relationship was in 2008 between China and the U.S. Hannah said, "Oh, I remember."

Then her smile turned into confusion: “Uh, yeah, so I see the Chinese people above the U.S. people, and they have money. Oh, so I think that it was something to do with money. And then I see papers being thrown, and so it seems like the Chinese people thought the U.S. people were worse."

This was a much better answer than if we hadn't created that visual analogy, because that answer would have been entirely blank.

But, as a teacher, i want more for my students than being able to recall things they learn, but only as shadows.

When I teach my students something, I want the medium in which they store the information to be rich and conceptual. I don't want it to have to be a silly cartoon analogy every time.

The usefulness of visual analogies reminds me of that old quote about democracy: democracy is terrible, but it's the best form of government we have.

We want students to be able to remember what they learn, and we want the form they store the information in to be actually helpful for learning. Visual analogies only solve one end of that problem.

In an ideal world, there would be a tool that provided the same sensory and memory abilities as visual mnemonics, but represented the information in its full conceptual form.

A visual analogy lets a student actually look at that image of the cliff and notice things in it, and they feel like they have it. They're holding the concept in their head.

Whatever better solution to this problem exists needs that property too, where the student can hold the concept in some imagined sense. And the trace of that imagined sense must be really strong, like images and not words.

If you're interested in talking more about alternatives to visual mnemonics for teaching students complex conceptual information in a way that sticks, you can check out the subreddit
[r/MentalAtlas](r/MentalAtlas).

Hi, my boys are 7 and 8 years old. Everywhere I look, AI seems to be changing the way people have worked for the past decade. My husband and I have been in tech for a long time, but even we're seeing the industry undergo a major transformation.

Learning computers, coding, or even ML/AI feels like it might become less relevant in the future, or perhaps there will be very few opportunities left, mostly reserved for the exceptionally talented.

My kids are naturally curious and love building things. They're not necessarily the top performers at school, but they consistently score above the 90th percentile without putting in too much effort, and we're happy with where they are.

However, I want to expose them to skills that will prepare them for the world they'll enter when they're 21. I want them to know how to navigate a world that's constantly changing, have a bit of a head start, or at least feel less intimidated by uncertainty.

For example, skills like decision-making, understanding human biases, money and finance, thinking from first principles, street smarts, and so on.

Have any of you taken steps in this direction with your kids?

So far, I've tried building on their natural curiosity and the questions they tend to ask. But there are two challenges. First, it's exhausting to do this consistently. Second, I have limited knowledge in some of these areas, and I sometimes struggle to come up with creative ways to explain concepts in a way they can easily understand.

I'd love to hear what other parents are doing and what's worked for you.

I'm a former high school teacher and my DIY Science project I call "Float-O-Matic" was accepted at Maker Faire Orlando (November 7-8). I could use a break mid day on Sat and Sun so I can eat lunch and hit the bathroom. Anyone want to help as a volunteer for an hour one of those days? I can provide you with a free weekend pass. No special skills needed at my booth. It's just a fun hands-on science / tech learning project that requires very little if any guidance for participants. I just can't leave the booth unattended. So many educators (and future educators) attend this Maker Faire.

I’ve spent years working with teachers on classroom practice. Posting because this shift in my thinking has been useful and I’d like pushback. No links.

The short version: I used to think improving teaching was mainly a content problem. Now I think it’s a consistency problem. Regular practice with support over months beats any single strong session.

Before: better materials, clearer methods, and a well-run session would improve classrooms. So the job was to design a good session, deliver it well, and collect feedback forms saying it was great.

After: most teachers already know plenty of good practice. What’s missing is time to try something, watch it go wrong, and adjust with support, again and again. Ten ordinary sessions on a fixed schedule beat one strong one. Feedback forms filled in right after a session measure how people felt, not what changed in class.

The same pattern shows up with new classroom tools. Before: the job was to show the tools. After: the job is to give teachers enough supervised practice to judge for themselves when a tool helps students and when it misleads them.

What pushed me in this direction wasn’t one moment. It was noticing that the question “did this change anything?” is almost never asked a month later, only at the end of the day. Once you start asking it later, single-day formats are hard to defend.

If you work with teachers, what do you actually look at to know something worked (classroom observation, student work, whether the practice is still in use months later), and what turned out not to be worth tracking?

Hi,

I’m looking for advice on whether I should get my 11-year-old nephew started on programming since he’s not being taught programming at school, and nowadays I see young pupils learning and honing programming skills. His analytical and logical reasoning abilities aren’t very sharp either compared to kids his age.

Therefore, I want him to learn things that are deeply rooted in problem-solving and critical thinking. Is this age suitable for getting started, or should I wait a few years?

Also, if you know of any resources that can be helpful or relevant to programming for kids, please do share.

Thanks.

If you’re a US teacher thinking about making the move to Canada, we’re hosting a free virtual webinar next week to help teachers learn more about exploring opportunities in Canada, and how to navigate the immigration process.

A lawyer will be sharing insights and helping you better understand what to consider.

If you’re interested, comment webinar and i’ll send you the link!

October 29, 7pm.

Hope to see you there.

Do you expect teachers to be able pass everyone along, force them to learn, and be responsible for standardized test scores? You leaders couldn't even last a day in schools now yet you are in charge of all of your mandates and nonsense things that make teachers look bad.

You sit back in your cozy office coming up with mandates and other rules when you haven't ever been in a classroom. You all are so clueless. No wonder why enrollment is falling in public schools. You blame this on teachers as an easy way out, but 99 percent of it is on you all. I have looked up state educational leaders and they try to keep their profile quiet, and they do nothing to help! They only got their position by sucking up to other people in charge and moved up the ladder. Yet they have low IQ and don't care about education. They only care about "test scores" and them keeping their jobs. That's why it's my last year being an educator in public schools. Tired of looser higher ups making so much money and doing nothing to help.

Let me know if this is the wrong place to ask this but I’m looking for advice on how to help students with this issue. I’m a peer educator at a university who supports classes like biology, anatomy, and chemistry, and students frequently come in demonstrating a worrying inability to read basic sentences from their lecture slideshows or study guides. I try to help them with the actual content of their courses, but I feel that I’m failing them if I don’t offer them any advice on improving this essential skill. I would love to be able to guide them through a few practice exercises during our sessions or have some practice that I can suggest they do on their own time. The problem is that I have no experience teaching literacy or reading and I’m scared of making them feel stupid or inadequate by bringing attention to their poor literacy skills. Does anyone have any advice on how I can help these students?

South Jersey students help shape the future of civic education

Last week my AP Government class hosted a Civics Summit for 90 students across four different South Jersey schools. Students worked alongside our Assemblywoman and state Senator suggest amendments to the Civics bill which calls for the state Department of Education to establish a Seal of Civic Readiness. We had several guest speakers including U.S. Sen. Andy Kim also appeared by video through Zoom. By creating a Civic Seal the State of New Jersey will be promoting and celebrating active civic engagement. If you're in New Jersey interested in having your students join our effort please reach out, contact your state legislator and our Department of Education and encourage them to prioritize Civic Seals and Civics Education.

The expectations placed on paraprofessionals, classroom aides, and support staff have skyrocketed, managing behavioral needs, implementing specialized IEPs that basically say kids can physically hurt you and be back the next day as though nothing happened, supporting special needs students, and stepping in where classrooms are stretched thinnest, while the compensation often hovers near or below a living wage.

When local retail, fast food, or entry level jobs offer comparable or higher pay with significantly less physical and emotional stress, the math simply doesn't work. Until districts and states treat these roles as professional, essential positions backed by sustainable salaries rather than budget line afterthoughts, the revolving door is bound to keep spinning.

Hi, I'm Ted Shachtman. I went to Vanderbilt for elementary education and cognitive studies and have a master's in computer science. And I've been teaching since I graduated from Vanderbilt in 2022. I'm writing this post to encourage more teachers to ask the questions I started asking two years ago, with great results. When a student is solving a problem and is inexplicably behind the other students, ask them what they actually see in their mind's eye and hear in their inner voice.

What I found is a good seven out of ten students who are behind are behind because of one of three reasons. Reason number one: their inner voice doesn't move on its own and they don't know to use it to solve problems in their head. Number two: their mind's eye doesn't render pictures on its own and they don't know to use it as storage for the problem in their head. And three: they're picturing something in their mind's eye that if you saw what they were picturing would make you fall over laughing at how terrible of a representation it was.

To illustrate these three examples, I have three anonymized stories from my own teaching. The first story resolves what happens when a student is picturing something in their mind's eye that makes you fall over laughing.

I was working as a basic skills instructor in an elementary school. My job was to work one-on-one with students who had been falling behind and bring them up to grade level. This particular student, who I'll call John, was in fourth grade and could not add five plus three in his head. However, when talking to him, it was immediately obvious he was profoundly bright. I'd explain a concept through analogies and his eyes would light up while he offered a distant analog that was, in fact, structurally the same. Yet, again, he couldn't add five plus three in his head.

So I asked him, when you're doing five plus three in your head, what are you picturing and what are you hearing? He said, I hear nothing, but I picture a number line. I was surprised because I picture a number line as well, and I know it to be a very efficient representation for adding in your head. So I asked him to draw the number line, and he drew this. I'm representing it in ASCII below.

|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|

As I looked at what he drew, a question popped up in my head. You might have spotted it already, but it went, “John, where are the numbers?” He stared back at me, confused. I asked him, “Okay, when you use this number line to add in your head, can you show me by pointing on this drawing what you would do?” He nodded and said, “First I would count to five.” He put his finger on the left.

Then, he tapped each successive vertical line on the number line, Silently, until he got to the fifth. He looked up at me and said, “Now I know I'm at five, and I remember that I have to add three more.” He moved his finger three more times to the right and landed on the eighth, albeit, to know that he was on the eighth line, I had to count there myself. Then he said, “Now I go back to the beginning so I can see how many that is.” He was about to start moving his finger when I asked, “How do you remember where you got to? He replied, “Sometimes it's really tough, especially for big numbers like eight or nine.” Then he moved his finger all the way from the left up to the seventh line and said, “Seven. Five plus three is seven.”

This story has a happy ending. I was able to teach John to put numbers on the number line in his head. He was then immediately able to add five plus three in his head, as well as much bigger numbers such as 16 plus 7. With this incredibly subtle change, just adding numbers to his number line, it unlocked his mathematical ability. Working with him throughout the year, he showed amazing improvement.

The next story I'll tell is with a girl named Cynthia. I worked with Cynthia because she had trouble with problem solving. When presented with a word problem or an unfamiliar type of problem, her teachers described that she had a lot of trouble adapting to it and only really was able to solve that type of question with significant amounts of one-on-one instruction. When I started working with her, I gave her a word problem. I saw her stare at the word problem and asked, “What do you hear in your mind? What do you see?”

She said, “What do you mean?” I asked. “When you are walking through the halls or eating lunch, do you hear a voice in your head that talks and describes the world around you?” Cynthia shook her head no. I asked, “When you're solving a word problem like this, do you hear a voice in your head that talks through the problem?” She furrowed her brow and again shook her head no.

“If I ask you to hear 'My name is Cynthia' in your mind, can you?” She said, “Yes, I can hear that.” I described to Cynthia that most people have an inner voice in their head that talks all the time and it moves on its own. But in her mind, her voice doesn't move on its own— it’s like an arm that only moves when you tell it to.

The way everybody else is solving these word problems is by talking it through in their head. The reason she didn't think to do it was because her mind's voice doesn't move on its own. So, guessing that you should move your mind's voice to talk through the problem is something pretty hard to guess.

Now, there's a reason I knew to ask this specific question. I am exactly like Cynthia, except when I was in elementary school, nobody told me that my inner voice didn't move on its own. I only found this out when I was 24. So, two years ago. And from my experience, I knew exactly how detrimental not using her inner voice to reason through problems was in her elementary school curriculum and would continue to be throughout the rest of her life.

What is it like to not use your inner voice to solve problems and think? It is an utter inability to reason.

My entire life, I never liked to plan. Why? I couldn't. What does it mean to plan? It means to reason, to think things through. In my head, only my images moved on their own. And so, to plan a birthday party on Tuesday, for instance, I could only plan what pictures could represent. Pictures have a very hard time representing a Tuesday. In fact, pictures have a very hard time representing anything even decently abstract at all. For my entire life, I could think very well when I wrote things down. I was very good at spatial puzzles. I was extremely good when talking an idea out loud to a friend. But if you asked me to silently think through a problem, what I thought “thinking” meant is to stare at you with images popping into your mind until some image gave me a fully formed idea, and then speak.

What I would not have given for someone to have asked me the question, “What do you see and what do you hear?” from a young age.

The continuation of my story is similar to the continuation of Cynthia’s story. Cynthia learned to reason in her head, and her teachers reported that her problem-solving ability skyrocketed. She was able to think through novel problems and notice patterns, as was I once I learned to reason in language.

The last story I'll tell is about a girl named Ruby. Ruby was in fifth grade and had extensive trouble doing math in her head. By this time, I had asked the question, “What do you see in your head? What do you hear in your head?” many times.

She was trying to multiply 60 times 20. She said what she heard in her head when multiplying was, “nothing”, and that she never heard anything in her head. I asked her the classic next question: “Can you hear My name is Ruby in your head?” And she said yes. Then I asked her to Draw a picture of what she saw in her head when she multiplied 60 times 20, and gave her a sheet of scrap paper. She wrote down the number 60, and then the number 60 below that, and then the number 60 below that, and then the number 60 below that, and so on, some number near 20 times.

60
60
60
60
60
….
60

Then she moved her pencil back up to the top two 60s and wrote 120 to the side. Then she looked up at me and said, “After that, the picture gets fuzzy.” In her case, this was a double whammy. I taught her to use her inner voice to reason, and I taught her how to picture a number line. After this, her academics greatly improved.

These stories have a moral. Every time I've peeked under the blanket of why a student is falling behind, it is almost never because they are just “not so bright.”

There is always some monster hiding under that blanket: either their inner voice doesn't move on its own, their inner pictures don't move on their own, or how they're using either their inner voice or their inner pictures is ill-constructed for the task. So, I ask the question: If every time you look, you find the same thing, what can you conclude but all the other times you didn't look?

We should be asking more students, “What do you see and what do you hear?” I'm quite convinced that a large amount of difference in academic ability can be explained by some students using greatly inefficient mental processes for tasks that students performing better use efficient ones on. So, in the comments of this post, share stories where you found that what goes on in a student's mind is the fixable reason why they're falling behind.

Edit: if you’re interested in discussing more about the techniques learners can use with their inner scratchpads, you can check out my subreddit, r/MentalAtlas. It’s grown from 100 to 2k members over the past week, so you’ll be in good company.

Hi! I have 2 boys, 3 years apart. My oldest was born in May and my second in August. I've heard and read a couple of studies saying it's better to delay kindergarten a year for summer-born boys. Has anyone done this, and do you think it was a good decision or not?

Thank you so much!

I’m not sure if this has been talked about elsewhere, but I’ve been thinking about the new “Do No Harm” standard to be implemented by the current administration, under which degrees will have to prove their economic worth or else be disqualified from student loan funding.

This made me consider the ramifications and ironies of such a policy. Naturally, much of the humanities would be under scrutiny. However, won’t this lead to a brain-drain of sorts that will create a shortage of humanities teachers (and possibly professors, eventually)?

Because K-12 teachers are paid so little, it will place the onus on the universities to make their tuition commensurate with the meager pay of teachers, or else the programs will be only available to students who can pay out of pocket, making the humanities a rich person’s field.

To me it seems like the last nail in the coffin for a culture who chronically devalues the humanities and has lost sight of the traditional purpose of education, which was to create well-rounded citizens, not just financially comfortable specialists.

Am I getting this wrong? Thoughts?

What software do people use for scheduling classes for schools? I'm talking from a school admin perspective here.

Or manually?

I love maths. Currently in electrical engineering university where I attend math, physics and computer science classes.

Why does everything have to be academic? With textbooks and exams? As if it's going to help you acquire the practical skills needed to be qualified for a job. But it won't, and this is exactly why job recruiters don't want employees with no experience... because they just don't have practical skills. You don't learn your job in university. You learn it after you actually get the job.

I don't like studying alone. Yes, I'm great at maths, but just sitting on your desk alone is so boring. And after long periods of time it triggers chronic isolation. I get stressed just by solving a single math problem. Two days ago I got to know another student in university and he later spotted me in the library. I showed him a problem that I was trying to solve for some time but couldn't. He was also stuck at first. But he sat down, we shared our thoughts, and after an hour of deep conversation we solved it together.

It was so fun that it seemed effortless. Time just flied. Education doesn't have to be tiring. It's supposed to be relaxing, and yet so many students around the world hate school with a burning passion because classrooms are the most counter-productive places known to man.

I don't want to continue sitting for hours in front of a desk solving exercises. I've been doing that for the past two years for hours every day just so that I could enter the university I'm in. But chronic stress has prevailed and I can't do this anymore with this stupid academic system of education that is meant to kill your will to be educated. I love maths, but I hate math textbooks. And I especially hate structured learning. But I simply can't learn the way I want because I absolutely need to get that useless paper that says I'm eligible for a job that I won't have learned until I get recruited. Whose idea was it to make everything fit into books and render it utterly useless... Academia sucks.

I find it insane how the literacy rate is only dropping in America. I’m a high school senior applying to college and I have a near-perfect GPA, test scores and everything else but it still feels impossible for my peers and I to get into good colleges, as things are only getting more competitive. However on the flip side there are kids at my school studying basic algebra, and it’s just so sad to me. Especially because a lot of those kids look like me, and in some of my AP classes i can count on one hand the number of POC students. It genuinely breaks my heart because so many people are getting left behind, and will likely end up struggling in life as a result. It’s ridiculous that i engage in conversations about how competitive everything is, but also how low/behind a lot of people are.

And if you’ve had a child repeat a grade, did it actually help?

I’ve hit a point where studying consumes all my time. Even when I’m trying to relax or do something else, the guilt follows me and I’m constantly thinking about what I should be doing

I’ve been looking into the growth of alternative credit providers like Sophia Learning, Study.com and StraighterLine. A lot of people on Reddit talk about taking credits from courses from these companies. I’m curious how people working in higher education think about all of this.

From what I’ve read on Reddit, universities are actively encouraging students to take courses with these providers.

I wrote an article describing online institutions as finishing schools. That they are ceding the first two years of academic instruction to alternative credit providers that offer inexpensive self paced courses.

The feedback and pushback that I received was that what I wrote was hyperbole, that the usage from these providers was minimal and had reached maturity. That it helps with completion rates, it gives students momentum, but it’s not widely adopted with partner universities.

So for people working at colleges/universities:

- are you seeing greater acceptance or active encouragement of Sophia, Study.com, and StraighterLine

- do you think online institutions will eventually become comfortable outsourcing a much larger portion of general education? How far does this go?