Whether you’re teaching a specialized ACT course or acting as your school’s point person for students taking the ACT, providing the right kind of support for your students as they prepare for the test can make a huge difference--not only in students’ scores, but also in the quality of their lives. Realizing the pressure that students are under to do well on standardized college admissions tests is the first step. That doesn’t mean you should assign less homework or let students get away with bad behavior, but it does mean that there are some concrete, actionable steps you can take to help set your students up for success, both in your classroom and for their futures.

As teachers, we mentor, manage and guide the most valuable gems of any parent: the children. Having a successful relationship between teachers and parents means understanding diverse personality types. We’ve written about 5 distinct, general personalities that are commonly observed by teachers.

Let’s face it, higher education can be expensive, with CNBC finding that the average annual cost of a four-year degree is $31,231. Although teaching is a hugely rewarding career it’s likely that you will need to be in your career for quite a while before all student debts are repaid.

That said, America needs good teachers, and the profession needs to recruit the very best talent to lead the next generation of thinkers and business moguls. The Washington Post reports that the U.S is facing its first major teacher shortage since the 1990’s, with a shortfall of 60,000 teachers missing from American classrooms.

Online education has been experiencing remarkable growth, and improvements in technology will only serve to increase the trend. In the 2014 – 2015 academic year, there was a 3.9% increase in enrollment in online courses. Over a quarter of all students were enrolled in at least one online course, and of those, almost half (2.85 million of 5.8 million students) were enrolled entirely online.

The role of the school counselor has grown in many ways. Traditionally, school counselors were responsible for giving students college and career advice.  And while that is still a big part of their job description, counselors today play a more active role in lives of students. Depending on certain state, district, and school requirements, a school counselor may provide a wide range of services to the student population.

Do you have students in your classroom that want to build personal computers or PCs? Are they more interested in playing computer games all day long in the classroom? Understandably, you may have some reservations at first. You won’t find a decent teacher that wants their students playing video games all day. And yet, the process of building a personal computer will teach your students important life skills that they may use in their career years into the future. After all, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 37 percent rise in hiring for computer systems design positions from 2012 to 2022.