This is Incredible!! The Teach 100 Reaches 500 Blogs!

On January 8, 2013, Teach.com launched the Teach 100--an innovative new system to score the performance and importance of education blogs. Our goal was to provide an accurate and authoritative resource for everyone to expand their knowledge across a variety of areas. Over the past year, you've helped us achieve all that and more. Thanks to our passionate bloggers, the Teach 100 has developed into a community driven by the voices of the most prominent figures in the space.

 

Today we’re thrilled to announce that the Teach 100 has reached 500 bloggers! Your community has grown tremendously over the past 11 months, with over 450 submissions bringing us from our initial 120 to this epic milestone. Your Teach 100 community represents educators from 26 countries and numerous backgrounds, and we’ve been thrilled by th…

Music: The Best Way to Boost Brain Power

Whether students are tickling the ivories on the piano or strumming a guitar, the hours they spend in music lessons and rehearsals are worth every penny. According to Education Week, studies presented at a recent Society for Neuroscience meeting pointed to the many academic benefits of learning a musical instrument. According to the studies, time spent doing so has been connected to a positive boost in creativity, memory, decision-making and multitasking skills. As with any talent or skill set, the earlier students get involved in music, the better.

One of the greatest outcomes of music instruction is the pleasure that students get from liste…

Teachers are America’s Superheroes: Honoring Sandy Hook One Year Later

“Real heroes don’t wear capes. They work in America’s schools.”

The above-mentioned quote was taken from Nelba Marquez-Green’s open letter to our nation’s teachers, shortly after the tragedy that took the lives of 26 children from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last December. Nelba’s daughter, Ana Grace, was one of those 26 children. Her letter is an equally heartwarming and heartbreaking dedication to the people she sees as America’s true heroes - our teachers.

The tragedy that shook Newtown undoubtably raises a number of issues, including that of mental health awareness, school safety, and gun control. However, as we approach the one-year “a…

Schools Pushing for Eco-Friendly Cafeterias

Compostable trays and pesticide-free produce are just a few of the items that large school districts across the nation are hoping to offer within their school meal programs.

According to The New York Times, the Miami-Dade County school district is one of the larger districts that have started to use compostable trays, rather than the Styrofoam trays traditionally used for student lunches. Made of sugar cane, the trays will be composted for farms and gardens rather than filling up oversized landfills. With 345,000 students in the Miami-Dade district, that really is a lot of trays. Penny Parham, administrative director of food and nutrition for the district, feels…

Competitive Grants for Career and Technical Education

On Tuesday, November 19th, the Obama administration unveiled details for a plan to host a $100 million grant awarding competition. According to Education Week, the grant money is specifically intended for the preparation of high school students for college and technical careers.

While the grants are similar to past Race to the Top and Investing in Education programs, these new monies will be provided by and managed by the Department of Labor. By collaborating with local universit…

The Most Important Year of School Is…

The answer is freshman year of high school, at least when it comes to predicting who is likely to drop out or not. According to The Atlantic, the periodical Education recently released research findings that prove ninth grade to be a “bottleneck” year with freshman having the highest levels of absenteeism, the lowest GPAs, the most failing classes and the highest level of behavioral referrals when compared to other secondary grades. While the year 1970 found 3 percent fewer students in…