Mass shootings in 2023 are a reminder of the omnipresent threat to our students in public schools. For years, I had no skin in the game so — to be quite honest — school safety was of little concern to me. When I became a parent and started sending my…

Gramsci talks at length about his ideal educational system in a response letter to then Minister of Education Gamile as part of his infamous Prison Notebooks work. At this time in Italy, widespread divisions existed between the elite and non-elite group with regards to education. Elite schools effectively had every…

Assessment and use of data when making decisions to refine curriculum is an important part of the curriculum planning cycle. No method of teaching is perfect, and no model of education exists that is inclusive of the myriad unique situations and backgrounds our students come from. For the academic community…

“Taking a gap year” entered the conversation around many dining room tables in homes of high school children across the United States during the pandemic. COVID rates have seemingly stabilized but a potentially bad flu season. Cost of tuition has risen exponentially. The entire world economy appears to be transitioning…

One of the prevailing wisdoms in sociology is that parents — or family more broadly — have the most significant impact on the socialization of children. When we are young, we rely on our parents to teach us language, social norms, how to tie our shoes, where to go to…

Public education administrators are not new to the idea of focusing on attendance as a key indicator of success for your school. After all, if there are no students in school, then what are you all doing in there all day? Attendance rates have dropped precipitously since the resumption of…

For the love of God, please direct your attention to matters that actually have some bearing on the improvement of our society. Why aren’t you taking the same amount of time and expending the same amount of energy to address gun violence in your state, or access to clean water…

Today I had a student come to my office to talk about starting our program. They were new to college, as in this was their first time even speaking with someone from a college, and they wanted to start in my program. The program I am tasked with supervising and…

by Benjamin Drury Last year I worked as an Assistant Principal at a high school on the West Side of Chicago. On any other year, this job would have been challenging. Fights, drugs, gangs, etc. are an omnipresent part of most any public-school south of I-290 in Chicago…but last year…