The silence between the notes

Although this is a tough topic for summer reading, I’m really glad to see  this article is tackling it. It’s no secret that student behaviors have become more noticeably challenging in the last two years, but a lot of people still don’t appreciate just how difficult it really is to manage a classroom full of students these days. Mind you, we’re not even diving into the increasingly common crisis of mass violence in schools, just the regular old non-deadly challenges that teachers handle in a typical week. This article has great insights for teachers AND non-teachers so I hope you’ll read it when you’ve finished with this prologue of mine. Maintaining a productive, healthy learning environment is SO MUCH MORE COMPLICATED than many people realize. Contrary to what I’ve heard non-teachers advise, we can’t just tell students to be respectful of each other, because all their homes define respect differently; and we shouldn’t try to scare students into working silently all day because t...