elementary

26Jan

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

Elementary School Teachers Talk About Managing Their Classrooms During A Pandemic – ‘Teaching Has Always Been Hard, But It’s Never Been Like This’

As the omicron wave spikes across the United States, K-12 education is one of many systems buckling under the weight of expanding needs. Recent headlines highlight staff and busing shortages, parental anxieties about both in-person and distance schooling and disputes between unions and districts. Yet teachers’ experiences in their classrooms can be overlooked in these conversations. As part of our research into teaching, since March 2020, we have been following the experiences of a group of elementary school teachers in one suburban school district in the Midwest. We’ve seen variations in teachers’ experiences and well-being over the course of the pandemic, yet our research suggests their situation continues to be incredibly challenging. In January 2022 – halfway through the school year...

Scientists Can Look Like Them – What Sending Science Majors Into Elementary Schools Helps Latino And Black Students Realize

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. A student’s drawings of a scientist upon starting and after completing the Young Scientists Program. USC Young Scientists Program, CC BY-NC-ND The big idea After taking part in hands-on STEM lab experiments as part of a youth science program I coordinate, Latino and Black students were more likely to picture scientists as people who look like them – and not stereotypical white men in lab coats. The Young Scientists Program at the Joint Educational Project of the University of Southern California offers specialized science, technology, engineering and math instruction in local elementary schools that have mostly Latino and Black students – two groups long underrepresented in STEM fields. My colleagues and I recruit underg...

Reopening elementary schools carries less COVID-19 risk than high schools – but that doesn’t guarantee safety

While only a fraction of the country’s 50 million public school kids headed back to school in-person this month, many have already found themselves back at home. Within two weeks of opening, multiple states reported school-based COVID-19 outbreaks, and thousands of students and school staff have been quarantined following possible exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Many of these districts are in areas with high community spread of COVID-19, and some didn’t enforce social distancing or require face masks. Our team of infectious disease epidemiologists collected data in the San Francisco Bay Area and ran computer simulations to examine how school closures and reopenings can affect the spread of COVID-19. What we learned points to three key strategies for minimi...