Rhetoric and Composition professor Jule Thomas understands that the path to learning isn’t always easy, equitable, or traditional. She reflects on her experience teaching incarcerated students and reexamining her own biases. Read how you can adapt to unique teaching environments and find new ways to connect with your students.
Category: In the Classroom
AI as a Thinking Partner, Not a Crutch: Designing Assignments That Actually Make Students Struggle (in a Good Way)
A few months ago, I asked a room full of faculty a simple question: If AI can complete the assignment, what exactly are students learning by completing it? The room got quiet. Not because the answer was obvious, but because many of us are wrestling with the same tension.
Engaging my AP® Chemistry Students with an Atoms-Focused Approach
In her 38 years of teaching chemistry and AP® Chemistry, Laura Slocum knows exactly what her students prefer. In our latest Norton Learning Blog post, Laura shares how Chemistry: An Atoms-Focused Approach, which emphasizes visual learning and couples perfectly with modeling instruction, keeps her students engaged and curious.
Research as Recursive Conversations: Using “They Say / I Say” in Your AP® Seminar
As a first-year AP® Seminar teacher, I was really nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to offer my students all the support they needed. But, since my students had access to “They Say / I Say,” I felt as if I had a mentor teacher with me at all times
Teaching on the Tenure Track: How to Ace Lesson Prep
Balancing planning, grading, and teaching while securing tenure isn’t easy. Kelsi G. Hobbs, assistant professor of economics at the University of Maine, shares how the right textbook resources are foundational in creating a strong course, allowing you to dedicate more time to research, service, and other projects.
Why You Should Engage Students with Primary Sources in Your ELA Classroom
Rebecca Newland is a high school librarian who spent 15 years as a high school English teacher before switching, which has been more fun than she could have imagined.
Learning to Teach on the Fly: Tips for First-Time Instructors
Adronisha Frazier teaches medical microbiology and biology lecture and lab courses at San Joaquin Delta College. She works closely with colleagues to mentor, teach, and support a diverse student population in earning credentials and transferring to 4-year institutions.
Maps, Primary Sources, and Practice Questions: Effectively Prepping for AP® World History
Daniel Hood is a high school history teacher at a private school in Southwest Virginia where he teaches AP® World History, AP® European History, and AP® Comparative Government. I love maps. Maybe it’s because of all the high fantasy novels I read as a young adult, which would have been incomplete without the map inside the first few pages that brought the whole fantasy world into sharper relief. Or it might have been …
Chemistry for Humans: Why the Right Textbook Matters
I have never encountered a student with strong opinions about whether they learn kinetics before or after thermodynamics, or which theory best explains expanded-octet structures, or whether quantum mechanics should occur early or late in the text. Fortunately, there are still many ways in which the viewpoints of instructors and students align perfectly. I’d like to share a few of those human-centric areas of agreement that can be supported by an effective textbook.
Teaching Students to Think Like Historians: Making Secondary Sources a Primary Focus in the U.S. History Classroom
According to AP® instructor Craig Nicoletti, students must be taught more than how to memorize information. In our latest Norton Learning Blog post, AP® instructor Nicoletti encourages his students to “think like historians” by synthesizing historical information, constructing arguments about the past, and recalling specific historical details.