برچسب: students

Through comedy, students can take ‘big swings’ for mental health
Teaching artists lead students through improv exercises during a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.
Top Takeaways

Many school districts are using comedy and improv workshops to teach students social-emotional skills, encourage self-expression and foster social connection.

Through the comedy program Laughing Together, professional comedians and mental health clinicians develop workshops based on exercises that can improve student mental health.

Game-based learning and interactive play can engage students who might have fallen behind academically or socially during the pandemic.
“If you were an object, what object would you be?”

Chris Gethard, a veteran comedian and improv teacher, posed this question to a group of high school students in Northern California at a Laughing Together workshop he was leading. He remembered one who identified as a fruit.

“When I was a kid, I convinced myself that I hated avocados,” Gethard remembered the student saying. “And then I tried one, and I actually love ’em. And that’s been my experience the past few years as I’m learning to love and embrace myself.”

It quickly became obvious to Gethard that the improv wasn’t about avocado or any fruit for that matter. It was a big moment, and the student was taking a big risk to figure out something about themselves — their gender identity in real time.

“Young people right now are living in a world where those experiences are often held up in the spotlight and politicized,” Gethard said. “So to see a kid being able to take a comedy exercise, which feels light and accessible and not too heavy, they can let their guard down and take a big swing like that.”

Many school districts are turning to comedy as a way of supporting student mental health. In 2023, Gethard co-founded Laughing Together, a program based on research that comedy can be an effective tool for students’ social-emotional learning and social connection with their peers.

Nearly 6,500 students and educators across 26 different schools, districts, or youth organizations, have taken part in their workshops since Gethard co-founded the program with Marlon Morgan, CEO of parent nonprofit Wellness Together.

“One of the reasons that we [partnered with Gethard] is that he had already shared about his own mental health through his comedy special on HBO,” said Morgan, who is also a former school counselor. “He can make dark and scary things funny, which really helps students gain insight into their own emotions and become better at connecting with each other.”

‘Taking chances in the spotlight’

Research shows that students who practice social-emotional skills in safe environments with well-defined goals have improved social behavior, emotional regulation and academic performance.

“We have clinical psychologists who go through all the improv exercises,” Gethard said. “They get to say — ‘these ones are about making people funny, and they also prioritize nonverbal communication, strengthening eye contact, being comfortable with failure and taking some chances in the spotlight.’”

Christina Patterson, a senior and peer counselor at Lincoln High School in Stockton, said pandemic shutdowns forced her to spend nearly entire days scrolling through social media, hoping for something new to interact with (“But, there never is anything new,” she added).

For the first time since her school implemented a cellphone ban, Patterson said taking part in the Laughing Together workshop, even for an hour, met the level of engagement she had always been looking for on her phone. Like Patterson, students in recent years report better cognitive, social and academic outcomes through game-based learning and interactive play, compared to lecture-based instruction.

“I feel engaged with people who are interactive — they’re not trying to teach at you, but they’re trying to teach with you together,” Patterson said.

Laughing Together workshops are led by one of the program’s teaching artists, including professional comedians, actors and performers, alongside children’s psychologists, drawing on art, play and game therapy research, to develop social-emotional learning and communication skill-building into each exercise. For Gethard, a workshop is successful if he can teach students something without them realizing it.

“We want kids to leave feeling more connected and comfortable with each other, not like they just watched a slide show or that they were just spoon-fed these lessons,” he said. “We want them to feel that they’re allowed to at least throw an idea out there, and no one’s going to judge them, pick them apart, or criticize them.”

Sofia Stewart-Lopez, a senior and peer counselor at Lincoln High School, helped set up a peer-to-peer summit, where she and other student mentors took part in a Laughing Together workshop. She remembered starting the day anxious about a big presentation about mental health resources she had later in the day, but after a few skits and improv games, she felt more confident, relaxed and connected to the people around her.

“I learned that a big part of balancing heavy topics of mental health, like anxiety, depression or substance abuse, is learning how to combat them with things that can help you with those feelings,” Stewart-Lopez said.

Markus Alcantar, a senior and a peer counselor at Lincoln High School, said his favorite part of the workshop was one in which he got to become an apple. He had to think on his feet about why he felt like one, and then he improvised a skit with someone who had decided they were a tree. In another exercise, he said a volunteer started with juggling a ball, after which students added another ball, followed by another, and then another — until they couldn’t keep up anymore.

“It was a fun representation of how you can have a lot of things going on in your head mentally, and that you can learn to unravel those thoughts and organize them for yourself and other people,” Alcantar said.

About 1 in 5 teenagers, and most of Stewart-Lopez’s friends at school, she said, have experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression. So the workshop, she said, was particularly helpful in understanding how laughter exactly works in the brain — like how endorphins and serotonin receptors can alleviate some feelings of sadness or anxiety — to be able to have fun and build healthy coping skills with friends at school.

“The [improv exercises] also taught us that thinking on our feet better prepares us to be able to respond in different types of situations,” Stewart-Lopez said. “We learned that different people need different types of support, which betters us as mentors.”

Middle school students attend a Laughing Together workshop at San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Peer-to-Peer Summit in September 2024.

Most recently, Gethard completed nine workshops at a high school where over half of the student body are on Individualized Education Plans (IEP), or accommodations for students with learning, developmental, or behavioral disabilities. During the first workshop, he noticed most students reaching for their phones in the middle of an exercise or while on stage. To ease students into the experience, he’d tell them to simply take a breath and try to be present.

“After the first few workshops, a teacher came up to me and said, ‘their ability to lock in and focus on that is leaps and bounds compared to week one,” Gethard said. “She said, ‘they just never got their ability to focus back after Covid, but if we can keep going with this, it’s going to change the game for these kids in the room.’”

Rates of anxiety and depression — which shot up by 70% among California children between 2017 and 2022 — are the top health-related drivers of absenteeism since the onset of the pandemic. Research indicates that reduced social interaction, coupled with overreliance on screen time, also worsened students’ social cognition skills, such as cooperation and communication, and executive functions, such as attention and memory.

Alcantar was in seventh grade when schools shut down, and when he returned to in-person instruction as a high school freshman, he said he found it difficult for him to initiate conversations with people around him. Stewart-Lopez said that after schools lifted mask mandates, she kept hers on for a while because she was worried about meeting social expectations about what she should look like.

“The pandemic had added to my sense of anxiety about, ‘What if I don’t fit in? What if I’m different from everybody else?” she said.

For Stewart-Lopez, laughter feels like home. It’s how she and her sisters got through their parents’ separation and also how she plans to take new risks with new people at college this year.

“We’re creating that safe place for students to get real-time responses to the risks they’re taking — and everyone’s taking risks — which makes it okay,” said Morgan, the CEO of nonprofit Wellness Together.
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05/06/2025
We must redesign middle and high schools to serve students better

Vista Del Mar Middle School in Chula Vista

Credit: San Diego County Office of Education

Tucked inside Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed state budget is a kernel of hope for the future of adolescents in California: A $15 million investment to reshape the way students experience middle and high schools. It represents just .013% of total state education spending, but it represents an important commitment to serving students better.

This investment will create a small cadre of middle and high schools to support students’ sense of belonging, to help prepare them for well-paying jobs in the future, and to personalize learning environments and supports so that those who need extra help can get it. Participating schools will also integrate more hands-on, experiential learning and lead the way in new and appropriate uses of technology for deeper learning. These are the learning opportunities and environments that young people are asking us to provide.

What might these schools encompass, and how would we approach this work?

The San Diego County Office of Education works with districts, students, families and communities to address system- and community-wide issues and goals. We work with interested districts to build a portrait of a graduate, where leaders listen to students, parents, community members, and school and district staff to co-create a district plan built on the collective answer to: “Where do we want our student to be in 15 to 20 years when they graduate and what attributes and skill sets do they need to possess?” Through this process, we seek to create and strengthen our schools to be welcoming spaces for all students, with opportunities to be successful in school and life.

The Secondary School Redesign Pilot Program (SSRP) is especially timely now, as California continues to chart a course toward improved outcomes and experiences for adolescents in our public schools. This state-level persistence in forward-looking policy is critically important amid federal-level backsteps and disinvestment in young people.

Working as an SSRP network to learn and grow together, a group of secondary schools would be selected to receive state grants to support the reshaping of schools as places where all students feel known, understood and engaged in future-relevant learning. The two-year pilot would be evaluated, as all new programs should be, to identify redesign strategies for schools statewide and determine whether the effort should grow.

The program smartly builds upon recent, substantial investments in secondary schools by the governor and Legislature. These include new “community school” models that serve not just students’ academic but their health and social-emotional needs; dual-enrollment opportunities that allow high schoolers to experience and accelerate toward college; and the Golden State Pathways Program, which puts students on paths toward college and high-wage careers in economic growth sectors such as technology, health care, education and climate science/adaptation.

At a time of sharp ideological divides, we have been encouraged to see strong, across-the-board support among California voters for the importance of college and career education, social-emotional learning, student mental health and school environments where all students feel accepted. Public opinion research conducted by a bipartisan polling group earlier this school year bears this out.

As we prepare to celebrate our many high school graduates during this season of commencement, we remain focused on our most critical work ahead: to ensure that our public schools function effectively for all, especially those students who are furthest from opportunity and for whom our schools have not yet succeeded.

California has taken strong steps toward improving school experiences and outcomes for adolescents, particularly in this post-pandemic period when they are truly in need. The SSRP is another stride in that direction. To stay the course on preparing our young people for the future they deserve, we urge the Legislature to act favorably on the governor’s proposal.

•••

Gloria E. Ciriza, Ed.D., the San Diego County superintendent of schools.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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05/06/2025
Calls, home visits, counseling help get California students back to school

When first grader Jordan Muñoz stopped going to school during the 2022-23 school year, his mother attributed it to depression, following the deaths of Muñoz’s great-grandfather and uncle. Some days, his mom couldn’t get him out of the house. Other days, she’d get him dressed and to the corner of Fresno’s Fremont Elementary, but he’d take off running. Most often, she failed to get him beyond the school parking lot.

“I tried to just take him. Leave him at school. But he would get right in front of my car so I wouldn’t leave,” said Muñoz’s mom, Deyanira Pacheco.

Aware of the difficulty, administration, counselors, psychologists and teachers at his Fresno Unified school developed a plan to support Muñoz, according to Cecilia Aguayo, the district’s child welfare and attendance specialist.

The district of over 70,000 students had made such plans before in an effort to reduce chronic absenteeism rates, which went from 50.3% during the 2021-22 school year to 35.4% in 2022-23. While this is still higher than pre-pandemic years, the decrease stands in sharp contrast to other districts, like Oakland Unified, where chronic absences rose from 47.5% to 61.4% during the same years.

Statewide, nearly a quarter of K-12 students remained chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year — a decline of about 5 percentage points from the previous school year, but a sign of the lingering effects of the pandemic that led to sharp drops in student attendance after schools reopened for in-person instruction. Students who are chronically absent from school are sometimes also the same children who do not have their basic needs met: Federal data shows that nearly half of all California homeless students, 44.5%, were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year.

Nearly a third of the 930 districts statewide that reported data had a higher rate of chronic absenteeism in 2022-23 than the year before. A small number of districts, 33, had a chronic absenteeism rate over 50% in 2022-23, the most recent data available.

EdSource’s analysis of data from the California Department of Education offers insight: The statewide average rate of excused absences for the 2022-23 school year was 54.7%, with unexcused absences at 39.2%. Both numbers are similar to pre-pandemic levels.

While both excused and unexcused absences are counted toward chronic absenteeism rates, a school’s knowledge of the reasons behind the absences can better help them support and re-engage students.

Researchers and school staff have long tried to better understand how to re-engage chronically absent students, or students who missed 10% or more days in one school year.

State education code lists over a dozen reasons for excusing students from school; however, interviews with districts show that many excused absences are mental health and illness-related. Unexcused absences could indicate that students did not have proper documentation to mark them excused, or that they provided no reason for their absence or that the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence.

Fresno Unified is in the Central San Joaquin Valley and is the state’s third-largest district. Across the 30 districts in Fresno County, all but four decreased their chronic absences between 2021-22 and 2022-23. Altogether, the average change was 11.62 percentage points, with Fresno Unified, the county’s largest district, above average with a gain of 14.9 percentage points.

The district credits their targeted communication with families as the foundation for their improvement, a method echoed by researchers as highly effective.

Child welfare and attendance specialist Aguayo made phone calls, visited Muñoz’s home and popped up at the school when Pacheco picked up her other child, a kindergartner, who soon followed his brother’s example and sometimes refused to attend school. The district referred them to counseling services.

Although Pacheco, the kids’ mother, said the visits and calls helped in a way, she didn’t pursue counseling, perhaps thinking it wouldn’t work, Aguayo said.

By the end of the 2022-23 school year, Muñoz had attended only 27 days out of 179 days enrolled — a 15% attendance rate. Of the days missed, only six were excused. The school district didn’t give up on him, however. They used every tool to get him back to school.

Oakland Unified’s rising chronic absences

Farther north, in Oakland, chronic absences increased from 47.5% in the 2021-22 school year to 61.4% the following school year. But the high rate was already clear prior to the pandemic, at 34.4% during 2018-19.

“There hasn’t been a ‘normal’ year in many years,” said Heather Palin, the district’s director of multitiered systems of support, about chronic absences, in October. “Just broadly speaking, this is way higher than pre-Covid.”

Oakland Unified, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a diverse district of 46,000 students that is currently facing a significant budget deficit. Most districts across Alameda County, of which Oakland Unified is the largest, either saw a decrease in chronic absenteeism or had virtually no change between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. Oakland Unified ranked last and stands out with an increase of 13.9 percentage points.

The district has adopted a plan aimed at reducing its 61.4% district absentee rate by 25 percentage points with similar drops in each individual school, Palin said.

Each Oakland Unified school is expected to have an attendance team that meets regularly and includes an administrator, community school manager, attendance specialist and principal. Teams’ plans for increasing attendance include offering incentives like attendance certificates, celebrations and swag.

“It was an expectation that was set last year, and we have more capacity to support it, and we’re more kind of unified as a system in the messaging around the importance of that team,” Palin said.

The district offers a virtual school, Sojourner Truth Virtual Academy, but it’s not aimed at students who are chronically absent. Rather, it’s a different learning format offered to all students.

Cumulative enrollment data shows that this school remained a popular choice for students: it had 250 enrolled students pre-pandemic, then jumped to 1,533 students during 2021-22. The following year, 2022-23, nearly 1,000 remained enrolled.

Palin said that district authorities do not know why all students are chronically absent because schools were unable to reach some families. The students they reached mostly said they no longer wanted to attend school or requested a transfer to the virtual academy. Students also cited illness, family relocation, mental health and safety concerns.

How insight from families can help

While school administrators can excuse absences based on students’ individual circumstances — even if the reason is typically not covered by state law — they can only do so if they know the difficulties absent students are experiencing.

According to a recently published PACE report that examined California attendance data across the 2017 and 2022 school years, schools with higher rates of unexcused absences often have lower attendance rates overall. The same study by the nonprofit research group found that “socioeconomically disadvantaged students are much more likely to have their absences labeled unexcused.”

To address the number of illness-related absences, Fresno Unified clarified expectations, informing families about appropriate scenarios in which to send their kids to school. Consequently, excused absences increased from 41.3% in 2021-22 to 54.8% the following year, while unexcused absences decreased from 64% to 43.4%.

When the district knows what’s impacting student attendance, they can support, not penalize families, which many feared, said Tashiana Aquino, executive director of support programs, and Abigail Arii, director of the district’s student support services.

The very few excused absences that Muñoz had, along with conversations with his mother, helped the district set up a plan to increase his attendance.

Staff sent letters, called, visited the home, and educated Pacheco about attendance laws. “They asked me why he didn’t want to stay at school,” Pacheco said.

But even with a plan in place, Pacheco couldn’t get Muñoz, 7, to school.

By Sept. 23, 2022, she’d enrolled Muñoz in the district’s eLearn Academy, hoping he’d complete the work from home. Still, he wouldn’t. Six weeks later, he was re-enrolled at Fremont but was still not attending school.

Pacheco faced a school attendance review board (SARB) case in June 2023, a step “we really tried to avoid,” Aguayo said.

But the case was the “wake-up call” that pushed Pacheco to get the help she and Muñoz needed, said district staff.

“I think that’s where she realized, ‘I need to step up, too,’” said Tainia Yeppez, the SARB technician.

During the case, Fresno Unified again referred the family to counseling services. This time, in summer 2023, Pacheco started Muñoz in therapy.

New, more flexible solutions

Ongoing chronic absenteeism requires new thinking, advocates say, to ensure students do not fall back on foundational academic skills.

“Just because kids are not in the school building doesn’t mean we can’t still figure out creative and innovative ways to educate them. These chronic absenteeism rates are not going to just drop,” said Lakisha Young, CEO and founder of parent advocacy group Oakland REACH. “Everybody is in uncharted territory. So the question is: ‘Can we change the conversation?’”

At the height of the pandemic, Oakland REACH established a virtual learning hub for Oakland Unified’s K-2 students, offering tutoring that kept them engaged and attending school regularly. Early results showed that 60% of their students improved two or more reading levels on the Oakland Unified assessment, while 30% improved three or more levels. The organization now offers paid fellowships for Oakland caregivers to work as tutors producing high academic results.

Part of the challenge with common alternative learning formats to re-engage absent students while meeting their academic needs is that they are not always viable for students whose homes do not have the space to designate for schoolwork, said Young.

“A family who chooses to home-school has a different setup than a kid that’s chronically absent, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be given that option,” she said. It’s up to each district to find the solutions that would best serve their students, she added.

Southern California’s Glendale Unified is one of the few school districts with a slight decrease of 1% in their absenteeism rate plus low excused and unexcused absences: 20.6% and 22.3%, respectively.

Last school year, more students met with the district SARB, said Hagop Eulmessekian, Glendale Unified director of student services.

To address increasing mental health concerns, every Glendale Unified school has a wellness center where students can take a break during the school day. If a student is experiencing behavioral challenges, they are transferred to a community day school where they take each class in the same room throughout the day while teachers rotate for different subjects.

“There’s no wiggle room for the students who kind of disappear” throughout the day, said Eulmessekian. “They get the same education, they get fed, they get additional support, whether it’s counseling or therapy, and then when we see they’re able to go back on our comprehensive campuses, we transfer them back.”

Oakland REACH’s Young encourages educators to think outside the box.

“We have got to get creative about these babies,” said Young. “At some point you have got to do something different. You have got to just say: ‘This kid’s at home, how do I still get them educated?’”

Back in Fresno, Muñoz has done a complete 180. As of March, his attendance rate is 98%.

“Counseling really does help a lot,” Pacheco said.

She also needed to learn skills to address the boy’s behavior, Aguayo said. “I think she kind of got the power she needed. She finally got control.”

Of 128 days, he’s only missed two, one of which was excused. Even on days when he’s sad about losing his great-grandfather and uncle, he goes to school, Pacheco said. In fact, he made a commitment at the beginning of the school year to attend every day.

“Now, he wakes up at 6 in the morning, ready to go,” Pacheco said with a grin. Muñoz, now 8, likes going to school to play soccer with his friends.

He is behind academically — the impact of not attending school for most of his first-grade year, Pacheco said. The school provides additional academic support through remediation classes.

“All he needed to do was attend,” Yeppez said.

Because of his current high attendance rate, the court dismissed the SARB case in December, and Muñoz ended counseling in February.

For other families with students not regularly attending school, Pacheco said schools and districts must help them by talking to them and figuring out the problem, much like Fresno Unified did for her, and families must utilize the provided or recommended services, such as counseling.

“I think it was a little bit of everything that helped mom,” Yeppez said. “She was willing to get the help, accept the help and make that change. She was willing to make that change for her son’s success.”

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04/06/2025
Students need more time for lunch

Photo: Amanda Mills/Pixnio

As a former public school kid who grew up in Southern California, I recall racing through the lunch line to quickly grab a cardboard tray and scarf down a soggy, plastic-wrapped meal in the scant time available to me. By the time the bell rang, there were often many students still waiting in the lunch line, having to rush back to class with a slice of pizza in hand.

These seemingly small memories may have a big impact on behavior, with research from the University of Michigan showing that 1 in 8 American adults show signs of food addictions.

Universal school lunch programs are now active in eight states, including California, with many more looking to follow. This is a huge stride forward in increasing nutrition access for public school students. But there is a notable gap in that there are no federal regulations mandating a minimum amount of time for school meals. Students across the country, including at California public schools, have been stuck dumping their meals out and rushing back to class.

Schools play a pivotal role in shaping young minds, but how effective are school lunch programs if children are left hungry waiting in a meal line or rushed through their meals?

To try to achieve equity in K-12 schools, policymakers and educators have rightfully prioritized the need for food access in schools. This movement could extend the positive effects in a low-cost way by implementing sufficient time for lunch in school. There’s plenty of research on how food can improve test scores, and a 2021 study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that middle school students given 20 seated minutes for lunch ate more fruits and vegetables.

Time is a critical aspect of food — time to eat, digest and engage in a social, communal experience that extends beyond just a full stomach. Think of iconic scenes in iconic movies like “Mean Girls” and “The Breakfast Club” that take place during cafeteria time — these are hallmarks of youth that deserve ample time. Food is vital to culture and relationship-building, teaching kids important lessons of socialization and connection that endure for life. Although planning school schedules can be a crunch to ensure required instructional minutes are met, cutting lunch times short is not a sufficient or sustainable solution for students.

By establishing a minimum duration for school meals, schools will acknowledge that fostering a healthy relationship with food is important to setting kids up for a positive future. There may not be one right solution for all schools, but the California Department of Education has suggested making sure lunch is at least 20 minutes, having recess before lunch, requiring a specific amount of time sitting, and ensuring students can get through the food lines quickly.

The interplay of cafeteria, community and classroom (the 3 Cs) reflects how K-12 schools extend beyond students’ desks. Young students are sponges of knowledge, and giving them the building blocks of mindful eating by encouraging longer lunch times can enhance efforts to help students live healthy lives and impact their lifelong eating habits. As mental health advocates call for increased mindfulness in our educational institutions, this philosophy must be extended to the cafeteria.

Now is the perfect time for schools to become environments where students feel empowered to make smart choices about the food they consume. Even with universal free school lunches, parents should continue investigating and asking their children about the food they are getting in school — and whether they’re able to spend time eating it.

Let’s bridge the gap between educational equity and nutritional equity, pushing for a system that enables well-nourished, mindful students to embrace learning during their time at school.

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Julia Ransom is a senior at Stanford University studying human biology.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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04/06/2025
Summer Ready: Our Book-Based Curriculum is Primed to Support Students and Teachers this Summer
Summer is just around the corner and for both remedial and enrichment programs, we humbly think single book units from our Reading Reconsidered curriculum are an ideal match. Our Associate Director of Curriculum and School Support Alonte Johnson-James, explains why:

Summer school and enrichment programs share a common goal of improving and advancing the knowledge and skills of students. They also provide a great chance for the teachers invested in their success to be able try out high quality curricula and newer, more research-backed approaches.

When considering a curriculum that best serves students and teachers, we believe the novel-based, modular units of the Reading Reconsidered curriculum provide the opportunity to support students with building knowledge and practice retrieving this knowledge throughout the unit.

Even more exciting is the “one-stop-shop” benefit of high-quality instructional materials that support the training and development of new and veteran teachers alike.

Here are some of the attributes of the Reading Reconsidered Curriculum that make it ideal for summer programs:

Novel-based:

With summer programs roughly spanning 5 to 6 weeks, our novel-based units are a hit! Leaders and teachers may select any of our 36 novel-based units based on their knowledge of their students. Using novel-based units affords summer school students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a good book and read it cover-to-cover. To support with choosing the best fit text, we provide a scope and sequence for text selection based on the time of year. Consider choosing a recommended beginning of year unit for supporting students through remediation or choose a mid-year or end-of-year unit to advance learning or prepare students for the upcoming school year.

Either way, choosing a unit with students in mind can increase investment and engagement in the novel. One teacher shared that the Lord of the Flies unit allowed students to be “immersed in deep concepts and look at things in a different light, that they would not normally think of. It helps get them involved in the plot of the novel and feel part of it.”

Knowledge and Retrieval:

As previously mentioned, Our student-facing materials provide students with the knowledge-building tools needed to see success in these novel-based units. A knowledge organizer makes the end of unit understandings transparent from the launch of the unit. Daily lesson handouts include a Do Now, Vocabulary Practice, Retrieval Practice and all essential knowledge students will need to access the reading and learning for the day. Additionally, materials also include embedded non-fiction and light embellishments to support teachers and students with key background knowledge needed to access pivotal moments of the text without spending valuable learning time with front-loading content. Including these knowledge-building moments at the “just right” moment allows students to build genuine connections between the non-fiction and the fictional text at the center of the class and deepen their learning and connection to the text.

Teachers will be better able to assess and respond to students’ understandings with the recursive practice embedded throughout units. Vocabulary lessons include recursive practice that revisits key literary and content-specific terms students will need to access the day’s materials and encode into their long-term memory for future study and application. Retrieval practice also assesses students’ understanding and retention of key knowledge and skills taught throughout the unit. Additionally, daily lessons include recursive practice of newly taught and previously learned content from the Do Now to the Exit Ticket. Teachers can leverage various portions of each lesson to gather data and best plan for how to respond to this data using the provided lesson materials.

One school leader had this to share about the retrieval practice:

I love the vocabulary boxes for exposure and how these are embedded words in the text. I also appreciate the periodic review of terms. The retrieval practices are a great quick check for where students are at and to emphasize what key details students need to retain.

One-Stop Shop:

The book-based Reading Reconsidered curriculum is highly regarded by school leaders and teachers because of its rigor, its accessibility and the embedded teacher support. Teachers are provided with unit and lesson plans that outline essential unit understandings as well as the standards that are practiced and assessed throughout the unit. The lesson plans serve as guides for teachers to ensure effective implementation with suggestions for how to approach the day’s reading and plans for engaging students in the learning, and an additional benefit to having printable daily lesson plans and student packets is it simplifies planning and allows teachers to focus on assessing and responding to student work with intentional considerations for adaptations and differentiation to tailor lessons based on students’ abilities and needs. Ultimately, the Reading Reconsidered curriculum lowers the planning lift for summer school teachers and makes the curriculum well-poised to serve as a training and development tool for more novice teachers. What’s even better? All materials are shared in Word form for easy formatting, adapting, and printing.

If you are looking for a literacy curriculum for this summer, choose Reading Reconsidered for its:
- Novel-based, modular unit structure to best select rigorous and engaging text that invest students in the novel and their learning
- Consistent recursive practice that reviews key knowledge students will need to master the unit’s content and provides teachers with consistent data to inform data-driven instruction
- “One-stop” approach to essential teacher and student facing materials that support implementation and differentiation
Email us at ReadingCurriculum@teachlikeachampion.org if you’d like to learn more and click here to see additional sample materials .
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03/06/2025
California students have a unique opportunity to shape education policy

California State Board of Education student member Julia Clauson talks with First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom at a convening on smart phones hosted by the governor.

As national conversations about the role of states in public education unfold, it’s crucial to center these discussions around the most important stakeholders in our school system: students. In California, we ensure that student voices are included in policymaking by empowering them to become policymakers.

Within our state, there are numerous opportunities for students to get involved in education policy. One of the most significant opportunities for California students is applying to be the student board member for the State Board of Education, a position I currently hold. Every year, the governor appoints one student to serve, and the application and selection process takes place during the applicant’s junior year.

In fact, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently appointed my successor to the board, Vanessa Ejike, who is currently a junior at Whitney High School in Cerritos, California.

As my one-year term on the State Board of Education comes to an end this July, I reflect on the incredible opportunity I’ve had to represent the nearly 6 million students in California public schools. It’s an immense responsibility to be the only student with voting rights on the board. As the application opens for students in the class of 2027, I highly encourage all students to learn about the position and consider applying.

After the applications are received this fall, a screening committee for the State Board of Education selects 12 semifinalists, who are then invited to the Student Advisory Board on Education (SABE) hosted by the California Association of Student Councils. At SABE, the semifinalists present themselves to student delegates from across the state through speeches and question-and-answer sessions. This is a wonderful opportunity for them to showcase their advocacy, passions, and commitment to leadership. Finally, the student delegates at SABE vote for the top six candidates.

The top six semifinalists then interview with members of the State Board of Education, who select three finalists. During these interviews, candidates have the chance to share more about their past leadership experience, the topics they care about, and why they should be considered for the role. The board members select the three top candidates, who are then submitted to the governor’s office for interviews in the following months. The final selection is made by the governor.

Although the process may seem daunting, each step of the journey offers students opportunities to challenge themselves and develop leadership skills. I remember enjoying the chance to advocate for my community, share my perspective on policy, and engage with passionate students.

Since being appointed by Gov. Newsom, I have been able to connect with students from across California and work hard to bring their voices to the forefront of policy discussions. Outside of the board meetings in Sacramento, I have liaised with the Statewide Model Curriculum Coordinating Council and provided feedback on the developing Native American Studies curricula. I have also engaged with the National Association of State Boards of Education through their Student Advisory Council. Meeting and collaborating with student representatives from other states has been incredible, and together, we have worked to propose new policies that make high schools more engaging.

Last November, I met with the governor, the first partner, and various policymakers and educational leaders to discuss cellphone policies and restrictions. I was able to echo the concerns of my peers, amplify student voices, and learn from our leaders in education, health, and government.

To better connect with the diverse student body in California, I established the first student board member social media account (@ca_sbe_studentboardmember on Instagram). Since its inception, I’ve used the account to make policy more accessible by sharing information about board meetings, highlighting other student leaders, and providing opportunities for students to get involved with various councils and scholarships.

These are just a few examples of the impact the student board member can have. Each student who assumes this role has the freedom to make the position their own, identify their own priorities, and share their unique perspective.

Applying to be the student board member was initially daunting, but I’m incredibly grateful I took the step. Competing for the position offers applicants invaluable leadership and communication skills, fostering collaboration with various stakeholders in education policy.

All students in the class of 2027 should definitely apply to be the next student board member. It’s truly an exceptional and unique opportunity for students across California.

•••

Julia Clauson is the current student board member for the State Board of Education, California’s K-12 policymaking body for academic standards, curriculum, instructional materials, assessments and accountability.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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02/06/2025
Teacher diversity is an investment in students worth making and keeping

Participants in the Diversity in Leadership Institute’s Aspiring Principals of Color program.

Courtesy: Adela Montes / Diversity in Leadership Institute

Representation matters, especially in the classroom. Students can do better when they are instructed by a person who looks like them. As California is challenged by fiscal uncertainties, school districts are bracing themselves to establish their own budget priorities. Now more than ever, it is time for school districts to protect and realize their promises of establishing and maintaining teacher diversity that is reflective of the students and communities they serve.

Two years ago, the Los Angeles Unified School Board demonstrated its commitment to Black students, educators and families by passing a resolution on Black student excellence through educator civersity, preparation and retention. The resolution demonstrates the district’s commitment to foster a more inclusive and equitable educational landscape.

But resolutions are only as good as their implementation. Los Angeles Unified has taken some initial steps that can be built upon and expanded to serve as a model for other districts.

In addition to prioritizing workforce diversity in the district’s Ready for the World strategic plan, one of the district’s key initiatives has been to create affinity spaces for Black male and female educators. These spaces provide a supportive environment for Black educators to connect, share experiences, and receive mentorship and support throughout their careers. This effort is a crucial step toward increasing the representation of Black educators in the teaching profession and fostering inclusivity.

Another significant initiative has been the district’s targeted recruitment efforts at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to diversify the teaching pipeline. By partnering with institutions like Cal State Dominguez Hills, the district has secured funding for programs that support Black students pursuing careers in education. This effort is a vital step toward addressing the longstanding inequities faced by Black students and educators.

Additionally, the district has established mentorship and support programs to incentivize students to pursue careers in education and facilitate a seamless transition into the profession. The Educators of Tomorrow program, for example, offers financial incentives to students pursuing teaching credentials and provides resources and support to facilitate their career transitions. Moreover, the district’s collaboration with nonprofits to expand the Black educator pipeline and the emphasis on mentorship opportunities within the district demonstrate a concerted effort to nurture talent and foster growth.

These efforts are not limited to Los Angeles Unified. In the Bay Area, Emery Unified School District is seeing progress through targeted approaches to improving outcomes for Black students by shifting to equity-based grading, paying teachers to tutor outside of school hours and continuing its focus on recruiting Black educators, among other strategic approaches.

And recognizing the need to invest more in school leadership, in July 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California State Legislature approved the Diverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative, a $10 million dollar grant program, to address the need for a more diverse and culturally responsive education leadership workforce.

Administered by the California Commission on Teaching Credentialing, this initiative seeks to credential and train over 300 new administrators across the state over the next four years. To recruit, support and retain educators, particularly those of color, we must have a pipeline of culturally responsive school leaders.

These local and state initiatives must be celebrated, supported and replicated. But while we celebrate Los Angeles Unified’s efforts to date, we know more transparency and engagement with community stakeholders is vital for realizing the promise of the district’s 2021 resolution. We also know others cannot follow what they can’t see. Los Angeles Unified and districts across California must share their data and learning so that others can join in taking action too.

Fiscal uncertainties can undermine progress and change if our leaders don’t uphold their commitments and maintain their courage. Districts have shown progress toward ensuring our schools reflect the students and communities they serve. Our state and district leaders can’t stop investing and prioritizing teacher diversity now.

We can’t build a better tomorrow for California’s students and families of color without keeping and making the necessary investments of today.

●●●

Laura McGowan-Robinson, Ed.D., is CEO of the Diversity in Leadership Institute, a nonprofit working to build a movement of racially diverse and culturally competent public education leaders.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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02/06/2025
USC students march in protest of decision to cancel valedictorian’s speech

Students march in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the University of Southern California on April 18, 2024.

Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

Holding Palestinian flags and signs calling for “Justice for Asna,” hundreds of University of Southern California students gathered Thursday to march in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the university.

The students, many of them wearing hoodies and masks, which they said symbolized the silencing of the valedictorian, first gathered by the Tommy Trojan statue near the center of campus. They then marched across campus, often chanting “let her speak” and holding signs with the same message in the Palestinian colors of red, green and black.

The march was the latest protest of the university’s decision to cancel the May 10 speech. The valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, is a biomedical engineering major with an interdisciplinary minor in resistance to genocide. USC officials said they canceled the speech because of security risks, telling EdSource in a statement Thursday that university leadership made the decision in consultation with campus law enforcement. They did not disclose the specific security risks facing the university.

“While the decision was difficult, it was necessary to maintain and prioritize the security of the USC community during the coming weeks, and to allow those attending commencement to focus on the celebration our graduates deserve,” the university said. “Nothing can take precedence over the safety of our community.”

Students march near the Tommy Trojan statue in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the University of Southern California on Thursday, citing unspecified safety concerns.
Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

Pro-Palestinian student groups and other supporters, meanwhile, say the university is perpetuating Islamophobia with its decision.

“It’s very disappointing that USC is very proactive in theory, for students, but then (the university does) not deliver,” USC student Aisha Patel said. “It’s a slap in the face that they won’t let her speak.”

Patel said that as a fellow Muslim woman, she feels represented and supported by Tabassum — and that the university’s decision to cancel her speech “silences the voices of people who visibly look like me.”

An international student at USC from Syria who did not want to be named, said the decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech “devastated and shocked me to my core.”

“When I came to the U.S., I thought this was a freedom of speech country and I thought I could express myself,” the student said. “It’s so upsetting that this is happening. If you can’t express yourself in America, then where can you do that?”

No pro-Israel demonstrators were seen near Thursday’s march.

The tensions between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli students at USC and on other college campuses have heightened dramatically since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, after which Israel responded with a bombardment of Gaza. The Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and another 240 were taken hostage. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza — mostly women and children — since Israel launched its military response.

The conflict has rattled universities across the country with administrators challenged to uphold freedom of speech amid charges that some speech is hateful antisemitism or Islamophobic.

USC officials have said the decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech has nothing to do with freedom of speech, since no individual student is entitled to speak at commencement. Some free speech experts have still criticized the decision, arguing that selecting her as valedictorian only to cancel the speech raises red flags about the speech climate on campus. The decision also has given Tabassum a platform beyond what she would have had at the graduation. She has been widely interviewed in national and international media. “When you silence us,” she told the Los Angeles Times, “you make us louder.”

USC students rally in support of a Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, after her planned commencement speech was canceled .
Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

After USC initially announced Tabassum as a commencement speaker, a number of pro-Israel groups, both on and off the campus, criticized the decision, with some attacking Tabassum over a link in her Instagram bio. The link leads to a webpage that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help.” Pro-Israel groups took issue with another part of the website that says Zionism is a “racist settler-colonial ideology.”

Rabbi Dov Wagner, who runs the Chabad Jewish Center at USC, said in a statement on Instagram this week that while he has nothing against Tabassum, the initial selection of her as valedictorian “has caused great distress” to Jewish students at USC. He said the speech featured on Tabassum’s social media “is antisemitic and hate speech.”

USC officials previously said that discussion related to the selection of Tabassum had taken on an “alarming tenor,” including from voices outside of the university.

Tabassum said in her own statement issued this week that she isn’t aware of any specific threats made against herself or the university and that she requested “details underlying the university’s threat assessment” but that the request was denied.

“There remain serious doubts about whether USC’s decision to revoke my invitation to speak is made solely on the basis of safety,” she added.

She also said that while she wasn’t surprised “by those who attempt to propagate hatred,” she was surprised that USC “abandoned me.”

USC student Hafeez Mir said he attended the march because “it’s outrageous to see the university succumb to external pressures and strip this honor away from her.”

Students protest USC’s cancellation of a planned commencement speech by a Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum.
Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

“She earned this honor and she is far and beyond deserving of it,” Mir said.

Tabassum also has the support of 66 student and local groups who signed an open letter calling on USC to reverse its decision and allow Tabassum to speak at commencement.

In the letter, authored by Trojans for Palestine and 65 co-signer groups, the students wrote that USC “perpetuates and engages in Islamophobia and xenophobia by bowing” to outside groups that called for Tabassum to be disinvited.

“We demand that the University recognize its grave error and allow Tabassum to give her speech at graduation, provide her with whatever safety measures she requests — as has been provided for former presidents and governors, royalty, artists, musicians, professional athletes and others — and publicly apologize to her for acquiescing to a campaign of intimidation and harassment,” they added.

Meanwhile, some free speech advocates have criticized USC for canceling the speech. Alex Morey, the director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), wrote in a blog post that “with no sense that USC actually received any threats or took any steps to secure the event short of canceling it,” the decision appears to be “a calculated move to quiet the critics.”

USC Provost Andrew Guzman said in a statement this week that there is “no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement” and that the decision to cancel the speech “has nothing to do with freedom of speech.”

Morey wrote that while she agrees that no student is entitled to speak, her organization disagrees with Guzman’s assertion that the decision has nothing to do with free speech.

“But once USC has selected a student for this honor, canceling her speech based on criticism of her viewpoint definitely implicates the campus speech climate in important ways,” Morey wrote. She added that administrators should have done “everything in their power to provide adequate security” and that canceling the speech should have been a last resort.

Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

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02/06/2025
California colleges agree on how to interpret in-state tuition law for undocumented students
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Credit: Ashley Bolter / EdSource

Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

More than 20 years ago, California passed a law allowing some undocumented immigrant students to attend college with in-state tuition, if they meet certain requirements.

But immigrant rights advocates say many students who should have been eligible have been wrongfully denied in-state tuition because of confusion over requirements, misinformation and different interpretations of the law at different college campuses.

“We lose that incredible brain power and colleges are losing enrollment,” said Nancy Jodaitis, director of higher education for Immigrants Rising, a nonprofit organization that advocates for undocumented people to achieve educational and career goals.

Immigrants Rising brought together officials from all three public college systems — California Community Colleges, California State University and University of California — to discuss and agree on answers to frequently-asked questions about the law.

The result is a document called the Systemwide AB 540 FAQ, which all three systems have now signed. The document includes answers to 59 questions, such as:
- What if a student graduated from a California high school (completing three years’ worth of high school credits), but did not attend three years at a California high school?
- Does a student have to take classes full time for their attendance to count?
- Does all their coursework have to be taken at the same school?
Spokespeople from UC, CSU and California Community Colleges all celebrated the document.

Paul Feist, vice chancellor of communications and marketing for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, said the document is particularly important because there are several different laws regarding the nonresident tuition exemption.

The first bill exempting some undocumented immigrants from out-of-state tuition, Assembly Bill 540, was signed into law in 2001. Since then, three other bills have been passed to expand the law, in 2014, 2017 and 2022.

“While the intent was to expand access to AB 540 financial assistance, they had the unintended effect of making it more difficult to navigate,” Feist said. “This FAQ is designed to provide clearer explanations and provide additional resources in advising students.”

Under current California law, students who are undocumented or have temporary protection from deportation such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, are eligible for in-state tuition and state financial aid, if they attended at least three years of high school, adult school or community college in California and obtained a high school diploma or equivalent, an associate degree or fulfilled the minimum requirements to transfer to a UC or CSU.

Access to state financial aid and in-state tuition can be a critical factor for undocumented students, who are barred from receiving federal financial aid. Without the law in place, some of them would be charged tuition rates for international students, often much higher than in-state tuition.

“This is huge,” said Maria Gutierrez, a college counselor at Chabot College in Hayward and a doctoral student at San Francisco State University. “It helps us be aligned and have something in writing.” Before the FAQ document, Gutierrez says college staff in charge of approving exemptions from out-of-state tuition were sometimes afraid to make decisions without written proof of how to interpret the law.

Gutierrez herself has benefited from AB 540. She came to the U.S. when she was 5 years old on a visa, which later expired. She attended elementary, middle and most of high school in California. She also graduated from high school in California. But when she applied to attend community college in California, different campuses disagreed on whether she was eligible for in-state tuition because she had spent two years of high school in Utah. At the time, a second law had recently been passed to allow colleges to consider years of attendance in elementary and middle school for AB 540 eligibility.

“One college that I went to in So Cal, I was approved for AB 540. When I had to go back to the Bay Area, I was not approved for AB 540. So then I was confused that there was this inconsistency,” Gutierrez said.

A few years later, when she applied to transfer to a four-year college, both UC and CSU campuses told her she was not eligible for in-state tuition, even though by then, a law had passed that clarified that attendance at community college could be counted toward the requirements. She spent a semester paying out-of-state tuition at San Jose State University, before the university finally acknowledged she was legally eligible for in-state tuition.

As a college counselor, Gutierrez continues to meet students who have been incorrectly told they are not eligible for in-state tuition.

“It’s crazy because in reality it hasn’t changed much,” she said. However, she said, the financial burden is harder now, because most students graduating from high school cannot apply for work permits under DACA, because the government has not accepted new applications since 2017.

“I see my students now and I see the struggles they’re going through. If I didn’t have DACA, I honestly don’t think I would be where I am now,” Gutierrez said. “There’s no way that I would’ve been able to pay nonresident fees or wait for whoever it is that is determining that to learn what they need to do for me to be able to go to college.”

Advocates say they hope the document will help colleges give correct information and avoid students having to research on their own for information.

California also recently streamlined the process for undocumented students to apply for financial aid and exemption from in-state tuition on the same application when they fill out the California Dream Act application. In the past, students had to both fill out a California Dream Act application and an AB 540 affidavit form for each college. Now, the AB 540 form will be part of the same application.

Diana Aguilar-Cruz said that change is significant. Aguilar-Cruz is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public health at Cal State Fullerton. When she first began her undergraduate education at Cal Poly Pomona, she was charged nonresident tuition, which was almost double the in-state tuition. She had immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico City in 2015, when she was 14 years old, and lived with her grandmother in Baldwin Park while attending high school.

She had completed a California Dream Act application, but no one told her she also had to complete a separate form. After researching it herself online, she found the form and completed it, at which point the university finally changed her tuition to in-state.

“If I didn’t find it in my Google search, would I be paying in-state tuition for my four years of college?” Aguilar-Cruz said. “I always think to myself, what would have happened if I was a more fearful student or a student who did not have a strong support system at home?”

This article was corrected to clarify how Maria Gutierrez immigrated to the U.S. and that Chabot College is in Hayward.
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31/05/2025
We must do more to prepare California students to confront climate change

Piedmont seventh graders participate in the global strike for climate change in San Francisco in 2019.

Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource

I live on the coast of California, near the Point Reyes National Seashore. In February 2023, we endured an abnormally violent storm with 60 mph wind gusts that brought down a large redwood tree onto two cars parked in my driveway. I was shaken but grateful to be alive. I was also grateful for the generosity of my neighbor who allowed me to borrow her car for the next two weeks as I sorted things out.

When the time came to return the borrowed car, I made sure to wash it, clean it out and return it with a full gas tank. I recalled hearing my father’s voice telling me to always return something you borrowed in better shape than when you got it.

I realize that my generation of baby boomers has essentially “borrowed” and used the planet for our own purposes for the past 50 years. And now it is time for us to return what we borrowed — and turn it over to the next generation.

Fifty years of population growth, industrial expansion, carbon burning and general lack of care has initiated a process of climate change that is generating a multitude of physical, economic and social crises. We are trying to mitigate these changes, but no matter how well we do that, we will nonetheless be turning over the planet to the next generation with irreparable damage done and in a state of accelerating decline.

So what else can my generation do?

I think our generation owes it to the next generation to prepare them as well as we can for the world they will face. If we cannot return the earth to them in good shape, we can at least give them a powerful education so that they can survive — and do better than we have done — when it is their turn to assume stewardship of the planet.

Preparing our children for the world they will inherit is the right thing to do — for them and for us. But it also could be very good for the California education system. Preparing students for the world they will inherit could help schools find renewed purpose and achieve the relevance that students are demanding.

In 2015, California published its Blueprint for Environmental Literacy. The document points out that K-12 students in California do not currently have “consistent access to adequately funded, high-quality learning experiences, in and out of the classroom, that build environmental literacy.” Many receive only a limited introduction to environmental content, and some have no access at all.

Why has so little changed in our schools over the nine years since the blueprint was published?

One answer is that the state has not made environmental or climate change education a priority, nor has it invested in long-term, well-crafted initiatives to develop the capacity and propensity of the educational system to change itself. The state does relatively little to develop the curriculum, assessments and professional development that is required to create learning opportunities that can help students prepare for a world dominated by climate change.

Over the next five years, California is planning to invest about $10 billion a year to combat the effects of climate change. By contrast, the state presently invests less than 0.1% of this amount to support the development of climate change education.

This means that for every $100 the state spends fighting climate change, it spends less than 1 cent on educating its students to understand the need for those efforts.

For every student in California, we spend over $20,000 a year on their school education. Of this amount, we devote less than $2 per student annually to develop our capacity to promote climate change literacy.

The Covid pandemic provides a clear example of what happens when investment in science and investment in education are not well-balanced. The nation succeeded in creating vaccines that were successful at fending off the worst effects of this new Covid virus. However, the lack of public understanding of vaccines, and in the science behind them, severely limited their timely adoption and success.

The same is true with climate change. In the long term, we will not be able address climate change without an equal emphasis on climate change education.

California is taking the lead in the nation in supporting policies and research that fight climate change. It could do the same with climate change education.

We very much need the next generation to be smarter and wiser than mine. This is not just my generation’s idea of what is good for our youth. They are already demanding of us that we do better in terms of mitigation, adaptation and education. Can we look them in the eye and honestly say to them that we are doing everything we can do to prepare them for what is coming?

•••

Mark St. John is founder of Inverness Research, a nonprofit organization that studies education initiatives, and a consultant to Ten Strands, a nonprofit organization promoting environmental literacy for California students.

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31/05/2025