Social studies teacher and Big Apple Award fellow Jay Maqsood discusses the merits of concept mapping to help students better retain and synthesize complex information and sets of data points.

While technology tools cannot and should not replace hands-on art making, these digital resources can be used to bring the arts, which may be otherwise lacking in your students’ school day, into your curriculum in meaningful ways.

For some teachers, summer is the time to take teacher institutes offered by notable organizations across the country that provide practical and unique learning experiences expressly designed for educators. 


As a school counselor, I recommend that classroom teachers do these four things to support students in their social-emotional growth. 


There are excellent online audio and visual resources that speech improvement teachers and classroom teachers alike can use to help students develop their listening and speaking skills. These media-rich resources provide ways to listen to language and isolate specific sounds and words that may need attention.

Incorporating strategies used by occupational, physical and speech therapists into classroom teaching can not only greatly benefit students with disabilities, but can also improve learning for all students. And the more teachers normalize using these strategies, the more special needs students will feel included and supported.