For 13 years of my professional life, my days included planning lessons and teaching a group of 30 children how to read, write, and manipulate numbers. I nurtured their imaginations, instructed them on forming their letters correctly, and listened to their ambitions and funny little stories. I loved my job and I was an effective educator.

Now that we're all practicing some sort of social distancing, parents everywhere are being faced with a slew of challenges. But a global pandemic isn't the time to worry about setting up a Pinterest-inspired home classroom. With 13 years of experience as an educator, I can confidently tell you that your child's teachers have resources and expertise that are very difficult, if not impossible, to replicate right now! Not only that, but parents area also juggling other demands like working from hom

Brain breaks help children by replenishing attention, improving learning, and boosting creativity. But, it turns out we might all benefit from giving our brains more downtime. Here’s why.

We chatted with teachers of all grades to see what they're hoping to receive this holiday season from their students. The verdict? This fab list of suggestions that'll help take the guesswork out of finding just the right gift for your child's teacher.

From the first time your young child asks you innocently where babies come from, to fielding questions about contraception and STIs from teens, parents are faced with the very real need to provide their children with the facts of life. But how much of this information should be coming from their teachers and what's the state of sex education in schools?

Learning about sexuality, and anatomy is a vital part of growing up. As sex education varies so widely across the country and some states completely opt-out of teaching kids anything about their own bodies, the basics of reproduction, issues of consent, unintended pregnancies, STIs and contraception, it falls on parents to do the heavy lifting.

Being open and honest about sexuality with your kids is a surefire way to raise confident, body-positive young people who understand their worth. It will also ensure your children are armed with the resources and information to make informed choices about their bodies and their lives. However, it can be hard to know where to start, especially if your own sex education was a little lacking.

For Fall babies parents have to make a tough choice: delay their entry to school until the following year or put them in a class with much older children. Transitional Kindergarten programs offer another solution.

Help your child to start their school life on the right foot, by checking their Kindergarten readiness against this set of commonly assessed skills.

Supporting your child's early learning is as simple as sharing a song. Check out these Kindergarten songs you can find online that make learning fun for the whole family.

Parents can now select an "X" gender marker on birth certificates. Experts explain how this can help parents raise gender-neutral children, but there are still a lot of unknowns for what the "X" means as these kids grow up.

Going away to college is an exciting time in anyone's life. You're starting your journey toward independence and maturity as well as achieving an academic milestone. However, not all colleges are equal, and making the decision about which institutions you want to apply to can be complicated.

Since moving to North America I’ve realised just how overworked UK teachers and school administrators are compared to their transatlantic contemporaries. My teacher friends back home in Blighty are exhausted. It seems that there’s not a week that doesn’t go by when they’re not handed duties that, actually, shouldn’t really be school issues at all. British teachers are expected to be curriculum experts, assessment wizards, social workers, nurses, nutritionists, and lead a whole host of extracurricular activities while triple marking students work to appease overzealous Ofsted inspectors.

Packing up and moving to another country is an exciting yet stressful proposition. Finding schooling for your children abroad can be another mammoth task to tick off your growing to do list. If your child has a diagnosed learning difficulty or particular special educational needs, it can be even more important to get it right.

Sometime over the summer vacation, you can usually expect your child's school to send a letter or email letting you know which class they will be entering and who their new teacher will be. This information might be met with delight or perhaps surprise — but what if the announcement leaves your child upset? I was a teacher for 13 years, and in that time, more than 400 students passed through my class. I formed wonderful relationships with the vast majority of them, who I recall with fond memori

Moving to a new school is exciting, but it can also be a tough transition for kids — from navigating a new school building to finding their place in a new class to striving to make friends all over again. Your child may experience feelings of stress and anxiety; sometimes, switching schools can even be as stressful as going through another tumultuous kid life change such as loss or divorce.

Our modern lives are busier than ever. In many families, both parents work full time and weekdays are spent organizing and moving children from home to school and back again. By the time daily activities, chores and dinner prep are completed there can be little time left over for extracurricular activities.

Summer internships, especially at large companies, can be fiercely competitive. Students want the opportunity to earn a little extra money, increase their network of contacts, and learn vital skills to bolster their future career prospects.

I moved to North America from the UK over a decade ago, and when I first arrived, I missed all sorts of things, from TV shows and foods to country-specific lesson content. To ease my homesickness, I decided to set up a pen pal exchange between my new school and my old school back in England. I asked a former colleague if she was interested in her students becoming pen pals with mine.

Teaching small children is a rewarding yet challenging career choice. Each day, you'll have the opportunity to make a meaningful and lasting impact on the lives of children and their families. You'll also, unfortunately, have the potential to cause harm.