Students and parents acknowledged the dedication and hard work of teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week (May 6-11), but what are schools doing to attract and retain teachers?

It seemed easy enough, get assigned a hypothetical salary and spend it on essentials, but for some of our students, a financial literacy event called Bite of Reality opened their eyes to the challenges of creating a budget and living within their means.

High school math teacher Bobby Trunz always has a few guitars at his desk, and when students ask why, he invites them to join his beginning guitar class.

For almost two years, Jayvon had been without a place to call home and often slept in a park. The park as it happened, was across the street from one of our schools.

Some kids may be fascinated by the gang lifestyle and love the rush and adrenaline of breaking the law, according to Robert Ontiveros, former gang member and CEO of Community Wraparound, a nonprofit organization that focuses on mentoring to keep teens out of gangs.

This week, 16-year-old Joey will sleep in a soft bed, take a warm shower and have a place to keep his belongings. He’ll then make his way to our school where he is catching up on credits and hopes to graduate soon. For most of the past year, he has experienced homelessness – couch surfing […]

After years of multiple suspensions at her previous school, Shanelle enrolled here at the age of 13. During her sophomore year and only 15 years-old, she found out she was pregnant. Two years later, her mother and only family support passed away from cancer and she was forced to take time away from school to […]

They’re part friend, part cheerleader and part problem solver. They are the retention specialists who work in our 80+ schools and they have one goal – to identify students who are at risk of dropping out and develop a multi-level approach to re-engage these students. When Raymond hadn’t shown up at school for a few […]

Yes, the pandemic created huge learning losses for millions of students, so what’s being done about it? “We work with many students who used to come to us as freshmen reading at a fifth-grade level,” explained Kathyrn Limata, literacy teacher. “Now, most of the students I see in my literacy classes are at a third-grade […]

Matthew’s upbringing was conflicted; he grew up in a good home, but he had a broken family. His parents were divorced, but they were always supportive and pushed him to excel. Middle school was challenging because students would often pick on him and, being a pacifist, he didn’t really defend himself. He tried hard to […]