The pathway to higher education brought me to Rutgers University-Camden in 1981, where I am now a professor and director of the Community Leadership Center. Enrolling there helped me build the social and political capital to establish LEAP Academy — Camden’s first charter school — in 1997. Since then, the school has grown from five trailers on an abandoned lot to a complex of transformed historic buildings along Cooper Street. 

Thousands of students have passed through our doors, and we have maintained 100% high school and college graduation rates. That has been our mission for 30 years. It is an ambitious goal, especially in a city like Camden, where nearly 30% of residents live below the poverty line and the district’s high school graduation rate hovers around 65%. Many young people in the city are left without a diploma and few opportunities ahead.

I am incredibly proud of what LEAP Academy has achieved for Camden’s students, families and educators. But K-12 education alone is not enough. Real generational change — especially for Black and Hispanic students — comes from obtaining a college degree and the financial support necessary to make that possible.

While a strong K-12 education provides essential groundwork, access to quality post-secondary education, career training and a broader approach to addressing systemic inequalities are all necessary to truly break the cycle of poverty.

This past June, I watched 160 students — all Black or Hispanic, many first-generation college-goers — walk across LEAP’s graduation stage. Each one took a step toward a degree, a career and a brighter future. For them, college is more than an academic achievement, it is a generational breakthrough.

So how does LEAP’s approach to college access work?

We set high expectations at an early age, remove financial barriers for families and challenge high school seniors to complete a full schedule of college courses.

At LEAP, getting ready for college starts in pre-K. With sponsorship from Rutgers University, young children can attend an early learning program that continues into LEAP’s K-12 school. Parents volunteer 40 hours each year, helping to make the school stronger for everyone. Even in the early grades, students at LEAP spend 10 more days in school than those attending neighboring public schools. We also serve as a community hub, opening our buildings at 7:15 a.m. for breakfast and keeping them open until 6:15 p.m. to provide students with additional instruction, tutoring, extracurricular clubs and intramural sports.

Each of our five buildings has a College Access Center. For students in K-8, center staffers  monitor their grades, explain how their academic progress connects to college readiness and update parents on how their children’s performance stacks up to college-ready skills. These services intensify in high school, as students prepare to apply to college. In addition, the team presents programs that introduce students to career possibilities in areas such as STEM, law, architecture, business and writing — all fields that can be pursued through college study.

In high school, students take real college classes taught by professors at Rutgers and Rowan universities. This helps these inner-city students build strong skills and feel more confident about life after high school. Graduate students from Rutgers-Camden, tutor LEAP students during the school day and after school when needed, for example, in tough classes like statistics.

Over 1,200 LEAP students have graduated with a full year of college credits, positioning them to finish college in three years and saving on tuition costs for families.

In addition, LEAP pays full tuition through the Alfredo and Gloria Bonilla-Santiago Endowed Scholarship for graduates who maintain a 3.5 GPA during their time at LEAP, have four or fewer unexcused absences during the year and need financial aid. Hundreds of students who maintain a 3.0 GPA at Rutgers University’s three campuses receive full tuition. 

An added benefit: As our students achieve college success, Camden receives a surge of intellectual capital.

Without an educated workforce, sustainable economic investment is unlikely. Companies will invest only if they believe they can find prepared, local talent. A city filled with college-educated citizens is not a dream — it is an economic imperative.

Today, Camden’s workforce is expanding, and residents are actively working to revitalize the city. From growing waterfront businesses to local hospitals and universities, LEAP graduates are shaping the city’s future while delivering valuable services to the broader community and helping to renew civic pride.

Yet troubling trends are emerging. Across the country, skepticism about the value of college is growing. One survey found that only have confidence in higher education. Another showed that believe earning a bachelor’s degree is important for getting a good-paying job.

This level of doubt is both misguided and dangerous. While some companies have removed degree requirements from job postings to demonstrate skills-based hiring, is still a criterion that managers use to determine whether a candidate brings the right skills to the table. College isn’t just about skills — it’s about learning to think critically, collaborate effectively and broaden perspectives. It’s where students meet peers from different backgrounds, build lasting relationships and expand their world views. Hiring managers compare job candidates against one another, and having a college degree weighs in favor of applicants who’ve earned one.

Undervaluing higher education risks breaking the very link that lifts up both students and cities. Disrupting the cycle of poverty requires year-round work and unwavering dedication. It takes educators who believe in their students, families who stay engaged and communities willing to invest.

Parents, educators and policymakers invested in K-12 education must never lose sight of what truly matters when transforming urban communities: helping every student envision a future beyond high school, and equipping them with the tools to reach it.

At San Tan Heights K-8, my team and I are looking at every aspect of how we educate students. Among the most important changes we’ve made is departmentalizing our teaching teams by subjects in grades K-8. Our grade-level teachers are now specialists, and our students rotate between classrooms — starting in kindergarten.

Departmentalization isn’t a big deal in middle or high schools, but it’s rare in elementary settings and virtually nonexistent in the early grades. Making the shift meant altering schedules, getting the children used to transitioning from class to class, building new professional development programming and more. Working with , a developer of high-quality curriculum, we started two years ago with third grade and up. At first, the teachers were nervous. But soon they were feeling less scattered, more focused and better at their jobs. Now, the whole school operates this way. 

The morning starts with an advisory, or homeroom, lasting about 20 minutes and focusing on social and emotional learning. This sets a positive tone for the day. The homerooms are led by our math, reading and English language arts/social studies teachers, so when advisory ends, students stay in that room for their first academic class.

Each grade level has three class rotations, and each class lasts 86 minutes. In kindergarten through third grade, one dedicated reading teacher works across grades on foundational skills. There is one English language arts teacher per grade, who also provides social studies instruction, and one math instructor, who also teaches science. 

Every grade is divided into three cohorts, and these groups of children move from class to class together. We keep the transition time short, just about two minutes, to limit distractions and misbehavior in the hallways. 

So far, the preliminary evidence indicates the change is producing positive benefits. For the first time in our school’s history, we experienced the highest growth in our district in both English and math, and I believe departmentalization has played a key role. 

We’ve also seen improvements in our school culture and climate.

Students enjoy rotating classrooms during the day. It gives them a chance to move. And because they’re traveling together in assigned groups, they get to know one another well.

We had initially worried that teachers might have trouble building relationships with their students if they didn’t have the same kids all day. But we’ve found teachers can build great relationships with students if they have them for about an hour and a half a day and connect with them in meaningful and engaging ways on the subject at hand.

Departmentalization has also allowed educators to go deep into the subjects they teach and become the experts students need — especially given pandemic-related learning gaps. For example, our literacy teachers have been able to devote time to studying research related to the science of reading without feeling like they’re shortchanging other subject areas. Similarly, our math teachers have stepped back and studied , received intensive coaching and learned new problem-solving and mathematical modeling approaches.

Our school, like many others, has replaced outdated curricula with higher-quality options, and more rigorous materials ask more of teachers. For example, they tend to require more time planning and preparing lessons. Departmentalization has given them that flexibility, and it allows our school leaders to tailor professional development offerings to their specific needs, based on the content they teach. They also get more opportunities to build their knowledge and collaborate with peers who teach the same subject in the grades above and below theirs. This allows teachers to explore how content builds upon itself from grade to grade.

As a result, teacher satisfaction is on the rise, leading to increased retention. Our school’s usual attrition rate has usually been around 30%, but in 2022-23, it dropped to 13% percent. Also this past year, half of the open positions at the school were filled by teachers within the district who requested to transfer in. That has never happened before.

Our teachers are happy because we’ve made them partners in the restructuring. Their input was critical when determining which educators to assign to each subject, a decision that also involved data showing which were the most effective. Once we moved to departmentalized instruction, I encouraged teachers to share feedback on how things were going as we progressed. Their insights have informed our practices — which are being evaluated by researchers from Johns Hopkins University over the course of a five-year study.
For elementary school leaders interested in departmentalizing, my advice is: Try it. You can always switch back if it doesn’t work, but I doubt that will happen. We at San Tan Heights welcome the chance to share what we’ve learned and help more schools close pandemic-era learning gaps by adopting this revolutionary approach. It’s well past time to rethink what schools are doing and take steps that can make a big difference in young lives.

Joy is a that causes the release of two types of neurotransmitters in the brain: dopamine and serotonin. These chemical messengers cause us to smile, laugh or even jump for joy. But the feeling is not limited to physical response. When children experience joy, information flows freely and of what they learned. Teaching and learning that induce joy and result in joyful classrooms are integral to helping students thrive and should . Research reveals that certain conditions lend to students feeling joy in the classroom. In one documenting the emotions of first and second graders, students responded most positively to student-centered learning that allowed them to “shine as experts” by making their own choices.

With so many children and adolescents having suffered adverse effects to their , and well-being due to the COVID-19 pandemic, infusing joy in learning feels more critical and valuable than ever. What produces joy may be personal, but there are many research-backed strategies that, when incorporated into classroom activities, can lead children to experience joy and begin to cultivate it within themselves. 

Discovery: Learning activities that help children engage in independent discovery make them feel joyful, whether it’s reading a new word, unearthing a solution to a complex problem or experiencing an “aha” moment when something clicks. Further, when students figure something out for themselves, they are more likely to and feel more pride and confidence in themselves.

Identity: Individuals with a more mature sense of identity . Participating in activities that allow students to explore and , and feel their identities are being recognized and appreciated by others, yields joy and an increased sense of belonging. 

Connection: Feeling connected to others and oneself generates joy.he health and academic  benefits of are well documented. Designing activities in which children collaborate to complete a task and solve problems with their peers on their own terms helps them form, enjoy and sustain connections with one another.

Movement: Movement and physical activity have a positive effect and , along with , including cognitive functioning, behavior in school and even grades. Programs such as integrate physical activity into various aspects of the curriculum to keep children moving throughout the school day and experiencing the effects of joy.

Play: Play has the potential to bring all of the above together. Dr. Stuart Brown of describes it as “a state of mind that one has when absorbed in an activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of sense of time.” Play is built into humans’ neurobiology, . It is essential to make sure kids have time and space to play every day.  

Embedding activities in the school day that elicit joy, such as those that incorporate discovery, identity, connection, movement and play, is invaluable. But great value also lies in asking children and adolescents directly what makes them feel joyful. This helps students recognize joy in themselves so they can cultivate and integrate it more fully into their lives. As educators, we need to answer the call to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing.

Even when suspensions significantly declined through the pandemic, racial disparities in school discipline persisted. COVID-19 only magnified how that created and those inequities .

While federal guidance and policy recommendations can help shape the conversation, they too often miss the point on practical solutions — particularly the fact that these solutions begin with supporting the .

For six years as a classroom teacher, I focused on improving school culture and discipline, realizing early on that if I didn’t, the very inclusive classroom spaces I sought to create for my predominantly Black students would be negated by traditional teaching approaches that punish them for culturally and age-appropriate behaviors. It became clear over time that discipline was actually less about practices that excluded students, and more about those that included them.

Here are five ways teachers can be supported to address school discipline this year. They are based on the , families and school community in South Los Angeles, in addition to my work as a consultant at the and research for the .

Understand the spectrum of school discipline. Although the past decade has yielded major efforts to reduce punitive discipline practices like suspensions and expulsions, it should be clear that discipline isn’t simply a response to behavior, but instead reflects a school’s .

In “,” my team of researchers and I found that there are varying approaches to school discipline that can be thought of as a continuum. Visualized on a chart divided into quadrants, a vertical axis defines the purpose of school discipline as running from domination to liberation and a horizontal axis defines a range of approaches for achieving it from exclusionary to educative. The latter is generally described as discipline that teaches students to develop self-discipline.

Teachers and administrators engage in different actions based on their beliefs about the purpose of and approaches to discipline. Beginning with this spectrum helps educators map not just where they’re at in their discipline practices, but where they want to be and how they can get there.

Invest in ongoing relationships with students, families and community. While the conversation around school discipline tends to focus on the exclusion of students from the classroom or school after an incident already occurred, the need for discipline is greatly reduced when teachers , families and surrounding community. These relationships help teachers learn more about their students, which not only develops deeper levels of trust but provides reference points for how to create a more inclusive environment that aligns academic and behavioral expectations in school and at home.

Ask the question of relevance. When behavior issues arise and discipline is needed, an often overlooked question is how relevant is what students are learning. Decades of research has found that effective teachers with the real, material conditions of their lives. As a way to measure relevance, whether every assignment they give students has some immediate, applicable lesson or deepens and widens their connection and understanding of their world. This level of purpose in including and engaging students in their learning can .

Sharpen culturally responsive teaching skills. Thinking critically about how to teach can help educators gain a deeper understanding of their students’ learning needs. Culturally responsive teaching — which stems from — considers students’ cultural backgrounds as strengths in the classroom and as a focal point for how to approach instruction. These students’ gender, age, socioeconomic status and where they live — is it in the suburbs or a rural area?

For example, in some cultures, interrupting shows engagement in the conversation, not disrespect. Culturally responsive teachers incorporate that in the lesson instead of disciplining students for it. Teachers wield significant power in shaping classrooms to include and validate culturally appropriate behaviors that are often otherwise targeted for exclusionary discipline.

When possible, smile. My students always used to tell me, “Mr. Pham, you should smile more.” I didn’t know it at the time, but their advice is that suggests greeting students “at the door sets a positive tone and can increase engagement and reduce disruptive behavior.” Although smiling in school is not always the easiest task, it might be that one small thing teachers can do to have a big impact on what already is proving to be a difficult year for students.

Like all Twilight Zone episodes, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is a parable. The lesson? People are all too quick to hate and fear what they do not understand. Hate and fear are fast-acting cancers; they can consume whole communities in the space of a single broadcast television program, or in a single election cycle.

When I read “Monsters” with my students, I could not have predicted that the story would serve as an apt metaphor for the school district where I first read it and where I spent the first five years of my career. Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, in north Texas, has given itself over to the monsters. Recently, a school board majority of four radical conservatives, elected with the help of and a “” , voted into existence a raft of policies that will harm students, teachers and families.

Any discussion of the existence of trans people is ; staff are free to call students by their deadnames and incorrect pronouns against the wishes of the students and their supportive parents. These policies, which go even further than the draconian measures already passed by the state legislature, will put already vulnerable students at . For example, LGBT+ youth who have at least one accepting adult in their lives are than those who don’t. Now, those supportive adults are gagged by district policy. Lives that were already going to be hard enough have now been placed in even more peril by an institution whose No. 1 job should be to protect them.

As a bonus, , long a staple of public school life,. Scholastic’s contract with the district, along with close to 19,000 additional outside vendor agreements, was canceled based on fears that some of the materials they provided “.”

One board member made headlines by publicly admitting she had of Grapevine-Colleyville’s first-ever Black high school principal, who . In the same breath, that board member also claimed that she and her conservative co-conspirators had . I have heard from many former co-workers who believe they may be on this list. They are unsure what their legal recourse may be, how being on such a list will impact their careers within the district or how it might hinder their pursuit of other opportunities.

I have not worked in Grapevine-Colleyville in many years, but I watch the collapse of this once stellar district into cruelty and absurdity with great personal sadness. Not only did I begin my career there; I was educated there from first grade through 12th. My mother spent most of her 38 years of teaching elementary and middle school in Grapevine-Colleyville. My niece and nephew attend the same elementary school I did. The district was never perfect, but in my time there, both as a student and a teacher, it was heading in the right direction. Teachers and administrators genuinely cared about Black and brown students and were taking steps to improve their educational outcomes; they were learning to navigate LGBT+ issues with compassion and grace. Generally, the people in this affluent suburb were mostly interested in living and letting live, in watching their children and their community thrive.

All that may now be lost, ground up in the teeth of the same rabid “conservative” movement that very nearly snuffed out American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021. 

A while back, when it was clear where the district was headed but before the board passed its horrifying new policies, my mother, the veteran teacher, asked if I would ever consider returning to Grapevine-Colleyville in an administrative role. I had to laugh. In addition to being a lifelong educator, I am an out and proud gay man. As much as I loved my time learning and teaching there, I would never put my professional reputation, or the life I have built with the man I love, on the line, living in constant fear of being called a “groomer” by an elected official or of being put on a secret undesirables list.

Many of my friends still working in Grapevine-Colleyville are looking for a way out. They are terrified. And they should be; a widely circulated from the last board meeting features a resident (and parent) foaming at the mouth in support of the new policies, “joking” graphically about sexual violence. He was not gaveled down by the board president or escorted from the room.

Plato teaches that democracies are inherently and inevitably at risk of collapse. Once know-nothingism and bigotry seize the levers of power, it is only a matter of time before societies sign their own death warrants, self-cannibalize and vote themselves into oblivion. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” closes with a similar sentiment: “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices … to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill … and suspicion can destroy … and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own — for the children and the children yet unborn.”

I hope the citizens of Grapevine-Colleyville heed this warning, and soon. They have only perhaps one or two more election cycles before the damage is irreparable and the monsters win for good. 

For those who live in “safe” places, who are absolutely certain such a hostile takeover could never happen, I beg you: Don’t fall into complacency. . Two candidates backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, , — the fifth largest school district in the United States.