Education

Writing Is Great for the Mind—and So Is the Process of Revision
How Human Ecology Education Can Counter Learned Social Hierarchies
Highlander Research and Education Center Brings Old-School Expertise to Present-Day Issues
Enrollment in Nature Schools Soars as Families Rediscover the Benefits of Outdoor Learning
What Is Humanitarian Education and Does It Help Build Peace?
Investing in Care: A Public-Private Model for Youth Opportunity
How Earth-Centered Education Helps Children Learn Through Nature, Play, and Relationship
How Human Ecology Shapes Social Democracy
Criminalizing Childhood: When the Justice System Fails America’s Youth
Why Every Student Needs Human Ecology Education Now
How Student Loans Became America’s Financial Catastrophe
How Community Schools Can Transform Parent Involvement for the Better
How Human Ecology Education Defuses the Roots of Terrorism
Declining Reading Habits Threaten U.S. Democracy and Social Connection
The Hidden Crisis: How America Fails to Protect Its Children
Why There Is a Growing Student Absentee Rate—and How Community Schools Can Fix It
Why Food and Nutrition Deserves Its Own Public School Curriculum
What’s Behind Right-Wing Attacks on Schools for ‘Teaching Critical Race Theory’
The Right’s Long Game to End Public Education
The Community Schools Model
Why COVID-19 Proved Children Need Physical Schools, Not Virtual Education
Community Schools Were Succeeding in Oakland, But the District Shut Them Down Anyway
Community Schools Can Revitalize the Neighborhoods Around Them
Are Community Schools the Last, Best Shot at Addressing Education Inequity?
Little Free Library’s Not-So-Little Commitment to Getting the Word Out
How Academics Are Pushing Back on the For-Profit Academic Publishing Industry
Can Humanity Repair Its Relationship With Nature? Weaving Earth Education Center Offers a Promising Path
The Legacy of Betsy DeVos on Public Education
Corporations Are Turning Public Schools Into Their Workforce Training ‘Pipelines’
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Guide to Caring for Vulnerable Youth

Reynard Loki, The Observatory

This guide examines the challenges facing vulnerable youth in America and the role communities, institutions, and public systems play in protecting—or failing—them. Drawing on research into child welfare, poverty, health, justice, and systemic inequities, the series explores how overlapping crises—from hidden abuse and neglect to the criminalization of childhood and the long-term effects of economic instability—shape young lives and limit opportunity.

The first article explores America’s hidden crisis in child welfare, revealing how children in foster care, detention, and institutional settings often experience neglect, exploitation, and harm. The second article examines how the justice system criminalizes rather than protects vulnerable youth through punitive detention, weakened labor protections, and systemic inequities that push children toward incarceration instead of opportunity. The third article focuses on the relationship between poverty and youth health, arguing that inadequate healthcare, pollution exposure, malnutrition, and environmental inequality undermine children’s ability to learn, grow, and participate fully in society.

The fourth article shifts from diagnosis to possibility, exploring how communities might coordinate education, healthcare, mentorship, enrichment, and meaningful work opportunities under a shared developmental framework. Drawing on existing civic-service and workforce-development models, it argues that resilience is not simply an individual trait, but the product of sustained social investment and consistent support.

The fifth article broadens the lens further, asking why societies so often normalize harm to children across war, poverty, environmental contamination, displacement, and public policy. Drawing on developmental science, civil rights history, and international child welfare, it argues that protecting children requires more than compassion or legal commitments. Instead, it calls for stronger accountability, sustained prevention, coordinated institutions, and renewed community responsibility at every level of society.

Future installments continue the series by turning from systems back to people, exploring the responsibilities of the adults who stand closest to children and the communities that support them. Taken together, the series asks readers to confront not only how children are harmed, but also what kinds of communities, institutions, and moral commitments are required to help them thrive. Readers are invited to reflect on a central question: Does your community care about children?
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Guide to Human Ecology

Sandra Ericson, The Observatory

Human ecology begins in the most intimate corners of our lives. Every breath we take, every meal shared, every relationship nurtured within a neighborhood depends on the health of the living environments around us. Human ecology helps us see how daily choices are woven into larger social and ecological systems—and how those systems, in turn, shape our bodies, minds, and spirits. It invites us to consider both our material needs—food, water, shelter—and our psychosocial needs—belonging, purpose, and agency—and to understand how inseparably they are linked.

Each lens in this Guide encourages us to notice relationships: between people, communities, and the natural world. It examines how governance can support quality of life, how neighborhoods grow and adapt, how education shapes our understanding of one another, and how cultures share resources and respond to change. The Guide offers practical ways to live more gently—and more courageously—with one another and with the planet, showing that the patterns we create carry consequences across places and generations.

At its core, human ecology is about caring for ourselves, the communities that shape us, and the ecosystems that sustain every moment of life. When society teaches that human well-being and environmental health are part of the same story, a new possibility emerges: that future generations may inherit not only knowledge, but wiser, more balanced ways of living on Earth.
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Guide to Language Arts and Writing

Danica Tomber,, Madeline VanArsdale, The Observatory

Humans have long used language, writing, and storytelling to make sense of the world—and to shape how it is understood. Writing takes many forms, extending from literature and journalism to scholarship, personal reflection, and everyday communication. Together, language and writing help develop our critical thinking, awareness, and curiosity. The Observatory Guide to Language Arts and Writing explores how language and storytelling shape the human mind, foster empathy, and serve as tools for understanding ourselves, connecting with others, imagining new possibilities, solving problems, and questioning the status quo. Drawing on literature, history, psychology, neuroscience, and the social sciences, the guide highlights how writing and narrative shape not only expression, but perception, meaning, and action.
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Danica Tomber
Danica Tomber is an applied linguist.
Jeff Bryant
Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network.
Alan Collinge
Alan Michael Collinge is a student debt activist and founder of <u>StudentLoanJustice.org</u>.
Janet McIntosh
Janet McIntosh is a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist.
Mouna Hashem
Mouna Hashem, PhD, is an international development consultant.
Bridget A. Lyons
Bridget A. Lyons is a surfer, writer, editor, teacher, and creative consultant.
Josh Fisher
Josh Fisher is a writer and educational theorist whose work explores how knowledge and understanding emerge through shared meaning, social coordination, and cultural transmission.
Jeff Feinman
Jeff Feinman is a veterinarian and molecular biologist.
Sarah Parker Ward
Sarah Parker Ward is an end-of-life strategist and death tech futurist.
Kevin Fitzgerald
Kevin Fitzgerald is a veterinarian, author, educator, comedian, and television personality.
Damon Orion
Damon Orion is a writer, journalist, musician, artist, and teacher in Santa Cruz, California. His work has appeared in Revolver, Guitar World, Spirituality + Health, Classic Rock, and other publications. Read more of his work at DamonOrion.com.
Isabella La Rocca González
Isabella La Rocca González is an artist, writer, and activist.
Carter Dillard
Carter Dillard is the policy adviser for the Fair Start Movement.
Fabian Cardenas
Fabian Cardenas is an international law professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia.
Melanie Joy
Melanie Joy, PhD, is a psychologist, international speaker, and social justice advocate. She is the award-winning author of seven books.
Caren Martineau
Caren Martineau is the founder and CEO of Bevival, a death literacy content platform and resource.
Isaias Hernandez
Isias Hernandez aims to improve environmental literacy through content creation, storytelling, and public engagement.
Peter Kindfield
Peter Kindfield is an ecological educator, author, and former science coordinator for the New York City public school system.
Sandra Ericson
Sandra Ericson is an author and educator. She chaired the Consumer Arts and Science Department at City College of San Francisco for nearly three decades.
Kirsten Tambling
Kirsten Tambling is an art historian specializing in 18th-century art.
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