2024 in Review, From Your Point of View

The art of teaching, you let us know this year, remains as complex, rewarding, and difficult as ever. 

As 2024 comes to a close, we’re reflecting on the conversations, insights, big questions, and surprising solutions our audience of teachers, school leaders, counselors, and staff delivered this year. Across our social media channels, in the schools we visited, and at live events and conferences, we got to meet you and learn about what’s keeping you up at night—as well as what’s got you feeling hopeful. 

Whole-book reading was a juicy topic this year, as was the appropriateness of AI tools in classrooms—a passionate debate that had educators around the world arguing about how the new tech might affect the development of foundational skills. Student mental health showed glimmers of hope even as significant questions emerged, and systemic challenges continued to loom large, bringing the profession’s enduring struggles to the fore.

Here are nine of 2024’s most compelling ideas and passionate debates that sparked important, memorable discussions among educators. 

I’m a Teacher, Not a Therapist

In August, we wrote about teaching elementary students self-regulation—and the article took off, quickly gathering over 100,000 views and 350 comments from readers across our social media channels. 

Teaching young students self-regulation skills, our audience overwhelmingly agreed, is important—and yet we detected a note of irritation: “Stop putting the onus on teachers to be therapists,” wrote Krista Diederich on X, crisply. Our job is “to teach content.” Even if teachers were so inclined, years of cuts and unfunded mandates have made it impossible, annelaine noted on X: “We need our teaching assistants back, we need children to be able to get lunches free at school, we need smaller classes, qualified special education assistants, and we would appreciate some respect for working with none of those things available.”

Teaching kids to productively manage their emotions and behavior in school is essential, and the evidence supports the “deep connections between young students’ self-regulation skills and continued academic success,” wrote Lori Blake, an assistant professor at Central Connecticut State University, in October of this year.

But teachers aren’t mental health professionals; they can’t shoulder the burden alone. The American School Counselor Association recommends staffing ratios of one counselor for every 250 students—yet the national average is 376 students per counselor, with a few states like Arizona wildly above that ratio. Meanwhile, more than a third of schools lack a full-time nurse, and over 50% of schools report both “insufficient mental health professional staff coverage” and inadequate funding, per 2024 data from the National Center for Education Statistics. 

What’s more, schools aren’t the final word on all of the culture’s bigger problems. “Community and county agencies must do their part,” concludes stbertling on Instagram. Before pointing the finger at schools, everybody needs to “think what they can do to be a part of the solution.”

Resistance to AI in Classrooms Grows

By now, AI is so ubiquitous that many say banning it in schools is merely delaying the inevitable. “AI is not going away,” commented educator Amber Kirby, expressing a common sentiment—and the best thing teachers can do is teach students how to use it to “develop their skills and strengths.” 

Not so fast, said high school English teacher Chanea Bond, who declared to her nearly 60,000 followers on X that she planned to enforce a strict no-AI policy in her classroom. Widely available tools like ChatGPT, she said, were robbing kids of the time and space to develop the skills that are foundational to literacy. “In order to do my job, I need to read YOUR writing. I need to know YOUR voice,” she asserted, before putting her foot down and letting students know they would receive zeros on assignments produced using AI.

She wasn’t alone: English teacher Shellie Turner started the school year having banned AI in her classroom too, writing on X: “It doesn’t help students think for themselves.” 

Ultimately, it’s probably a question of balance and timing: AI isn’t going anywhere, but focusing on AI integration in school when core skills are being taught, notes Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, is a grave mistake, “especially as these systems improve and using them becomes even easier.” 

A New Chapter in the Reading Wars

What on earth is happening in K-12 education if college students can’t read a whole book? 

That’s the uncomfortable question many asked after a viral Atlantic article claimed that college students can’t handle the books typically assigned in undergrad classes. 

The article touched a nerve in the Edutopia community. Kids like to read “when they’re allowed time to connect with books and stories” and “if time and proper instruction are provided,” commented English teacher Steve Nuzum and AP lit teacher Amanda Austermann, respectively. 

Instead, we tend to “drill passages and ask multiple choice questions that are often irrelevant to the things adults hope to get from reading,” all in service to standardized tests that “don’t assess the ability to read and understand long, complex works,” Nuzum explained. 

The debate is familiar territory for journalist Natalie Wexler, author of the best-selling 2019 book, The Knowledge Gap, who referenced the Atlantic article in a recent Substack post. When students lack essential background knowledge and vocabulary, they can struggle to decipher words, ready fluently, and understand anything that is “lengthy, complex, and/or uses archaic language and sentence structure,” Wexler noted. 

Teaching comprehension skills to help kids work through complicated texts helps, research shows, as can strategies commonly reserved for elementary kids, like reading aloud and interactive vocabulary games. And pairing kids with high-interest materials matters: Mindful of her school’s reluctant readers, librarian Alice Edda spent two years collecting books based on students’ interests, and as a result “loaned more books than ever before.” 

Finally, while it’s easy to romanticize reading novels, hooking students with audio books, movies, comics, or other texts can serve as a great entry point, too. “The best reading is the reading you’ll do—a graphic novel, nonfiction books, magazines or even Guinness Book of World Records books,” wrote Jennifer Dimler on Facebook. “Not everything has to be ‘literature’.”  

You Do Love Your Seating Options… 

It’s fair to say that our audience is obsessed with classroom design. 

This year, a simple strategy for classroom seating—arranging desks in L-shaped groups—written by Jay Schauer, a retired biology teacher from Oregon, lit up our channels, with hundreds of teachers commenting and thousands more reading and saving the article. 

“I’ve done this for the first time in 22 years of teaching English and it’s so great,” wrote Nicole Potter, after learning about the L-shaped configuration. “My huge class was impossible to get around to see all students; now I get to four at a time.” Educator Megan McLean chimed in: “I love this config.” Meanwhile, others lamented the shortcomings of awkwardly shaped desks (triangles!) and pocket-sized, crowded classrooms: “Tried this and just didn’t commit because I don’t have the space, but hoping I can get a few groups together like this,” posted lalaurala.

The importance of planning classroom seating can’t be overstated, says Schauer, and getting it right is critical for making “the most out of our limited time and opportunities with them.” With desks arranged in L formations (see the article for photos), no one’s back is to the teacher, students focus on the front of the class, and can easily turn to peers for small group work. “An added benefit is that you can stand in the space at the junction of the L and be adjacent to each student in that group,” Schauer writes, and the small clusters allow him to “create strategic heterogeneous groups at each L to provide peer supports.” 

There’s no one-size-fits-all. In determining when to use L-shapes, rows, semi-circles, or other configurations, a good rule of thumb is to consider the types of tasks students will be doing and “arrange seating accordingly,” suggests Blake Harvard, an AP psychology teacher in Alabama. When Harvard is introducing new material, for example, he chooses rows. “And if I want students to interact with one another to discuss topics or work together to complete a task, they can easily turn their chairs to create pairs of groups.”

Teachers Cheer as States Take Aim at Cell Phones 

This year, we polled teachers nationwide to ask if cell phones should be banned from classrooms. Nearly 5,000 educators responded—and 3,816 of you gave a resounding yes! 

State legislatures are finally connecting the dots, passing new laws to restrict or ban cell phone use in classrooms. California—home to the largest share of K-12 students in the nation—passed a bill requiring school districts to develop policies to ban or restrict smartphone use by the beginning of the 2026 school year. Similar laws previously passed in Florida, Indiana, and Ohio took effect at the beginning of this school year. All told, eight states drew lines in the sand concerning cell phones in school, and another 12 are crafting similar bills, according to a recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

Properly enforced cell phone policies are critical, teachers told us, and can make a real difference. “It’s the best ever,” remarked Jenny Young about the cell phone ban recently enacted in her state. Educator Rebecca Kelly said she teaches in both a banned cell phone environment and a “responsible use of cell phone” environment. She prefers the former: “It’s delightful,” Kelly reports, adding that teaching in a school setting where phone policies are vague is “stressful” and it’s tough to watch “the constant distraction of the phone on young people.” 

Asking students or teachers to manage cell phone use in class is unfair; the scope of the problem is entirely too large. After a previous policy required kids to independently store phones in lockers or backpacks—rules students roundly ignored—Matteo Doddo, a principal in Newburgh, New York, told Edutopia that his school banned phones outright, and the tide began to turn. “At the end of the day, there’s no gray area with this—the phone is either in the pouch and turned off, or it’s not.” 

The new, no-nonsense policy makes a difference for kids too: Olivia, a 16-year-old at Doddo’s school told him, “I got more work done today than I’ve gotten done for the last two weeks.”

Are Teens Really That Fragile?

This year, there was a flicker of hope about teen mental health when, per recent CDC data, the percentage of students who reported consistently feeling sad or hopeless declined from 42% to 40%—a modest but promising downtick after a decade of alarming upward trends. A 2024 survey from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation found 55% of Gen Z students say they’re “thriving in their lives,” up from 53% in 2023. 

Simultaneously, an interesting conversation emerged: are we protecting kids too much? 

“Gen Z has been raised with what's called ‘moral dependency,’” says social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, author of the 2024 best-seller The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. With adults always present, kids struggle to solve problems independently—and when they’re always protected “from unpleasantness, from conflicts, from teasing, from exclusion,” Haidt concludes, we are setting them up “to be more easily damaged or discouraged.” 

There’s a fine line between providing the support kids need and overdoing it, some educators agreed. For example, new teachers are often advised to just get to know students in the first week of school rather than dive into content, “as if children are so fragile that they need to be eased into school like a warm bath,” observed middle school math teacher Jay Wamsted. Similarly, former educator and founder of researchED, Tom Bennett posted on X, “Children need calm, safe environments where expectations are clear, scaffolded, and taught; where boundaries are upheld and consequences happen when they are breached—with support when required.” Treating children as porcelain dolls "actually makes them less safe, more vulnerable,” Bennett stated.

Mental health doesn’t mean feeling good all the time, so, “when the rubber hits the road, how does the kid handle it?” asked psychologist Lisa D’Amour on Instagram. The difference between blowing off steam by going for a run, or smoking large amounts of marijuana, is vast and revealing, she says. “It’s that divide that actually alerts us to whether there’s a mental health concern, or a typical and expectable reaction to a very hard thing.”

Teaching Can Be a Pain in the… Bladder

When we asked our readers how schools support teachers when nature calls, close to 1000 comments came pouring in (pun intended)—and the picture is dire. 

“I don’t drink water before 1pm,” wrote Beth Schoellkopf on Facebook. “My school’s solution is… hold it,” aajh15 posted. “We can’t even go during passing time because we are required to be in our doorways greeting students.” Unchecked, educators told us, it can become a serious health issue: “Teacher for ten years, and I have destroyed my pelvic floor,” writes its_sage_chaos. “I can't hold it anymore.” 

Without scheduled times built in, teachers resort to workarounds: nudging a colleague to watch a class while they pop out—or worse, leaving kids unattended while they use the restroom. In some settings, of course, that’s not an option. “Today, I didn’t get lunch—and I didn’t go to the bathroom for like three hours after I had to go,” Liz Boddye, who works in a classroom for students with emotional disabilities, told NEA Today. 

Schools must find solutions to ensure that teachers can meet basic needs—from timely bathroom access to breaks to nourish themselves and recharge.  

A few principals shared that they frequently walk the halls, popping their heads into classrooms to see if teachers need anything. And in classrooms with co-teachers, aides, or paras, for example, adults can have a bit more flexibility. A number of schools use a tap in/tap out system where teachers text into a group chat, though it’s important to work out the kinks: Brenda Ann Perry thought her school’s new QR code system sounded great at first, but often “no one responds.” That needs to change.

Direct Instruction or Inquiry? Let the Context Decide

The fiery debate between advocates of direct instruction and proponents of inquiry-based continued in 2024.

“Direct instruction is effective precisely because it doesn’t utilize rote learning,” said educator Zach Groshell, firing a shot across the bow early in the year. “You know what system does, though? Inquiry methods where students unthinkingly copy from group members and the internet!” 

Not so, argued educator Ralph Pantozzi, noting that, when done well, inquiry-based learning starts with a question that students already “have the knowledge to solve,” and is designed to “spark curiosity” for further learning.  

In the end, the two instructional approaches are not in opposition, a 2023 study suggests. It’s a question of using the right approach at the right time and in the right context. 

When teaching foundational knowledge, for example—like asking kids to recall the formula for H₂O, or asking them to “calculate the number of atoms in 118 grams of water,”—direct instruction is an effective method, researchers from the study write. Inquiry-based learning, meanwhile, shines when students are ready to grapple with complex, open-ended problems and questions to “foster deep conceptual understanding” about, for instance, how water’s boiling point changes with altitude.

Away from the glare of social media, we find that teachers often strike a commonsense  middleground: “A strong lesson will incorporate both approaches placed strategically at the point in learning where they will benefit students the most,” comments teacher Kristen S. Ultimately, “different teaching methods are better for different learning goals,” school leader Nat Coffman wrote on X. And in successful science classrooms, writes Will O., teachers often weave together “lectures, demonstrations, and guided practice, followed by a lab activity to deepen conceptual understanding.” Skillfully combining these approaches, he concludes, “best addresses students’ learning needs.” 

Teaching Through the Storm

As temperatures continue to rise and powerful hurricanes and wildfires wreak devastation, schools and districts are contending with unprecedented disruptions. 

This year, schools in Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, among others, experienced prolonged closures, contending with flooded classrooms and damaged local infrastructure. “This is unprecedented,” Pinellas County Schools superintendent Kevin Hendrick told a local Fox News affiliate after Hurricane Helene caused severe damage, forcing schools to close for weeks. 

Meanwhile, as the air heats up, so do classrooms. The Washington Post reported in May that almost 40% of schools in the U.S. were built when global temperatures were cooler and air conditioning wasn’t a necessity. “It’s miserable,” Shari Obrenski, president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, told the Post, noting that her teachers experienced classroom temperatures well over 90 degrees in recent years. “Students throwing up, not being able to keep their heads up, just horrible conditions.” In the hottest months, some districts sent students home early, switched to virtual instruction, and delayed start days for the new school year. 

Research shows that escalating temperatures in the classroom aren’t just uncomfortable—they also impact student learning, test scores, and even health outcomes. The effects are particularly stark for students of color. A 2018 study analyzing test scores and temperatures in 12,000 high schools found that in schools without air conditioning, a 1°F hotter school year reduced learning by 1% each year—and accounted for between 3% and 7% of the gap in PSAT scores between White students and Black and Hispanic students. 

Unfortunately, climate-related events aren’t going anywhere: By 2050, the U.S. is predicted to warm another five degrees, researchers note, which could lead to students missing 10% of the average learning in a given school year. “Without further investments in school infrastructure, climate change would likely also result in a further widening of current racial achievement gaps,” the researchers concluded.