Category: Education

Dive Brief:

• Webster University will close its nine remaining campuses on U.S. military bases, the private nonprofit confirmed Thursday. 
• Five locations are slated to shutter next month, with the rest winding down by the end of May. The offices have “minimal” staffing, and about a dozen employees will be affected by the closures, according to a spokesperson for the Missouri-based university. 
• The locations together enrolled around 250 students. The spokesperson said most were taking classes online, “so the impact to students will be minimal.”

Dive Insight:

A decade ago, Webster had physical offerings at 43 military bases. But as more military education moves online, the university is winding down its physical presence. 

“We have seen 90% of our military in person enrollments shift to online offerings,” Webster Chancellor Timothy Keane said in an emailed statement Thursday. “With the closure of our last 9 locations we will be providing all of our military students/learners with their option of choice.” 

On a website for prospective students, the university touts its 40 years in military education and 120 programs that “meet the academic and career goals of the entire military-adjacent family.” 

As of Oct. 31, Webster continued to highlight its physical offerings, which combined with its online coursework makes the university “uniquely positioned to serve the educational needs of active-duty military.” 

The university offers credits for military service, a portal for class materials that is accessible during deployments, and discounted tuition and scholarships. 

The university’s budget is in the red, with a total operating deficit of $38.9 million in the fiscal year ending May 2023, up from a $24.9 million shortfall the year before, according to its latest financials. The increasing shortfall follows a more than $10 million drop in revenue from pandemic-era federal grants and a $8 million-plus spike in operating expenses. 

At 6,396 students, fall enrollment at the university’s main campus in suburban St. Louis has nearly halved since 2017, per federal data. The university also has locations in South Carolina and Texas, along with international campuses. 

Keane told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which first reported the closing military campuses, “We’re looking at every program, we’re scrutinizing every cost we incur.”

Webster’s military locations set to close include: 

• Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas.
• Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.
• Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. 
• Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.
• Fort Liberty in North Carolina. 
• Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
• Fort Jackson in South Carolina. 
• Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. 
• Fort Belvoir in Virginia. 

The spokesperson said 54 faculty members teach students at those locations, but only a few would be impacted, given that they also teach online courses for the university.

The victory was bittersweet.

Khoa Ta, then a sophomore at Owensboro High School from Daviess County in Western Kentucky, was elected as a student board member for the local board of education last May. It was a role Ta was eager to build on, having helped to write and lobby for a statewide bill that sought to put a student board member in each Kentucky school district.

After the pandemic, school boards became a political battleground. Since they enact policies that affect students, Ta says, it seemed like students should have a voice in the decisions they were making.

But the happiness of winning the election was soon tampered with a sense of frustration and incompleteness. The position felt “superficial,” because it does not hold voting power, Ta says. While Ta can explain how students think about an issue to the board, they can also blithely ignore it. So embedded in the victory was also the next struggle. Having a voice is one step in trying to create change in your community, Ta says, adding that the ultimate goal is to prove that students can hold the exact same power and agency as adults.

Unlike many students in the country, Ta is politically engaged. Among long-standing democracies, American youth aren’t all that politically active. When it comes to voting, countries such as Australia make it compulsory and even fine those who don’t vote, with the number of young Australians enrolled to vote hovering around 90 percent, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. In comparison, young American voter registration is much lower and participation spiked in 2018 — when 28 percent voted, a record percentage — though it’s dipped since then. So perhaps it’s not so surprising that American politics can skew old, with the average age of House lawmakers a youthful 58, and the average age of those in the Senate more than 65 years old.

But some states seem to want younger people involved. In recent years, a number of states have passed civics testing mandates to pressure students to become more civically active. But can you really force young and student voters to take part? And how useful is civic education for those who chose to get involved?

Challenging the Gentrocacy

Compared to test scores and academic performance, people often forget about how vital civic development is, says Jilli Jung, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. Schools have the potential to foster really effective citizens, Jung says. But while there’s broad agreement that education should be the main way young people learn to become good citizens, it’s often forgotten about because schools don’t seem to be doing a good job and the United States seems worse at this than other democracies, she says. There isn’t much empirical evidence at how good the education system is at turning these students into active citizens either, she adds.

One idea that’s taken root is forcing students to take a civics test as a requirement for high school graduation.

Last year, Jung co-authored a report investigating the Civics Education Initiative, the standardized civics test that at least 18 states now require in the hopes it will leave students with a “bare minimum” of civics knowledge, preparing them to become active in shaping their communities. But Jung and her co-authors found that the mandates did not increase voter participation.

While civic education could help to introduce some students to political engagement, the effect of these mandates is less positive. Schools don’t devote much time to civic education, usually only one class per week and now that time is going toward preparing students for the test, Jung says. It’s possible that this means that students from marginalized communities — for example, immigrant communities — may not have any place to learn about civic education and politics and no place to talk about meaningful political issues, Jung speculates. However, the evidence for this from her study was weak.

In general, when it comes to lifting student participation rates broadly, it’s a common misconception that youth aren’t motivated, Jung says. Youth are motivated to participate, she says. But it’s hard to overcome barriers, such as registering to vote. Other countries are less restrictive in that way, she says, and have higher participation rates. So giving students practical guidance is useful, she argues. For example, she says, the civics exam asks a question about what the longest river in the U.S. is. That’s less likely to help students than showing them how to register to vote, taking them to visit legislators or holding mock elections, she argues.

Kentucky, where the students interviewed for this article attend public school, has a version of the civics test policy, which the state passed in 2018. It requires students to score 70 percent on a standardized civics test or to take a one-half credit civics course. The questions mostly probe facts, including the names of one of the state’s senators and the length of a presidential term. For some politically active students who have taken it, the civics test the state mandates was, “in every conceivable way, surface level”: memorize the answers, take the test, never think about it again. It also didn’t move them to get involved in their communities.

Incentivizing Change

Some hope to reinforce civics in other ways.

Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, doesn’t think the civics mandates will make students engaged. But it is a sort of minimum effort that districts should be doing. It’s not enough, though. Social media in particular has served as a rumor mill, exaggerating distrust and polarization, Khan says. In reality, he adds, Americans are more aligned than they seem and there’s a hunger for high-quality civic instruction.

Khan’s company offers civic instruction that he hopes will promote mastery of civics material. But another component is to facilitate discourse, Khan says. In its work with university admissions, Khan’s company is also launching the “Dialogue Project,” a series of facilitated Zoom conversations about hot-button topics that he hopes will help with constructive conversations. Students who participate in the sessions will get “an Uber[-style] rating” about how well they can make others feel heard and whether they take part in constructive conversations. That will then be passed on to admissions officers.

Khan says that he hopes it will motivate students to become engaged. It will be a “carrot and not a stick,” he says. If a student takes part in 30 of these conversations and has a good score, then adding it to their application could give them a bump, because it’s a value these universities say that they want. The versions of this that colleges tend to offer already don’t scale well, Khan says. The project has been announced, though the full list of colleges planning to use this haven’t been named yet. Khan says that he hopes it will be mainstream by the next admissions cycle.

Khan says he has no illusions that this will serve as a “silver bullet” to the problems of the country. However, it is perhaps a necessary part of the growing pains of a democracy.

“I think we all sometimes want to crave a benevolent dictatorship, like Singapore, where they’re generally doing good stuff for the people, and it’s all orderly, and no one’s yelling at each other and there’s a high degree of trust in the government,” Khan says.

But maybe American-style debate and discourse is just an inevitable consequence of having more information out there, and being in a democracy means confronting that. These are genuinely new problems brought on by the expansion of democratic participation, he argues:. “To some degree, the more people participate in democracy, the messier it looks, which isn’t a bad thing, right?”

The mess is precisely what pulled in some of the students from Kentucky.

Joining In

Peter Jefferson, a senior at Henry Clay High School, a public school in Lexington, Kentucky, is active in politics, especially for someone who is not yet 18 years old.

Last year, Jefferson joined the legislative policy arm of the Kentucky Student Voice Team. There, he tried to give people information about important education-related bills, including the bill that introduced Amendment 2, which would overturn the state’s constitutional restriction that prohibits using public funds for private and charter schools. The amendment is up for a vote this election.

Jefferson was struck by how much of an impact this could have on K-12 schools in Kentucky. So he’s been trying to spread awareness about what he says is the student perspective on the bill, that it will decrease education funding for public schools. Jefferson says that means fewer opportunities for students with disabilities, or for students in rural areas or who want to work in public schools one day.

After the 2016 election, Jefferson started to become more politically aware. Then in fourth or fifth grade, he started reading the news every day, and trying to bone up on political issues.

Most of his education came through AP courses, Jefferson says. Since the information was being filtered through history and politics lessons, it meant he was learning about how an amendment changed women’s right to vote or how Andrew Jackson was able to mobilize the popular vote in the 19th century. It meant there wasn’t really a practical emphasis on how to register to vote today, he says. The knowledge was useful for inspiring more thoughtful social media discourse. It also left him with an understanding of the value of protest, which is motivating. But it wasn’t a “catalyst” for him getting involved in politics, Jefferson says.

His first serious engagement with politics, he says, occurred in seventh grade when a town he was living in was looking to put in a new steel recycling plan. Jefferson spent hours pouring over the public environmental impact reports. He was moved to circulate a petition among his friends — which got about 50 signatures, he recalls — and that was the first time he felt as though he was part of the process. Nobody ever explicitly told him that he could get civically involved, by say, canvassing or registering to vote. But over time, he says, he noticed more opportunities passed along by his high school government teacher.

Even some who feel lucky question how handy their education was for real civic life.

Ta, the student board member, feels like their district does better than most in civic education. “I myself have kind of been more fortunate in a lot of standpoints, because I feel like the public education system itself really does do the minimum,” Ta says.

While Ta is too young to vote in this election, they are highly engaged in politics. Still, the path was winding and not limited to school. When Ta was in middle school — when the country was embroiled in the 2020 presidential election and reeling from COVID-19 — political questions seemed suddenly relevant for them. Controversy over those issues meant that they were barred from really discussing them in school, almost like there was a stigma, Ta recalls. But for the first time, Ta found the news interesting. While the controversy pushed some people away, Ta found they enjoyed having critical conversations.

Later on, Ta opened an email from their school that mentioned the Kentucky Student Voice Team, a state-level group that was started in 2012 to bring students into the advocacy process. It seemed like good resume padding, Ta says. It was an “almost selfish thought,” they add. From there, now a freshman in high school, Ta joined the team as a student journalist, where they tried to put a “human touch” on complex issues. For instance, when the state legislature banned gender-affirming care — overriding a governor’s veto to do it — it also censored a lot of queer content, Ta says. For Ta, the care is potentially life-saving for those who might be struggling with suicidal thoughts, including their friends. “And a lot of people that I knew that are queer, like, were genuinely afraid,” Ta says. So being able to bring a voice to that felt powerful.

It also convinced Ta that elections are important. When the Young Democrats started canvassing for Kentucky’s 2023 gubernatorial election, Ta joined. In all, they went out five times, volunteering in spare moments on the weekends. Ta’s candidate won re-election, and has since banned conversion therapy in the state via executive order.

Practical Practice

So what was useful for those students who did get involved?

Ta says the biggest opportunity their school gave them at an early age was when social studies teachers began class by turning on the daily news. It pulled them in, revealing that there was a big world out there. School also taught Ta to conduct research, which was helpful. Plus, outside of school, Ta’s city had civic programs such as The Wendell H. Ford Government Education Center — a development program meant to turn students into “leaders who practice civility, cooperation and compromise” — that gave them an opportunity to research and understand candidates for office. There was also the National Honor Society, which stresses community service.

Jefferson, also with the Student Voice Team, says that making students in middle school and high school get involved with their local government in some way would help. That creates more personal connection and investment into what’s going on, he says. That’s how he got involved.

But there’s a problem with how schools and civic groups try to reach out to students, Ta says. They happened to see the email about the group, prompting their own participation there. But more often than not, students don’t check their emails, they add.

It would be more useful, Ta argues, if schools were more direct about teaching how to practically apply civic knowledge so students can make themselves agents of change in their communities. Without that, it seems like schools don’t necessarily promote engaging with the broader community, Ta says. Perhaps schools should make community service mandatory, Ta suggests.

The amount the chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system spent on restaurants one week in September 2023, according to an investigation by CT Insider. The state’s governor, Ned Lamont, requested an audit into the system’s financial management following the report, which also found examples of spending that may have broken state or institutional rules.

By Sarah Brown

The 325-page document shows a handful of prominent colleges struggling to respond to the start of the Israel-Hamas war and the resulting pro-Palestinian encampments.

The Controversial Shift: Employers Mandating A Return To The Office Post-Pandemic

With remote work being the new norm post-pandemic, companies are weighing the potential benefits and drawbacks of bringing employees back to physical workspaces. According to a survey by PwC, 68% of executives believe that remote work has been successful during the pandemic but are also concerned about its long-term effects on productivity and company culture. Without consideration for employee willingness and perceptions surrounding a push for return-to-office (RTO) policies, companies may face detrimental blows to their business, including talent shortages, cost implications, and a perceived unwillingness to adapt to a new working world.

The Productivity Debate

In a current business environment where economic instability is still met with investor expectations to grow and remain more profitable than ever, companies are no longer willing to leave productivity unchecked. While remote work has demonstrated its viability, there is a growing perception that it may not be sustainable in the long term. Yet, according to a recent eLearning Industry survey, over half (57%) of employees agree that return-to-office mandates are more about leaders wanting to micromanage their teams and not about increasing productivity or improving company culture. Seemingly, questioning employees’ productivity (i.e., their time spent in the office) is the newest scapegoat and reason being used as to why companies aren’t able to compete in an economically unstable business environment.

Whether companies’ motivation for returning to the office is truly about productivity or not, this demonstrates that proximity bias—the tendency of leadership to show favoritism toward employees physically present around them—has not wavered in its chokehold on modern management structures. Managers must be trained in effective ways to assess the productivity of remote and hybrid teams, such as micro-evaluation, to separate themselves from archaic, stale managerial styles. Micro-evaluation gives employees a clear performance review on a weekly/biweekly basis while allowing managers to keep a finger on the pulse of their team’s productivity. At its core, proximity bias is the root of all RTO policies, and companies must prioritize training on a variety of management styles to ensure all employees feel properly evaluated and appreciated.

The Mental And Fiscal Cost Of RTO Policies

According to a study by Mental Health America, 83% of employees reported feeling emotionally exhausted due to pandemic-related stress. Almost four years since the onset of COVID-19, many workers have forgotten what it’s like to work in person on a consistent basis. Or, with over a third of Gen Z being remote workers their whole professional career, some workers have never stepped foot inside an office setting.

Additionally, the return to office adds up financially as workers expect to spend up to $500 a month in additional costs, including commuting, food, childcare, and more, if they are mandated to return to the office. Employers, too, can expect to face expenses related to office space maintenance, utilities, and employee amenities. Businesses must take action to avoid a well-being crisis as workers return to offices and address employee concerns, including the erosion of boundaries between home and work, the impact of loneliness in a remote environment, and additional costs burdening their personal budgets.

Talent Acquisition Challenge

With an already established talent shortage, companies have begun introducing new and creative benefits that did not exist as broadly pre-pandemic. Ranging from wellness stipends and pet insurance to four-day work weeks, the power structure has shifted into the hands of the employees, which brings about a new set of expectations when applying for jobs. One of the key benefits gained from the pandemic was flexible work. With many employees already proving their ability to work remotely or hybrid over the past three years, the sudden demand to return full-time to the office comes with pushback.

According to a 2023 eLearning Industry survey, over a quarter (25%) of employees have considered quitting their jobs over RTO mandates. Organizations need to recognize that flexibility in work arrangements is a powerful tool for attracting and retaining talent in today’s competitive job market. Failing to adapt to these changing preferences may lead to talent drain and recruitment difficulties. Striking the right balance between in-person collaboration and remote work will be essential for businesses to attract and retain top talent in this changing landscape, as is the acknowledgment that they trust their employees to get their work done without constant monitoring.

RTO Policies For Millennial Vs. Gen Z Employees

The diversity of the modern workforce requires companies to approach the return to office movement in various ways. Data shows that a typical US company consists of about 20% baby boomers, 35% Gen X, and 38% millennials, leaving only a small percentage of Gen Z employees. However, these numbers are consistently changing, as Gen Z is set to make up about 30% of the workforce by 2030. This information is important because each generation has a different view of the RTO mandates. Surprisingly, Gen Z and baby boomers seem to view the return to the office more favorably than millennials, who are particularly reluctant to let go of the numerous perks of the WFH model. Specifically, younger employees prefer hybrid working models that give them the freedom to work remotely while also letting them experience the office environment and face-to-face interaction with colleagues.

It is crucial for leaders to keep these generational preferences in mind when developing their RTO policies, as they can significantly help them identify suitable motives to attract employees back to the office. For example, while flexible hours and well-being perks may be particularly appealing to Gen Z employees, millennials might be more appreciative of WFH days and options for childcare stipends and alternatives.

Best Practices For Setting RTO Policies

Regardless of your employees’ initial reaction to a return-to-office mandate, it is important to remember that a solution that works for all parties can be found as long as you follow a set of best practices.

First, you need to prepare the office, ensuring comfortable and quiet office spaces, fast internet connections, and up-to-date devices. If employees have to struggle with office raucous and outdated computers, they will quickly return to remote work. Then, you must demonstrate to your employees that you value their opinions. A company-wide survey may clarify what your employees need to be motivated to return to the office and how you can make this transition as smooth as possible. Moreover, remember that moving from remote to in-office or hybrid work is a significant change for your employees, and they might need time to adjust. Finally, don’t forget that flexibility is a nonnegotiable element of the modern workspace. Whether that means hybrid work, flexible schedules, or work-from-home days to accommodate personal responsibilities, these will all make your RTO policy easier to accept.

Conclusion

While there are compelling reasons for in-person collaboration, employees’ concerns underscore the potential consequences for productivity, mental health, and attrition. The future of work will likely be shaped by those who can find an equilibrium, ensuring a thriving, motivated workforce while harnessing the benefits of in-person interactions.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that’s all about giving thanks, building community, and coming together. Set aside time this November to engage students in Thanksgiving activities that are reflective, academic, and just plain fun. 

1. Thanksgiving Bingo

Bingo is always a winner. Use fall-colored bingo chips to cover the word. Play in a variety of ways with these Thanksgiving activities, including describing the word and having students cover it or say a synonym for the word that students cover. 

Try it: Thanksgiving Bingo Printables

2. Host Thanksgiving in the Woods

Read Thanksgiving in the Woods by Phyllis Alsdurf and host your own outdoor feast. Have students organize the feast, including deciding what to eat, assigning tasks, and planning Thanksgiving activities. The act of planning a community meal strengthens their executive-functioning skills as well as their sense of community. 

Buy it: Thanksgiving in the Woods

3. Find-a-word

How many words can you find in the word Thanksgiving. Start with the full holiday, and then branch out into other Thanksgiving words (e.g., abundance, companionship, drumstick). Give students a time limit for friendly competition in these Thanksgiving activities.  

Try it: Thanksgiving Words Printable

4. Thanksgiving trivia

How many American towns are named Turkey? What holiday takes place the day after Thanksgiving? See how much students know about Thanksgiving with a game of trivia. Use Kahoot or another online quiz platform to create a Thanksgiving game you can use again and again. 

Try it: Fun Thanksgiving Activities Trivia Questions and Thanksgiving Facts

5. Thanksgiving dinner math activity

Design your own ideal Thanksgiving dinner. Use paper plates and magazines and advertisements to create collages, or use the plate template and food options in our Thanksgiving printable bundle to incorporate math.

Learn more: My Dream Dinner Printable Math Activity

6. Thanksgiving math challenge

Print and post these Thanksgiving math problems around your classroom. Have students work together to solve one before they move on to the next. It’s like a multiple-course Thanksgiving meal but for math. 

Learn more: Thanksgiving Math Problems 

7. Thanksgiving Around the World comprehension activity

Read about how people celebrate Thanksgiving in different countries, then extend students’ learning by researching one country’s traditions around gratitude. When do they have their celebration? How do they celebrate? What foods do they eat?

Learn more: Printable Thanksgiving Comprehension Activity

8. Read and write Thanksgiving poetry

Start by reading Thanksgiving poetry, and then write your own on cute Thanksgiving stationery. 

Learn more: Thanksgiving Activities Writing Paper

9. Thanksgiving conversation-starter cards

Designed to spark meaningful discussions, these conversation cards feature a range of Thanksgiving-related topics for students to explore and share their thoughts on. You can even send these cards home for the holiday and have students use them to spark discussion at the dinner table.

Try it: Thanksgiving Conversation Starter Cards

10. Disguise a turkey

A turkey doesn’t want to get caught and eaten on Thanksgiving! Assign students to use their imaginations to disguise the turkey. When students have finished their disguises, have them write about their disguise. What is their turkey dressed up as and why? 

Try it: Turkey Disguise Printable

11. Watch a Thanksgiving movie

Pop some popcorn and watch a Thanksgiving movie. You can find classic and modern Thanksgiving movies about family, fun, and football at the link below.

Try it: Heartwarming Thanksgiving Movies 

12. Go on a Thanksgiving scavenger hunt

Create a scavenger hunt game for students to complete around school with clues like a yellow leaf, football, and a Thanksgiving bulletin board. Or have students complete the scavenger hunt at home and school with additional clues like a wishbone, slice of pie, and fall decorations. 

13. Write a Thanksgiving story

Use Thanksgiving writing paper to draw and write a Thanksgiving story. Some ideas for prompts:

• What would Thanksgiving be like if it were in August instead of November?
• Describe your favorite or least favorite Thanksgiving food. Go into detail!
• Imagine you have a pet turkey for a day. What would you do?
• Describe a special Thanksgiving memory.

Try it: Thanksgiving Activities Writing Paper and Thanksgiving Writing Prompts Inspired by Children’s Literature 

14. Thanksgiving build-a-word

Students will create new words using letters from the word “Thanksgiving” in these engaging Thanksgiving activities. This worksheet encourages creativity and literacy skills as students build words. Try challenging your students by seeing who can think of the most words within a given time frame.

Try it: Thanksgiving Build-a-Word

15. Host a Thanksgiving open mic

Have students tell their best turkey and Thanksgiving jokes. Create a laugh-o’-meter to record how loud the laugh is after each joke.

Try it: 100+ Corny Thanksgiving Jokes

16. Create a place-value turkey

Have students turn their hands into a place-value turkey, and then roll a di to create numbers in the hundreds, tens, and ones place value. Compare the numbers. Who had the largest number? Who had the smallest? 

Try it: A New Twist on the Hand Turkey 

17. Make a brown paper bag turkey

This is one of the Thanksgiving activities that never goes out of style. Stuff brown lunch bags with crumpled-up newspaper. Tie the top and then decorate with googly eyes, feathers, and other decorations as you see fit. 

Buy it: Feathers at Amazon

18. Gratitude Tree

The Gratitude Tree worksheet is a fun activity that encourages students to think about what they are grateful for. Students will decorate their tree with leaves of gratitude by filling in each leaf with something they’re grateful for, then glue their leaves onto their tree. This worksheet can also be incorporated into a lesson about Thanksgiving. Plus, the finished product will create a great bulletin board!

Try it: Gratitude Tree

19. Make an apple turkey

Another classic Thanksgiving activity. Give each student an apple, toothpicks, mini-marshmallows, and raisins. Students make turkey “feathers” with the mini-marshmallows and raisins on toothpicks, and then put the “feathers” on their turkey. 

20. Gratitude cards

These cards are easy to print and pass out to students. You can use the black-and-white version and allow students to color them in themselves, or you can print out the colored versions to save time. Then, challenge your students to find someone they’re thankful for and express their gratitude using one of their gratitude cards. This is a great way to acknowledge those around you that you’re grateful for and encourage your students to express themselves. 

Try it: Gratitude Cards

21. Create turkey glove puppets

Make a turkey puppet that you can use during read-alouds, in puppet shows, or as a fun take-home craft. Glue feathers onto the fingers of a brown glove. Then add a googly eye and an orange felt triangle beak to the thumb to finish the look. 

Buy it: Brown gloves and feathers at Amazon

22. Thanksgiving acrostic poems

These are a sweet and easy way to get students writing about thankfulness, gratitude, and family.

Try it: Thanksgiving acrostic poems

23. Play Thanksgiving categories

Write the ABCs and have students think of Thanksgiving words to go with each letter. A for acorn, B for basting, and so on. The students who come up with the most words win. 

24. Thanksgiving word scramble

With this worksheet, students will have fun unscrambling various Thanksgiving-themed words. This activity helps build vocabulary and provides a playful way to reinforce language skills. You can challenge your students by having them create their own words to unscramble and let them challenge a partner.

Try it: Thanksgiving Word Scramble

25. Create a gratitude chain

Give each student a strip of construction paper. Each student writes one thing they are thankful for. Then, create a paper chain by looping all the strips together. Add the Thanksgiving gratitude chain to a bulletin board or classroom decorations.  

26. Thankful writing prompt

Students will reflect on things they are grateful for this Thanksgiving season with this writing prompt worksheet. This activity engages students in applying previously taught writing skills while exploring the topic of gratitude.

Try it: Thankful Writing Prompt

27. Play a gratitude game

This game requires a set of pickup sticks. Drop the sticks on the ground and have students pick them up, one at a time. They say one thing they are thankful for depending on the color they pick up. 

• Red: Name someone you are thankful for.
• Yellow: Name something you are thankful for.  
• Green: Name a place you are thankful for. 
• Blue: Name a memory you are thankful for.

Buy it: Pickup Sticks at Amazon

28. Reflect with a gratitude jar

You can do this as a class or individually using a real jar or a free printable paper version. Have students write what they are thankful for, either one per student or 15 to 20 slips for one student. Then, fold the papers and put them into a gratitude jar. If you do this as a class, pull one paper out of the jar during morning meeting or at the end of the day to reflect on the things that you’re grateful for. Or have students take their jars home to share with their families. 

Try it: Gratitude Jar Printable

Buy it: Plastic Mason Jars

29. Design handprint turkeys

Get yellow, red, brown, red, and orange paint and have students dip their fingers and hands in paint so that when they press their hand down, it makes a turkey. 

30. Run in a turkey trot

Find a turkey trot in your area to run or walk in, or create your own course around your playground or even a turkey obstacle course in the gym. If you’re hosting your own turkey trot, design medals and a playlist of music for the starting line.

31. Play Thanksgiving Pictionary

Use the list of Thanksgiving words, a whiteboard, and a marker for a game of Pictionary. Divide students into two teams. One person from each team chooses a word and draws it for their team to guess. If their team guesses the word correctly, they win a point. If not, the other team has a chance to guess and earn the point. 

Try it: Thanksgiving Word List

32. Create play dough turkeys

Put play dough, feathers, googly eyes, and pipe cleaners in a center and have students create their own play dough turkeys. 

33. Craft a gratitude turkey

Cut brown turkey bodies out of construction paper. Then cut different-colored feathers out of construction paper, write things that students are thankful for on the feathers, and decorate the turkey to create a turkey that’s full of gratitude.

34. Thanksgiving word search

With three levels (easy, medium, hard), your students will love being detectives and finding the Thanksgiving-themed words in these word search puzzles.

Try it: Thanksgiving Word Search

35. Volunteer

Service and giving back is a part of Thanksgiving. Research and choose a volunteer project to do around Thanksgiving. 

Try it: Ideas for Volunteering With Kids in Every State

36. Create a class cookbook

Have students bring in recipes that they like to make and eat on or around Thanksgiving and create a class cookbook. Send the cookbook home with students so they can try out each others’ recipes. 

37. Thanksgiving coloring pages

This bundle of coloring pages is a great way to keep your early finishers engaged or provide a quick brain-break activity during the busy holiday season.

Try it: Thanksgiving Coloring Pages

38. Create your own parade

Use balloons and papier-mâché to create and decorate “balloons” or make paper Thanksgiving Day balloons to hang on a bulletin board. Even better, blow up actual balloons and decorate them to create a mini-parade. 

39. Make place mats

Take strips of construction paper and weave them into a place mat. Decorate it with stickers, notes, and Thanksgiving themes and colors. 

40. Make a turkey puppet

So cute! A great craft to make before you act out a silly story, or have students use their puppets to follow along with a new book they’re reading.

Buy it: Craft Foam 

41. Make Thanksgiving napkin holders

Cut toilet paper rolls into halves and decorate them as turkeys or leaves. Send each student home with a set for everyone who will be at their Thanksgiving dinner. Or decorate one per student and use them in your classroom Thanksgiving meal! 

42. Design a pop-up turkey card

Make this cute, easy pop-up turkey card with older elementary students. The craft is a fun take-home activity and reinforces following directions and fine motor skills. 

Buy it: Construction Paper

43. Play a Thanksgiving dice game

Create Thanksgiving dice using blank foam dice. Write six prompts and attach one prompt to each side of the dice. Then have students roll the dice and respond to the prompt on top. Some ideas for prompts:

• A place you are thankful for
• A memory that makes you feel happy
• A person you are grateful for
• Your favorite food to eat on Thanksgiving
• Your favorite thing to do on Thanksgiving 
• Something you are excited about 

Buy it: Foam Dice

44. Ride in a Thanksgiving bike parade

Decorate bikes, trikes, and scooters for Thanksgiving and have a class or school parade. 

45. Pass the turkey

Like hot potato, pass a turkey (could be a stuffed animal, could be a paper turkey) around in a circle. When the music stops, the student holding the turkey has to say what they are thankful for or what they are excited about over Thanksgiving. 

Buy it: Turkey Plushie

46. Play Thanksgiving Would You Rather?

Would you rather? but for Thanksgiving. Have students answer, would you rather:

• Eat turkey or duck on Thanksgiving?
• Be in a parade or be a commentator at a parade?
• Play football or watch football?
• Eat stuffing or eat cranberry sauce?
• Eat pumpkin pie or apple pie?
• Eat dinner early or late?
• Have a Thanksgiving meal with only your favorite dish or with everything but your favorite dish?
• Always smell like turkey or always smell like gravy?

47. Match turkey feathers

Like Pin the Tail on the Donkey but with turkeys. Put a large turkey body on the wall and make feathers out of construction paper. Students put the feathers on the turkey blindfolded or not, depending on their age. 

48. Compete in a Thanksgiving obstacle course

Create an Thanksgiving obstacle course with classic games. Have students hop in potato sacks, run with a football, toss the football, and march in a parade back to start. 

Want more articles like this about Thanksgiving activities? Be sure to subscribe to our newsletters.

Plus, if you loved our Thanksgiving activities article, check out Meaningful Gratitude Activities for Kids. 

Vice President Kamala Harris is touting her record on predatory for-profit colleges on the presidential campaign trail — and deservedly so. But in reality, work still needs to be done to fulfill promises to student borrowers. As the clock ticks down on the Biden-Harris administration, she needs to finish the job. 

Our client, Jaime Maldonado, remembers nearly ten years ago when Harris, then her state’s attorney general, announced findings of significant misconduct against the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges. To Jaime, an alumna of Corinthian’s Heald College, a report detailing those findings validated the feeling that she had been duped and scammed by the institution. Still, she always assumed that her Corinthian debts would die with her and did her best to pay each month — barely keeping up with the ballooning interest. 

In June 2022, when Harris and the U.S. Department of Education announced a group discharge for Corinthian borrowers, canceling nearly $6 billion in federal student loans for all borrowers who had attended Corinthian institutions, Jaime was elated. A day she thought would never come now promised to change her financial future.

 Group discharge announcements for other predatory for-profit schools followed, including Marinello Schools of Beauty, ITT Technical Institute, Westwood College, the Art Institutes and Colorado-based campuses of CollegeAmerica. The department sent notices informing borrowers that they had no further obligation to repay the loans, which would be canceled without any further action on their part. 

Public announcements are important, but implementation matters. Lo and behold, more than two years later and countless hours spent trying to get clarity from student loan servicers and the Education Department, Jaime and thousands of borrowers are still fighting for that relief. 

Meanwhile, they have watched as the Education Department continues to announce more discharges and as Harris travels the country talking about the success of this work. 

The urgency to finish the job is now growing. While the Higher Education Loan Authority of Missouri, or Mohela, and other loan servicers are legally obligated to fulfill their contractual obligations and discharge these loans, it’s up to the Education Department to hold them accountable. If they won’t, others will, including Jaime. Our recent class-action lawsuit, Jaime Maldonado v. Higher Education Loan Authority of Missouri, demands that the group borrower defense loan discharges be implemented immediately.

We acknowledge the many challenges confronting the Education Department and the complexity of the student loan system it (along with Congress) created. But those challenges do not excuse the department from holding servicers accountable and delivering long-overdue justice to defrauded borrowers.  

Fifty-six members of Congress — led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn — agreed. In September, they sent a letter to the Education Department citing our lawsuit against Mohela, calling the allegations “explosive.” The letter urged the department to immediately protect borrowers from “MOHELA’s abuses” and begin determining if the student loan servicer is meeting its contractual obligations.

The cost of inaction is significant. Every day that borrowers are left in limbo, they suffer real financial consequences. 

For those who attended notoriously fraudulent schools like Corinthian, the Art Institutes and ITT, the trauma has endured for nearly a decade. Our clients have been denied mortgages, car loans and jobs because this debt remains on their credit, even though the department said it is canceled and unenforceable. They’ve delayed starting families, going back to school and worry about the multigenerational effects of this debt on their loved ones.  

We don’t know what will happen in November’s election. But we do know what happens when a Trump administration is in charge of the Education Department. Borrowers’ legal rights are trampled and ignored, and policies ensuring essential consumer protections for borrowers are eliminated. The previous U.S. secretary of education was even held in contempt of court for violating a judge’s order and illegally collecting on Corinthian borrowers. 

Real progress has been made and Harris deserves credit for her efforts. But the department needs to move faster and with a real sense of urgency to ensure these canceled debts are actually discharged. Borrowers can’t afford to wait any longer, and neither can the Biden-Harris administration. 

It’s time to finish the job. 

Internal Competition

The analysis also found that ESSER spending led to a staff recruiting conundrum within school districts: In some cases the emergency funds were spent at higher rates at a district’s wealthier schools, despite similar needs at higher-poverty schools for additional staff.

Roza says that district leaders whom researchers interviewed about the problem reported staff vacancies were typically filled first at schools with lower poverty rates, sometimes with district employees looking to transfer out of schools with higher poverty levels.

That exacerbated the staffing issues at higher-poverty schools, which were then left trying to fill newly created ESSER-funded jobs and replace staff who moved across the district.

“Let’s say San Diego said, ‘I’m going to put a reading coach or a nurse or parent coordinator in every school,’” Roza says. “Immediately those positions got filled in their most wealthy schools first. We see this all the time where teachers migrate to less-poor schools, so you might have just actually created yet another opening in your high-poverty school.”

Not Looking Back

When it came to contracts for services like tutoring or edtech that were funded by ESSER, Roza says she and her fellow researchers found that school districts frequently renewed those contracts the following year without ever reviewing whether they were worth the money.

That was one of a litany of ways that contracted services were running ineffectively, according to the analysis.

“Let’s say you had a restaurant or something like that. If they’re going to spend money on a vendor product, they’re gonna make sure they get the value out of it,” Roza says, “or they’re going to cut that, because it matters for their bottom line. The market isn’t functioning as well in the public education space.”

Roza says there’s no one person to blame in the system. An example of how money might go to waste through a contract, she offers, would be when a math coordinator requests a program for teachers that they end up not using much. But then the coordinator leaves their position for a promotion or a job outside the district, and their replacement renews the unused program without investigating whether it’s needed — it was simply part of the budget they inherited.

“[Districts] got all this new money, and some of them did indeed spend more money on the vendors that have good products across the board,” Roza says. “But they’re not necessarily buying the best products, or getting what they need, or making the most of what they bought, or checking if it even worked. We hear this even from the vendors who are frustrated with this.”

Reading Outcomes

Edunomics Lab’s analysis found that when it came to improving reading scores, identifying more students with reading disabilities did not always lead to improvement in their reading ability.

Where did investment in reading pan out? Roza says districts were most successful when they first improved reading instruction for general education students — namely through instruction that relies on the science of reading. By the time a student immersed in that type of reading instruction is identified as needing special education services, Roza explains, they will already have a strong foundation on which to keep building.

“Fewer of them are even going to get referred to special ed for reading disabilities,” Roza says, “because having that kind of good core instruction from the beginning really helped them.”

Broken Budget Process

Similar to the problems with contract work, the analysis found that school districts tended to continue spending ESSER funds on programs for multiple years without reviewing their outcomes.

Part of the problem is that district budget cycles require them to finalize budgets for an upcoming year before getting standardized test results from the previous year, leaving little or no room to adjust spending based on student performance.

In one case, Roza says, a district leader reported having to finalize a budget an entire year in advance, locking it into spending that may or may not be ideal for students’ needs.

“In the first full year pandemic-relief funds were available from the American Rescue Plan, districts spent only 14 percent of the grant funds, largely because those monies were held up in district budget cycles that left no room for a more nimble, urgent response,” according to the analysis.

Ultimately, Roza says that while the averages in the data help researchers describe the relationship between ESSER spending and student outcomes, that doesn’t mean the average reflects the reality of every school district. There are big differences between districts, she says, and some of them buck the trends.

“People keep wanting to say ‘the average district,’ and the average includes districts that have gotten great outcomes and some that have not,” Roza cautions, “so it’s not great to try to apply our average findings to every individual district.”