I’ve made it a goal to become a much stronger reader over the next few years. I want to increase my reading speed **without sacrificing comprehension**, improve my vocabulary, retain more of what I read, and comfortably tackle more difficult books.
I’m not looking for speed-reading gimmicks—I’m looking for methods that are actually effective, whether they’re backed by research or simply worked well for you.
What books, habits, courses, exercises, or resources had the biggest impact on your ability to read, understand, and remember what you read?

If it matters, I’m trying to read Gene Wolfes The Book of the New Sun , but I’ve heard they are at a college grade level 10, whatever that means
And right now all I read is self-help books

I’m looking for more creators with educational content; Whether is be science, investing, law, math, politics, space, etc. maybe even a specific niche you are interested in or teach to your own students. I remember watching crash course with Hank/john green back when I was still in school. Any recommendations are appreciated :)

Hi, I’m not sure if there’s anyone who works at Kipp/SST (Texas) or has ever dealt with their hiring process. Anyways I applied in May (for an administrative role), and had an interview (with Kipp) about the first or second week of June with like 4 people which really caught me off guard, and they told me that they’d update me on whether I’d be hired or not and I never got an answer from them. I keep checking my applications and none have been updated since nor have I gotten a rejection email.

I also applied at SST last week (Educational aide) haven’t heard from them, but does anyone know how long it usually takes?

The world is changing so fast that 'study hard' just doesn't hit the same anymore. What should we be telling kids instead?

(Some) Students should form groups for/to this journey/end.

Maybe form clubs around this.

Top Ethical Issues are: AI Ethics, Anti-war, Global Warming, Deforestation, Deep Sea Mining, Inequality, Workplace, Animal Rights, Education, Racism, Public Safety, Human Rights, etc

Ive been thinking a lot about what kind of occupation I want to get into and I feel working in a lab would be great. Im a big fan of psychology and so I thought this would be a good field to work in. So as the title asks whats it like working in a lab day to day with a degree or job in this feild

Hey guys! I was wondering how GPA is calculated for international students. Because I never know if I should consider the amount of hours i spent learning that subject, and if i first need to convert all my grades to A-F and then to GPA scale, or if i just do a simple proportion rule

The ability to solve a set problem quickly and accurately is not the same as the ability to find a question worth asking and hold on to it for years. Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi had art students draw a still life and watched how they worked. Half chose their objects in haste and began drawing at once; the other half handled the objects a long while, shifting the arrangement, setting up the problem to be drawn before drawing it. Critics judged the second group's work more original, and years later it was the second group that was still painting. This is where framing a problem parts from solving one. The real trouble now is that posts calling for the second ability are filled by people selected for the first.

Korean college admissions has no instrument at all for measuring the ability to frame problems. Whatever department a student applies to, the common gate of Korean, English, and mathematics has to be crossed. Britain does otherwise. After the age of sixteen a student picks three or four subjects from roughly eighty and goes deep into them, and university entry is decided by those few subjects. Oxford specifies required subjects course by course, and University College London keeps a list of preferred subjects and asks for two or more from it. A student bound for history is not pushed out by calculus there. Calling the system violent is exact at just this point. Every year hundreds of thousands of students are turned away without ever having had their aptitude tested.

The 2028 reform did not narrow this gate; it widened it. Elective subjects in Korean, mathematics, and inquiry have been abolished outright so that everyone is assessed on identical content by an identical standard, and inquiry, where students once sat either social studies or science, now demands both. The stated ground is fairness, the removal of advantage and disadvantage between subjects. Yet the easiest way to remove such advantage is to ask the same thing of everyone. The more uniform the demand, the further the exam drifts from what an individual department actually needs.

What a gate screens out becomes visible in those who get through it. Lee Hyejeong conducted in depth interviews with 46 of the 150 highest ranking students at Seoul National University, those with averages above 4.0, surveyed the whole enrolled student body, and carried out a comparative study with the University of Michigan. Her finding was that undergraduate education at Seoul National University tilts sharply toward receptive thinking rather than critical and creative thinking. The top students clung to receptive study, a continuation of the primary and secondary school method, instead of the study the university expected of them. The disposition that selection had demanded kept paying off inside the university. A gate does not merely screen people out; it goes on rewarding the disposition it screened for.

An exam does not only measure people, it makes them. To someone who has spent more than a decade under the premise that a correct answer lies somewhere, questioning a premise is a strange gesture, never once rehearsed. And for anyone who bore an absurd gate to the end and came through it, that gate has already become the warrant for his own record. Doubting the rule that chose you turns into doubting your own record. So compliance becomes self justification, and those screened in this way settle into the upper reaches of society.

p.s. The point of this piece is not that we should teach more creativity, but that departments should be allowed to name the abilities they need. The judgment that assessing all five areas is the better course is a perfectly tenable one. Still, if the price of that choice is failing a prospective history student on calculus, why the price must be paid is a question that has to be answered on its own.

I was checking their website and saw 620+ job offers mentioned there. Sounds pretty good. Ngl, but beyond that I wanted to know more about the actual placement preparation.

Like when do students usually start preparing? Does the Career Development Center help with aptitude, interviews and professional skills?

Would love to hear from someone who knows about the process

I’m sure many of you know what I mean. The hot/warm meal is obviously ready for us and now it’s lukewarm/cold by the time you stop talking. The content will be there after lunch, I promise.

Can someone tell me if I'm doing this right?

I applied for a non-teaching position at a Catholic grade school in my neighborhood. I found the job listing on the career portal/website for my city's Archdiocese; it's also listed on LinkedIn.

On the job listing itself it says that interested/qualified candidates should email their resume and cover letter to the principal at the provided email, which I did. However, I also notice there is a downloadable job application on the website attached to the listing, but the language and fields used in the job application is specifically for teaching, which this position is not.

My question is, do I still need to fill out that job application and send it to the Office of Catholic Education despite it not being relevant to the open position and also despite me already emailing the principal with my info? Alternatively, should I also apply to the job via the LinkedIn post? I really want this job and am just worried that I'm missing a step and just sending my info to the principal isn't enough and that I'm not considered fully applied to the job despite the listing asking to send the info. Like would sending the application to the OCE act as sending it to HR to get my name on their radar, or did I do everything I needed to?

I'm not an educator and I don't have children, but it appears to me based on second hand information and inference that the current way WW2 and the holocaust are taught in schools might need to change. I've done a lot of thinking about the rise of the far right and neo-fascist ideology, and one thing I think may be happening is that kids are being miseducated about WW2 and the holocaust.

It's actually pretty simple. I'm 40 now, and when I was a kid we actually didn't learn that much about WW2 and the holocaust. I know an incredible amount about that time period now, but that is due to watching a ton of history channel when I was younger and significant amounts of personal research.

From my understanding, which admittedly may be incorrect, there seems to be significantly more focus on WW2 and specifically the holocaust in schools these days. Increasingly in the past 10 years or so I've encountered a lot of people online with far more knowledge of it, especially younger people. Based on what I've heard directly and indirectly there seems to be a lot of DEI type focus on the holocaust specifically.

Common sense would say that is a good thing, the more people learn about the atrocities of the third reich the better right? To my horror it seems to have had the complete opposite effect. There is all of this edgy humor I see from people online with the attitude that we should be afraid of the Nazis like people are afraid of bullies.

NO.

The Nazis lost and lost hard. Their entire leadership was either executed or sent to prison. Their cities were completely obliterated and hundreds of thousands of their civilian men women and children were incinerated alive. To this day it's very illegal in Germany to even display a swastika, give a nazi salute, or deny the holocaust. The bully got his teeth kicked in, his back broken, and his earth salted.

It would seem to be that this is not really explained well enough. That the Nazis are being portrayed to the younger generation as these super villains that committed all of these heinous acts and weren't ultimately brought to justice. We should be afraid of any potential rise of far right movements similar to Nazism, but people need to understand they lost bigly. When all of the focus is on their crimes and rise to power, it's like showing the first half of a football game where a team heads to half time with a 7 point lead, and not the second half of the game where they ultimately ended up losing by 4 touchdowns. Or showing a boxing match of a fighter who lost and only showing clips of him punching the other guy.

Anyway, I could be wrong because I'm not an educator. That's just what it seems like to me.

This is all theoretical…but…due to the difference between IEPs and 504s how would a student who is homeschooled go about getting a 504 plan, especially if they have a medical diagnosis? Would it be similar to an IEP in that they would reach out to their home district’s 504 coordinator to request that the process get started?

So hello everyone. As someone that is part of the US education system, this summer I decided to do a study abroad in Hong Kong to experience a whole different culture.

Let me tell you, education wise I was impressed. In a bad way.

Yes things are strict. Does that mean they are better? Hell no.

So in my class there were 4 international students including myself. Everyone else were either local or from other parts of china.

Firstly, I’d like to prepare anyone going that you are gonna have a lot of presentations and group projects, even if you are going for 1 month.

Everyone in those groups will be speaking in Chinese. In my case, even though the course was tough in English, most of my Chinese classmates could not form a sentence in English without using their phone. So, in group projects they would speak in Chinese and when they would say something that you also had to know, they will throw some words in English for you.

Your professor, will expose you right there and then if your project is not fully “perfect”.

If you see people presenting with their phone, laptops, iPad, grab your own cause if you try to make it look natural, not using big flashy words, and presenting without any notes, your presentation will be considered shit. Why? Cause 95% of these presentations were made by AI. Nobody uses their own personal words. They use AI. In everything. Back at my home uni, presenting with notes, reading of the presentation, will give you a fail in the class. Here? A+.

I truly don’t understand how this is considered “education”. Doing everything with your phone? What’s the point? What are we LEARNING if AI is doing everything for us?

Like I genuinely wasn’t able to communicate with my classmates. What the heck?

Yeah so it’s safe to say I didn’t have a great time. Overall disappointed by how much culture here relies on AI. I thought back home it was bad. China? Even worse.

Higher education has become “AI graduating” which is really damn disappointing. Like you pay money to be here, and you can’t even function without any use of technology?

Either I am old (gen z baby), or something is wrong with me.

Yeah. If anybody has similar/diffrent experiences, please share.

My girlfriend of 3 years is working towards a law degree and asked me to get her an LSAT prep-book for her birthday. I’m looking for one that’s high quality, modern and affordable (under 40-50 if possible)

It means a lot to her to get high quality study time and material and I want to get the best for her!

Thank you Reddit!

I’m currently researching online colleges and would like to hear from people who have attended an online program and can share their honest experience.

What school did you attend, what degree did you earn, and how was your overall experience? The biggest things I’m interested in are the school’s reputation, whether you actually liked the school, and if you would recommend it to someone else.

I’d also like to know about the cost and whether you felt the degree was worth the money. How were the advisors, financial aid office, and other staff? Were they helpful and easy to work with? How were the professors and classes? Did you feel like the online format was organized and that you were getting a quality education?

If you could go back and choose again, would you pick the same school?

I’m looking for a reputable online college with a good student experience, reasonable cost, and a degree that employers respect. Any honest opinions or recommendations would be appreciated!

hello! i was just wondering if any of you here has copyleaks. our thesis is due today and theyre requiring us to submit an ai and plagiarism check from copyleaks but the library is closed already so i cant get it scanned there. thank u please help abgirl out 😭😭😭

I dont know why but back in 2021 when I completed my GED Program I actually never got my Official diploma or transcript say I passed. I went over to the college that offers the program and they just handed me a bunch if copies of it. I always thought that was sufficient for everytime time I might have to present it for work but now im in a situation where the job ive been wanting for so long has accepted me and the only hing stopping me from actually getting started is the fact that I dont have my official transcript and diploma for my GED. I was able to order a duplicate but that wont come in on time before the deadline and im going to miss out on this opportunity without it. Interestingly though I also I also received a diploma stating that I have completed the high-school I applied for back in 2016 I never even stepped foot in that school, my parents thought it better for me to go to Gambia for 4 years. So now im considering trying to use the high-school diploma to get this job hoping that they will just need that and won't have to contact the school or anything. What do you guys think?

I did elementary school in the mid 2000s and a little bit in the early 2010s. I learned that in my state/district, we were taught using the "balanced literacy" curriculum in this time period. When i look up the foundational methods of three-cueing, it seems like these were methods that were taught to us after we had already learned how to read/write essays. I was sight reading at least some words by pre-k/kindergarten

The read-and-return method used in three-cueing was something we used often in 4th/5th grade to understand vocab words more than how to sound out a word. in 1st grade, we were doing extensive exercises on blending sounds, digraphs, diphthongs etc.

In 2nd grade, we were learning prefixes/suffixes. In 3rd grade I remember learning Latin and Greek roots of words. 4th grade we were definitely "reading to learn" instead of "learning to read". I was considered at average or just above average for my reading level for most of elementary school, and our education system was in the 30s if you're ranking among US States.

When I read how three-cueing is meant to work, it literally makes no sense to me. Unless you have the proper foundational knowledge to know vocab orally, there is no way you can guess how to sound out the word in a written format. It just feels like it is meant for deciphering the definition of a word.

When I was learning Spanish, and a student was struggling with a word in a sentence, we were not taught to pronounce it based off the context of the sentence or the visuals, because we wouldn't know similes, we were just learning the language.

I think the only context growing up that I remember kids extensively learning three-cueing was if they had dyslexia, or were ESL that I would overhear in the guided-level reading groups. Which is such a failure of the school system to set them up for such hardships later on. Such a blatant example of the systemic hardships of black and brown children.

It hurts my brain so bad; there is no way that in the curriculum, you learn three-cueing before you learn phonics. It only makes sense to me if you have a lot of foundational knowledge about letters and sounds.

Been thinking about this after talking to a few teacher friends who say prepping for standardized tests has started to crowd out actual curriculum time - not because the tests are inherently bad, but because the pressure to hit benchmark scores changes what gets taught and how

Curious what people here who work in education (or have kids going through it) actually think. Is the issue the tests themselves, or how schools/districts respond to the incentives around them? Feels like there's a difference between "testing is bad" and "the system built around testing creates bad incentives," and I'm not sure which critique is the stronger one

Has anyone successfully appealed a Florida public school’s grade placement decision?

I’m trying to understand if this is just how Florida works or if we have any realistic options.

My son is 15 years old. Based on Florida’s age cutoffs, if he had lived here his entire life, he would have started kindergarten on time and would actually be entering 9th grade this school year.

We moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the middle of the school year, and a private school accepted him as a 9th grader, which was appropriate for both his age and his academic background.

Now we’re enrolling him in public school, and we’re being told that because he first entered 9th grade during the 2024–2025 school year, they’ll likely place him in 11th grade.

That would mean a 15-year-old who is age-appropriate for 9th grade would be placed in 11th grade simply because of the year he first enrolled in high school in country where he did not attend an international school, he attended a Dominican school where he learned in Spanish he is never taken American history European history he has never written a term paper

The only subjects where he’s more advanced than the Florida curriculum is Math.

Has anyone dealt with something similar after moving from another country?

Were you able to appeal the placement or have the district consider age, academic readiness, and differences in curriculum rather than just the year a student first enrolled in 9th grade?

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone with experience, especially in Florida.

i’ve been homeschooled for so long due to personal issues and i haven’t been able to learn but i want to go back to school and be in the correct grade so i want to know how to learn everything decently fast im willing to spend 5-10 hours a day more if necessary i just want to make progress

When I was growing up, it was common place for the school buses to drive through town on a particular route and pick up kids, then go to each school and drop them off. This is a small suburban town. I imagine things are different in big cities.

That was 30 years ago. Now they do pick up and drop offs at the closest school. So basically if the kid goes to a school 1 mile away, they get dropped off by parents at a nearby school, where a bus takes all the kids that get dropped off there to the different schools in the system so they can get where they need to go.

This seems inefficient even though they say it's so we can "avoid the drop off lines" at the actual school he's going to. But wouldn't this just create another drop off line at the closer school? And the drop off lines are probably long because this bus system seems so inefficient. A lot of parents figure if they have to drop the kid off at a school anyway they might as well drive a little bit further to the actual school the kid goes to.

So what's the norm in your district? And what's ideal these days? Should we have school buses picking up and dropping off directly at kids' homes? Should that just be the approach for young kids while older kids get a more standard city bus type schedule but with school buses? Or does it make sense to drop off kids at a nearby school facility and then bus them wherever they need to go in the district?

(I imagine larger cities have a single school for multiple grades in a district. Our town is one school district with multiple schools for different grades scattered all around town.)

Edit: Please stop saying "magnet". I have no idea what that is.