Middle schoolers are communicating more, but connecting less, writes Alex Whitcomb on Medium. Middle-school relationships are crucial, he writes. You all know what I’m talking about?—?the note-passing, “check yes if you like me,” gossip around the lunch table about who likes who. . . . with the dawn of new technology, Gen-Z is in the midst of overhauling a staple that has lasted for generations. They are communicating more than any generation before them, but experiencing sig

Teachers chart their relationships with students at a high-poverty North Carolina school, reports Lisa Philip on WUNC. Pattillo Middle School teachers post the names of school’s 265 students on index cards, then place dots by those with whom they have meaningful relationships. “Then we were able to step back and see which students didn’t have a dot, or didn’t have as many dots as other kids,” said Byron Bullock, an administrator at the Edgecombe County school, about 75 miles