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How Did You Grow and Change This School Year?

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How Did You Grow and Change This School Year?

The 2025-26 academic year is coming to a close, and we have a post describing 10 ways to reflect on these last months and learn from them. But the 10 ways aren’t just for students — we also hope teachers can benefit from them. In fact, we would be delighted if teachers and students did some of the exercises together and told us what happened!

We invite you to post a comment reflecting on any aspect of this school year that you would like to make public, and we have provided some questions below to get you started.

We hope, too, that you will not only post your own reflections but also comment on the thoughts of others. As always, our staff will moderate comments, and we can’t wait to learn from you.


Students and teachers, read our related list of reflection ideas from which the questions below are drawn and then answer any of them that resonate with you. Please identify yourself as a teacher or a student when you post.

  • What do you want to remember about this school year? Why?

  • What are you especially grateful for this year? To whom would you most like to write a letter of gratitude if you could?

  • What surprised you?

  • What successes are you most proud of?

  • What challenged you? What helped you face or overcome those challenges?

  • What did you learn that most matters to you, whether in or out of school?

  • What new skills, however small, did you acquire?

  • How have you grown — as a student, a friend, a community or family member or a person?

  • How could you build on that growth next year?

  • What would you like more of in your life? What would you like less of? Why?

  • What music would be on the playlist of your 2024-25 school year? Why?

  • What books did you read this year that you would recommend to others? Why?

  • About what, if anything, did you change your mind? How did that happen?

  • If you were to collect and graph some data about your life this school year, what would you choose to graph, and what do you think it might show? What could you learn from it?

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

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Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

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Education

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Booker T. Washington and 6 Other Americans Who Shaped U.S. History

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Booker T. Washington and 6 Other Americans Who Shaped U.S. History

When Donald J. Trump eulogized Schlafly at her funeral in September 2016, he cast both himself and her as underdogs — perhaps reasonably. Mr. Trump looked like the most long shot presidential nominee in living memory. Schlafly, who gave him a rare early endorsement, had in the 1970s slayed the Equal Rights Amendment, which sought to give women equality under the Constitution — a seeming shoo-in, until she got involved.

By 2016, much of American life had turned nightmarish for someone like her.

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Gay marriage: widely accepted. Abortion: legalized. Gender-neutral bathrooms: commonplace on many campuses. Many women no longer measured their success in marriage and children, but in financial independence and personal fulfillment.

These days, though, her arguments ring anew in our ears, as a new generation of conservative women challenges feminism’s gains.

Today, anti-feminists hold powerful roles in Washington. Social media has gone frilly with tradwives. Their reasoning echoes Schlafly’s: Homemakers enjoy special status, protected and provided for by their husbands. Why give it up?

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Decades before battles erupted over unisex bathrooms for transgender people, Schafly warned that the Equal Rights Amendment would spawn co-ed bathrooms. Long before “America First” and “stop the steal,” the ultra-isolationist Schlafly accused shadowy “kingmakers” of conspiring to nominate “America Last” candidates for president. She tarred feminists as radicals, just as her heirs do now.

To combat the E.R.A., abortion and gay rights, she mobilized formerly apolitical evangelical Christians, helping to build the coalition of religious conservatives that propelled Ronald Reagan to victory and eventually ousted social moderates from the Republican Party.

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The political divisions that defined those 1970s debates “only got more pronounced over the years,” leading to today’s hyper-polarization, said Marjorie J. Spruill, the author of “Divided We Stand.” “And Schlafly’s tone had a lot to do with it.”

Schlafly’s victories came wreathed in paradoxes: She presented herself as a model wife and mother, breastfeeding all six of her children, yet she had resources (her husband, a lawyer, came from wealth) and a housekeeper that allowed her to run political campaigns and churn out books, newsletters and commentary. While exalting homemaking, she lobbied (unsuccessfully) for a top post in the Reagan administration.

Calmly, she deflected accusations of hypocrisy, saying that she had raised her children before embracing what she called her “hobby” — politics. Career and homemaking, she said, came “at different times in my life.”

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Feminists never tire of leveling similar charges today, against women like Erika Kirk, the conservative activist who now leads the influential organization started by her late husband, Charlie Kirk; and Katie Miller, the prominent Republican political operative who promotes motherhood as women’s highest calling.

Yet many young women are veering further left, and their conservative peers aren’t necessarily sticking to homemaking, either. At a recent Turning Point USA conference for conservative young women, several speakers openly discussed balancing family with high-powered careers. You could see Schlafly’s influence. You could also see feminism’s.

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Education

Test Your Knowledge of Books That Inspired Popular Screen Adaptations

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Test Your Knowledge of Books That Inspired Popular Screen Adaptations

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. As America edges closer to its 250th birthday next month, this week’s challenge highlights the popular screen adaptations of books about significant eras in the country’s history. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. Scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their screen versions.

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Education

Video: How the Job Market Is Leaving New Graduates Behind

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Video: How the Job Market Is Leaving New Graduates Behind

new video loaded: How the Job Market Is Leaving New Graduates Behind

Sydney Ember, a Times business reporter, has been speaking with recent college graduates struggling to find work. She explains why starting a career in the current economy could leave lasting scars on wages and opportunities.

By Sydney Ember, Nour Idriss and Stephanie Swart

June 5, 2026

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