Tis the season for championship academic competitions. And while not as well known as UIL or quiz bowl, the inaugural Vocabulary.com  Vocabulary Bowl was notable this year for crowning a champion from Houston. Chavez High School students won the national championship with a collective total of 303, 387 points amassedRead More

May 27th – High school students from all over the state converged in Austin, TX for the 2015 University Interscholastic League Texas Academic meet. The meet, which was held on campus at the University of Austin, lasted for three days and held over a dozen competitions in subjects such asRead More

As the academic year draws to a close, so too does the season for academic competitions. The Private Schools Interscholastic Association State Meet was held in late April; its public school counterpart, the UIL Academic Competition, will have its state meet next week. And the week after that, the NationalRead More

May 4-8 of this year marks the annual celebration of Teacher Appreciation Week. It can be tempting to brush this off as yet another commercialized greeting-card holiday – doesn’t everything have its own day or week nowadays? But the simple fact is that teachers really do deserve our appreciation, andRead More

Each year, Rice University‘s Boniuk Institute hosts a writing competition called Embracing Tolerance. The contest, open to high school students in the greater Houston area, encourages young people to think about and engage with the idea of religious tolerance and coexistence. The 2015 prompt asked students to consider the qualitiesRead More

This week, HISD’s Barrick and Grissom elementary schools welcomed a special guest. Bess the Book Bus visited these schools, as it has visited countless others, to bring free books for the students. Access to books in the home is an important factor in fostering a love of reading, and studiesRead More

Houston students benefit from a wealth of summer enrichment opportunities, including everything from test prep to day camp at the natural science museum. Today, we’d like to spotlight a summer program hosted by Rice University: the Tapia Math-Science Scholars Program. This is an all-costs-paid, one-month residential program in which risingRead More

Two weeks ago, the eleventh annual ExxonMobil Texas Science and Engineering Fair was held at UTSA. Each year, students from all over the state come to showcase research projects in the STEM fields. The event is open to students in grades 6-12 who compete and score well in a qualifying regionalRead More

Spring break is upon us. Several Houston private schools are on break this week, and many more will be on break next week; HISD spring break is next week, too. For students, this means a week of relaxation and no homework, but for parents, spring break can be a littleRead More

Parts 1 and 2 of our feature on spring-deadline scholarships listed regional and national scholarship competitions. But of course, there are Houston-specific scholarships, too. The application deadline for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo scholarships may have come and gone, but there are still a few local scholarships with plenty ofRead More

Today, HISD schools and most Houston private schools are closed in honor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday. Many parents also have the day off from work, making it a perfect opportunity to spend quality time with children. The Children’s Museum of Houston’s MLK Day Celebration is aRead More

At the start of January, many people make New Year’s resolutions – statements of intention to improve themselves or their lives in some way. But for many adults, resolutions quickly fade, forgotten within weeks or months. One study found only 8% of people actually achieve their resolutions. For adults in theRead More

Looking for something fun do to with your family this weekend? The annual “Dickens on the Strand” holiday festival will take place December 5-7, 2014, in Galveston. Given the time of year, one might suppose that Dickens on the Strand centered on a production of the author’s holiday classic, “ARead More

Yesterday, we posted an article about holiday volunteering opportunities that students can use to earn service hours and give back to the community. But of course, volunteering isn’t just for students – many parents give of their time in serving their children’s schools and the greater community. If you’re lookingRead More

The holiday season is upon us, and has been since at least the first Christmas-themed commercials began airing in late September. With Thanksgiving merely days away, now is the perfect time to count one’s blessings and give back. Several local organizations are still in need of volunteers to assist with feedingRead More

To most of us who aren’t computer scientists, programming seems like a daunting prospect. We know that our computers, tablets, and phones could not function without vast quantities of code, but we couldn’t write that code ourselves – we couldn’t even make sense of it if we read it. WithRead More