Blogger Julie Torres coordinates support for National Board candidates in our district. In that capacity she observes many teachers at their practice. In her recent post, 10 Degrees of Teaching, Julie takes the temperature of the current teaching environment and lists ten observations. After
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I went treasure hunting. I sought the definitive metaphor to contrast the power of all that is wrong in education with the power of all that is right. Yin Yang? Nah. A transformative professional development doesn’t need to be balanced
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Over the past 18 years I have been a teacher, an instructional coach, a mentor and a student. This year I had a unique opportunity to look at teaching through a different lens. I began to examine education through the
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Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Wow, that sounds extremely corny, so I’ll explain. Four years ago, in the spring of 2008 I was accepted into Arizona State University’s doctoral program in leadership and innovation.
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Typically around this time of the year I pull out my old, tattered and torn, Charles Schultz books: Happiness is a Warm Puppy Love is Walking Hand in Hand When I was in the classroom it was fun to read
Read MoreTo dramatically improve teaching and learning nationwide, structural changes and out-of-the-box thinking are needed. The most quality solutions will involve new layers of teacher support and leadership. I think the chart below speaks for itself. I mean, if horses have
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Each year, I host teaching interns or student teachers (or both) as they move through teacher-preparation programs through local universities. During this process I am able to “pay things forward” by coaching other inspired people to be the best teachers
Read MoreOne exhausted night at the end of May 2011, I got sucked into a Jersey Shore marathon and began to wonder if teachers could “GTL” like the overly-tanned and overly-paid reality show MTV characters. According to the oh-so-charming Mike “The
Read MoreLike its sister-term, “accountability,” the term “reform” has had a few minutes of fame in education this year (see this swell piece by blogger-extraordinaire Nancy Flanagan). Here, Flanagan blatantly opens her piece with the statement, “Hello my name is
Read MoreRavitch believes that as long as charters are working strictly with at-risk kids who are on the verge of dropping out of school, that is just fine. But as soon as charters start to attract the “regular” kids, they become the enemies of the public education system.
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