My son said to me last night that he didn’t want to go to school tomorrow. As he is 11 and just started middle school, I ran the myriad of thoughts that any normal mom would – maybe it’s the new schedule, perhaps it’s a...
What, as a teacher, am I trying to be effective at? Last week I visited a former student of mine in the hospital. He had just woken up from a week-long coma. Several of his friends, also my former students, claimed that his head and brain...
So, what’s the big deal with retaining teachers? Recently, I found myself skimming through the oh-so-trendy but undeniably fascinating Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The excerpt I found most intriguing proposed the following: becoming great at something takes a significant amount of time, which Gladwell frames in...
In this high-stakes culture in which we operate, why should teachers strive to build solid relationships with their students? I have taught in segregated special education schools. My students had been removed from their feeder schools, usually due to behavioral issues. The urban high school students...
Going Back to Zero Enough already! As a nation, we generally agree that the teacher is the single most important variable in the education of children. However, very little has been done since A Nation At Risk was published in 1983 to improve the status of...
While in a meeting with U.S. Department of Education’s Assistant Secretary Peter Cunningham, he posed this question to a group of teachers. I would like to answer this question by sharing a story about a former student of mine. Daniel is an African American 3rd grade...
In a speech to Nationally Board Certified teachers, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, spoke about America’s need to attract and retain highly talented and capable individuals into the teaching profession. Secretary Duncan specifically pointed to how other countries incentivize the highest performing college graduates to...
How does class size affect the abilities of effective teachers? My first year of teaching I sat looking out in a sea of 35 third grade faces thinking to myself, “Where in my methods classes did they prepare us for this scenario?” I knew right then...