Teacher Professionalism
Read more about efforts to professionalize teaching and improve its status, and hear what teachers think about their profession
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Every Day We Fail to Take Action, We Choose This Fate
We live in a country that turns its back on our very future: our public schools, the precious children who attend them, and the teachers who sacrifice their energy, spirit and personal resources to keep these children safe and growing.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
What Is a 'Quality' Curriculum?
Using a range of materials, and, more important, creating hands-on experiences and interactions with big ideas within a discipline, helps students construct and apply knowledge.
School & District Management
Opinion
Should Teachers Invite Policymakers Into Their Classrooms?
In my teaching career, I have had more than the usual number of opportunities to have outsiders (including media, education organizations, researchers and, yes, legislators) visit my classroom. And I can testify that most visitors don't come to learn something new from an hour or two walking in the teacher's shoes. They come with an agenda.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Teacher in a Strange Land: The Best and Worst of 2017
Angst is not what teachers, parents and school leaders are looking for in their op-ed/blog reading. Inspiration, perhaps—or confirmation that their observations and ideas are shared. Thoughts about coping, adapting, revising—it's what teachers do, and have always done. But this has been an extraordinary year. The entire realm of education policy is up for grabs (and grabs is the correct word).
Student Well-Being
Opinion
Are Schools Responsible for Teaching Boys to Respect Girls?
There isn't a teacher in America who has been able to avoid what happens on CNN or Fox News--children bring their families' values into the classroom. And the easiest path for educators is to reproduce the cultural norms of the communities where they teach. But maybe these past few days represent a sea change in national thinking about gender inequality.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Do Perks for Teachers Compromise Their Integrity?
Schools and teachers are the objects of commerce and policy, not co-creators or idea-generators or genuine partners. We get "gifts" from business, if we are producing what they need.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Who Is the Ideal Teaching Candidate?
Where do good teachers come from? How do we pick promising candidates out of the crowd? What is the secret to putting the right people in the classroom?
Teaching Profession
Opinion
What Is a Personalized Education, and Why Doesn't Everyone Get One?
When you strip all peer interactions out of learning, you're left with bare facts and theorems and instructions. Or, in competency-based learning, a screen, the next quiz and maybe, if you're lucky, a digital badge.
Recruitment & Retention
Opinion
The Many Ways We Are De-Professionalizing Teaching
The policy goal here is de-professionalizing teaching, establishing it once and for all as a short-term, entry-level technical job designed to attract a revolving door of "community-minded" candidates, who will work diligently for cheap, then get out because they can't support a family or buy a home on a teacher's salary.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
The War on Teachers and the End of Public Education
We have genuinely reached a tipping point, one where we're struggling to get young people to go into teaching as professional career (as opposed to two-year adventure before law school). Our state legislators are openly declaring that teaching is now a short-term technical job, not a career, and thus public school educators don't really need a stable state pension. That's not only a war on individual teachers, but a war on teaching itself.
Assessment
Opinion
Top of the High School Class? Not Good Enough!
There seems to be a social movement (or at least a book) suggesting that success in a professional career is not enough, that valedictorians are merely conformists, hard workers, even suck-ups, not the kinds of disruptive movers and shakers who change the world. But--should they be disrupters?
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Misguided Things People Say About Public Schools
The unexamined national goal now seems to be a productive, compliant workforce, at the lowest cost, not an educated citizenry. Instead of building on our public education infrastructure, we talk about "failing schools," and bogus international testing data.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Advice for New Teachers: Bring About Change
"New teachers: Don't stop speaking up when others may discount your thoughts, or make you feel as if you are too new to know any better."
Teacher Preparation
Opinion
Famous School Choice Pundit vs. Ordinary Teacher
While I toiled away at what you termed the retail level, you, Checker Finn, studied the research, analyzed the data, and made pronouncements impacting education across the nation. It's interesting to think that you have, in many ways, shaped the work that I actually did. For decades.
