Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! National headlines declare a shortage of teachers. But student teachers and their guide teachers know that in some parts of the US getting your foot in the door after credentialing is through is still as tough as ever . […]
Thomas Courtney
Thomas Courtney is a 6th-grade middle school English Language Arts and History teacher in San Diego, California. He is the author of many articles, memoirs, and short stories found in anthologies, magazines, and newspapers. He has written several books, including the upcoming Viral School Rhetoric: A Teacher’s Story of Good Intentions, Bad Policy, and a Pandemic, available in the Fall of 2025.
Posted inOpinion
It’s Time for Teachers to Stop Blaming Ourselves
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Every profession has its detractors. Society can find fault with just about anyone doing their job, except maybe a baker. Never heard a bad thing about a baker. When it comes to teaching, George Bernard Shaw once famously said […]
Posted inOpinion
Mr. Courtney’s Publicly Funded Snake Handling Divinity School
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! For 23 years, I have been a public school teacher. Yet, never once have I shared my religious affiliation nor religious beliefs with my class, nor with a single student for that matter. With very rare exceptions, I never […]
Posted inPedagogy
Red Light! It’s Time to Take Digital Literacy Seriously
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Several months ago, my fifth-grade class asked me to play Red Light, Green Light. Not typically a game my fifth graders request, it came as a surprise. Later that week I watched the first episode of a very grown-up […]
Posted inFrom the Front Lines
Teach to the Rest: Three More Ways We Can Use the Pandemic to Transform Schools For the Better- Part 2
By Thomas Courtney Last year, I wrote about the opportunity we had to change the very way in which our schools operated. Twenty years ago, teaching to the test transformed our educational system. To many, the pandemic was simply the last piece of the puzzle that revealed the picture of what our schools had become. […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Assessing Your School’s Social Emotional Learning Practice
Social and emotional learning is abuzz in educational circles now at long last. One might even say it’s a call to action, one that is long overdue in our schools.
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Waging a More Civil War on Our Campuses is the New Norm
Waging a More Civil War on Our Campuses In my second year of teaching, I made the mistake of reading a book about a boy who was secretly a wizard to my class. The next afternoon, I found the back of my head scraping the bulletin board as a mother screamed, cursing me and Satan […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
A New Hippocratic Oath For Teachers
In March of this year, I watched as a student’s beloved grandfather had a stroke via Zoom. It was beyond frustrating to know there was so little I could do for him, and the event was not only traumatic for my student but pretty much summed up the entire year for me as a virtual […]