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 […]
Thomas Courtney
BIO: 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 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 […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
ASK A TEACHER: Parents, You Can Decide Where Stimulus Money Goes, Here’s How
Now Is the Time to Join Your School’s Governance Team Here’s Why, and How to Do It The State of California is pumping stimulus money into schools like a kid pumps pencil shavings into the back of his desk. As a teacher, I’d like to see more than my union, or my district decides what […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Students and Families; It’s Time to Retire Our Headsets
Several years ago, I retired as a volunteer firefighter. Soon thereafter, I put my helmet and my badge in a glass case. This year, as a teacher, I ended my last Zoom class. I then took off my headset and I realized that I’m going to be placing it in a glass case too. In […]
Posted inFrom the Front Lines
Pandemic Stories of a Teacher #1: I’m Smiling Mr. Courtney, You Just Can’t See It
Please do not tell your students yet. The words from the principal flashed at me in neon while my body sank into the swivel chair at the front of the class. I fixed my face or so I thought, aware of the many eyes that would be on me now. Instinctively, as if worried […]