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 […]
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 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 […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Teach to the Rest: How the Pandemic Could Be the Best Thing for Education in 20 Years
What’s getting you through 2020’s chaos? For me, it’s the knowledge that education could change, and not by a little. As with all things education, I’m not alone of course, And many others have come before me. I know because I used the pandemic to read them all. Reardon and Timar. Ravitch and Tatum, Delpit […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
OPINION: I Chose The New Deputy Secretary of Education Myself Once
The school in which I teach, and now send my daughter to learn, lies in one of the lowest socioeconomic neighborhoods in San Diego. Nearly all of its students qualify for free and reduced lunch, the vast majority of the students speak English as a second language and teachers teach their hearts out. But there’s […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
What Does It Take To Keep A Republic?
After months of their own false accusations about voter fraud, many GOP leaders hid under the pews during the insurrection. Afterward, with public pressure mounting, some changed their votes to certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Just like that. And as I was considering their quick change of mind, I listened to […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Global Education: What We Don’t Teach Has Never Been More Important
As adults in a time of crisis, we turn to familiar sources. I find myself these days interested in the efforts of South Korea, in the singing balconies of Italy, and in the ways in which different nations have dealt with the virus. It helps me to interpret what is happening around me, and what […]
Posted inOpinion
Dear Betsy, Thanks for the Memories
Dear Betsy, I heard you resigned today because of all the bad things the president said at his insurrection party. You just finally had enough, huh? Hey don’t worry, I agree with you. It wasn’t pretty. My students think so too. In fact, we didn’t like Trump’s rhetoric either. I guess we just noticed […]