Something is wrong—very, very wrong. Teachers across the country at all grade levels, in all subjects, teaching a wide variety of student populations, can sense it. There is a pulse of dysfunction, a steady palpitation of doom that the path we are on is not properly oriented. There is a raw and amorphous anxiety creeping […]
Featured
Posted inFeatured
Why the Teacher-Hero Model of Education is Doomed to Fail
“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald I’m not a hero. Neither are my colleagues. And here is the really important thing to note: no one should expect us to be. And here is the really, really important thing: the success and failure of modern American education […]
Posted inClassroom Management, Confessions of a Teacher, Current Events in Education, Elementary School, Featured, High School, How to Fix Education, Instructional Strategies, New Teacher Bootcamp, Opinion, School Improvement, Special Education, Teacher Leaders, Teacher Self Care, The State of Education
Today We Walked-The Oklahoma Edition
Today we walked out in Oklahoma. Not out of selfishness or resentment. Not out of discourse for our jobs. Not out of spite. [bctt tweet=”We walked out – for our kids. ” username=””] We walked out because we do not have adequate supplies for our classrooms. We do not have a curriculum for our students. […]
Posted inFeatured
An Act Declaring April the Worst Month to Teach
AN ACT DECLARING APRIL “THE WORST MONTH TO TEACH” Be it enacted by The Educator’s Room Readers and Writers: Whereas, by now, students and teachers have shared on average 130 classroom days together; Whereas teachers have hit the “survival mode button” more times than Staples customers have hit the “That Was Easy” button; Whereas students […]
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5 Signs You Have Become a Teaching Dinosaur – Are you Ready for Retirement?
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he’s a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he’s to setting. It happens suddenly in the course of a teaching […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
I Used To Teach on $30,000: Supporting West Virginia and Oklahoma Strikes
Like most college graduates in 2005, I was just glad to have a job in education. Better yet that I was hired at my Alma mater school, nestled in the coal region of Pennsylvania. Here I knew the teachers, the culture, and the community. But I still remember a conversation my uncle, who just retired […]
Posted inSocial Studies
Social Studies in a Political Era
“Build the wall! Build the wall! Build the wall!” Several of my 8th-grade students chanted President Trump’s campaign slogan several times when I explained to the students our next unit would be on immigration. One student, perhaps the brightest I’ve ever taught, approached me after class that day and asked me, bluntly, “Mr. Miller, what […]
Posted inConfessions of a Teacher
How My Teachers Saved My Life
I’m a proud graduate of Panther Valley High School, which a website labeled the “6th worst district in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” Nestled in the brown belt, coal region of our state, it has suffered economic and social turmoil for decades now. That said, I don’t care one bit about what that website says, the […]