Anyone who has ever been a cooperating teacher for an up-and-coming student teacher knows how difficult it can be to evaluate one’s protege negatively. As I observed my student teacher. I am inspired to evaluate my own teaching style and the elements of my personality that go into my efforts to be a master teacher. […]
Middle School
Posted inConfessions of a Teacher
Are Elementary Teachers Jacks of All Trades or Masters of None?
Recently, I was facilitating a discussion with high school teachers about Kylene Beers book When Kids Can’t Read What Teachers Can Do – A Guide for Teachers 6-12. In chapter four, Beers explained that one of her students did not understand how to find the main idea and that she did not do a good […]
Posted inConfessions of a Teacher
Test Scores > Hungry Kids? PA Teacher Fired for Making Pancakes
Welcome to 2018, where schools are permitted to hold pep rallies for students to “get them excited” about standardized tests (like that ever worked!?), but if a teacher makes his students – 95% of whom are free and reduced lunch – pancakes during the tests, that leads to him being fired. Seriously. This isn’t an […]
Posted inHow to Fix Education
And We Will Rise: Day 3 of the Oklahoma Walkout
We are on day three of the Oklahoma Walkout. Our governor made the comment yesterday that we [teachers] were acting like a bunch of spoiled “teenagers who want a better car.” One of our legislatures went Live on Facebook and said we were never going to be happy and that he “wasn’t supporting teachers anymore!” […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Teaching The Legacy of Dr. King: Fifty Years Later
I sit to write on the waning hours of April 4, 2018, fifty years after the assassination and death of Martin Luther King, Jr. I was seven when we all heard the news of his death. Even at that young age, I knew something had happened that would change the direction of my nation, indeed; […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Educators React to the March for Our Lives
Young People Take the Lead On March 24, 2018, in the wake of the February 14, 2018, school shooting in Parkland, Florida, anti-gun violence marches were held in the nation’s capital and around the globe. A record 800,000 attended the DC march, coordinated and led in large part by the students who survived the Parkland […]
Posted inAdult Learning
One Future of K-12 Education: From the Factory to a Personalized Model
From the Factory to a Personalized Model If you’re old enough, try to think back to the way teaching and learning was designed 40 or 50 years ago. The teacher was the “sage on the stage.” He or she had the subject information in their mind, and it was up to the teacher to make […]
Posted inTeacher Leaders
Project-Based Learning: A User’s Guide
Over the past several decades, trends in education have come and gone or been resurrected with a new name. “Group work” is now called “cooperative learning.” Teacher-centered learning in the form of lecture and discussion in secondary education has taken a back seat to student-centered learning where students have a greater voice in determining how […]