Teaching

This year I had the great fortune of getting to know some thoughtful charter school leaders from across the country. We were convened in New York City by the Partners for Developing Futures, a group that makes grants to promising charter schools who are led by people of color. Our group visited three schools that were in their early stages of development. The school leaders were using the most thoughtful approaches to working with children who are overwhelmingly poor and from minority backgrounds. Based on my observations of classrooms the students were getting a great education.

The first ever International Summit on Teaching, convened last week in New York City, showed perhaps more clearly than ever that the United States has been pursuing an approach to teaching almost diametrically opposed to that pursued by the highest-achieving nations.

This past week I was in Washington to talk with colleagues and friends about the upcoming debates over NCLB.  While I enjoy the city and my friends, it was great to get back to my school just in time for Friday—one of my favorite days.  And it has nothing to do with it being the day before the weekend.

Every other Friday my staff and I meet for what we call ‘planning period meetings’.  Since we are on a semester schedule with long periods this means we have about an hour to talk about our shared work.  During the first semester of the year we read a book together and discuss it.  In the second semester we take on a protocol called ‘looking at student work.’

(Previously published on Valerie Strauss' blog, "The Answer Sheet," in the Washington Post.) 

Years ago, I learned that if you want to communicate with people, it’s best to avoid jargon.

It was my fourth year as principal, and I’d decided to add a portfolio requirement for graduation. After two years of study, meetings, and hearings, we were ready to move forward and decided to share the plan with the entire community. Feeling creative, we decided to put the entire proposal in a booklet and mail it to every district resident.

Then, mistakenly, we decided I would write the booklet.

On October 22, the Forum hosted a panel discussion in Washington, DC about how to invest in the creation of a long-term teaching profession in the United States. The following article about the event, written by Anthony Rebora, appeared in Teacher Magazine. A copy of the Forum's policy brief can be found at http://rethinklearningnow.com/resources/Teaching_Brief_1009_ForumForEd.pdf.

What I appreciate about Chester Finn is that he always has some good points to make. But Finn makes one good point and several questionable and fallacious ones in his Washington Post Op-Ed, “Slow the Preschool Bandwagon” (May 15, 2009). The good point is that it would help at-risk children and their families to have intensive support from birth to age five. When this was done in North Carolina’s Abecedarian Project, I.Q. scores rose, special education placement rates fell from 48 percent to 25 percent, and grade retention declined from 55 percent to 31 percent.

The Alliance for Childhood’s  new report, Crisis in the Kindergarten, offers a careful account of what's actually happening in early childhood classrooms across the country.

The news  is frightening.  

by Guest Blogger Harry Feder

After a year of practicing law in the pursuit of commerce (my second stint as a litigator; the first one lasted eight years), I am returning to the high school classroom.  I am excited and a little nervous at the prospect.  In my first go round as a teacher, I taught social studies at Urban Academy in New York City, a small public high school that affords its teachers immense curricular freedom and that graduated students based on performance assessments – analytical papers, science and research projects, solutions and explanations to applied mathematical problems, public presentations – that truly assessed their college-ready skills.