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A difference
Can you tell the difference: this is my first post from an iPad. It’s taking me a bit longer to type, but this may challenge me to be a bit less wordy. This may work out. Other than that, you might be...
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#Teacher #evaluations are balls
Yeah, they’re balls, you want to fight about it? Check this ridiculous and infuriating story from Chicago Public Schools with regard to principal evaluations of teachers. Hey, I have a question: when...
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Some people are just too stupid for words
Did you ever want to do this to someone? I know that’s not too diplomatic of me, but some piece of garbage principal in Arkansas appointed a co-valedictorian because he was worried having a Black...
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Constructive critique and what is actually harmful to children
I saw this circulate today through my circles on doling our better criticism. I like it. It applies to my discipline because I feel as if I am constantly scrutinized by individuals who do not know how...
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The NEA should have listened. It’s too late.
The Washington Post has a feisty profile of the new NEA president, Lily Eskelsen García: What would she do if she were still teaching and an administrator told her to do something in class to improve...
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The practice of lesson plan review
Beginning my second year back in the classroom, I am once again becoming aware of the obligatory lesson plan review by administration. I have no problem with this in theory, but I am curious as to the...
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A grave mythology is propagated by our own colleagues.
I am certain that any educator and reader of this website has been confronted with the following: You are against standardized testing. Therefore, you are against all assessment. You are against...
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In an era of the “Clipboard Culture.”
I can’t say for sure if I invented this term on the fly or not. I lamented to my colleagues that the “clipboard culture” needs to end. Those of us subjected to daily and weekly observations from...
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The Audit culture in public schools
Almost like in a teaching hospital, people from District offices around the country do rounds in classrooms and schools to tick boxes on a checklist. Do we have the right things hanging on our walls?...
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Teachers will give inches that quickly add up to miles.
Few things in any given teacher’s career will make the ceding of ground more obvious than new administration. We’ve had three principals in as many years. Our school has struggled mightily all three of...
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Watch administration twist themselves in knots.
One of the cheapest and least effective interventions in struggling public schools is to require teachers to hang very specific items on their walls. From a teaching standpoint, these interventions do...
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The new anti-testing police
I am awash in analysis of the Obama administration’s walk-back of testing. See, from the NYT. This is a somewhat hopeful shift in focus for an administration that has exponentially increased the amount...
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The case for smugness in education
On a near daily basis, educators are asked repeatedly to let down their guards and be “open” to feedback. Although, when someone asks you as a teacher to be open to feedback, I’d start to build that...
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Principals should be elected to four year rotations
Like a lot of things in today’s pubic schools, the principal is a position that harks back to factory models of schooling. The building principal is a middle-level manager, a waypoint between the rank...
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Do stressed teachers lead to stressed students?
Education Week reports on a study that adds to the literature on linkages between teacher and student stress. First, let me get this out of the way. For the study, researchers surveyed 17 teachers in...
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Any school leaders out there willing to own up to hateful practices?
Like this one. Who approves things like this, and what teacher worth her or his salt would draft something like this? Of all that I’ve seen, this is certainly not the worst, but it’s certainly up...
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