Dave Orphal's blog

It seems to me that too many educational reformers are simply terrified about a zombie horde of so-called ineffective teachers shambling toward our city’s children, moaning, “Brains!”  It seems to me that the National Council on Teacher Quality may be falling into this trap.
 
That’s the only explanation I can give to NCTQ’s first recommendation for my school district, “The district needs to do a much better job of hiring and assigning teachers.”
 

What would a teacher evaluation system look like if it really worked and helped teachers improve our craft?
If you read my last post, you’ll know that many teachers in my home town of Oakland are frustrated with the evaluation system as it currently stands.
So what would a better system look like?

“Don’t surprise your principal,” I remember Mr. Faeth saying.
He was the principal who hired me for my first teaching job. I was teaching world history and civics at a continuation high school in Eureka, California. “If you are going to have your class read a controversial article or book or if you are going to watch a movie with any questionable content, I need to know about it in advance,” he continued. “That way if a parent calls me asking about the article or the movie, I can tell her that you and I have talked and these are the educational merits of the material.”

Over December, my students at Skyline High School in Oakland worked on four school-reform proposals.  This project is the child of summer work that my colleagues and I did with the Buck Institute for Project Based Learning and my recent trip to Finland.

Over the past month, my students at Skyline High School in Oakland have been working on four school-reform proposals.  This project is the child of summer work that my colleagues and I did with the Buck Institute for Project Based Learning and my recent trip to Finland.