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Teaching can often feel like a lonely job, but there are nearly 4 million of us in the U.S. plugging away at it everyday.
Having trouble getting your first-graders to transition from recess to class? Want some tips on how to teach the concept of density of middle-schoolers? There are many thousands of other people dealing with the same thing. Teacher need to connect with each other and the technology exists to do it.
Teacher Wall, backed by the Gates Foundation, is it. The press release describes it...
Jose-
I recently attended the NYT Schools for Tomorrow conference that you called out for not acknowledging the expertise of teachers as innovators and change agents in the national debate on the direction of educational technology innovations. I wanted to say thank you. I am not sure I would have been able to attend if you hadn’t spoken up. I was happy to learn that most of the crowd in attendance were...
I've said it before and I'm sure that I'll say it again: The Innovator's DNA by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen has really had an impact on my recent thinking.
The book's central premise is that organizations can figure out how to become more innovative by studying the key actions of the most innovative companies---Amazon, Apple, eBay, PayPal, Virgin---and one of those actions is systematically hiring innovative people.
Dyer, Gregersen and Christensen put it this way:
Clearly, if companies want innovative ideas from employees, they should screen for...
Over the past few years, the only year that my school made AYP was the same year that we utilized a block schedule – where students meet with their core teachers every other day, for ninety minutes at a time instead of a traditional schedule where students meet with each teacher every day for classes that last about fifty minutes. In addition to using a block schedule that year, the core teachers had two separate preparation times. One preparation time was to take care of personal teaching duties, such as grading papers and contacting parents. The additional preparation time was devoted to collaborative activities with teachers’ interdisciplinary teams and grade-level department lesson planning.
The core teachers’ meeting times...
I've read a ton of reviews lately of The Mitchell 20 -- a remarkable education documentary film driven by my good friend Kathy Wiebke that details the efforts of a group of 20 teachers in a high-poverty Phoenix elementary school to change the lives of their students by changing their own practice.
I guess I'm struggling to find the right words to explain how powerful the film is.
That's why I was so jazzed to find a comment from a teacher named Jill Saia on...
The new documentary, The Mitchell 20, offers a moving analysis of both the real causes and possible solutions to the educational achievement gap in this country. It is particularly timely as the issue of improving teacher quality and teacher evaluation moves to the forefront of the education reform discussions in Washington and beyond.
It is the story of one school in Arizona and 20 of its teachers who decide to pursue National Board Certification (or a portion of it, known as Take One!) together. Deciding to take on the premier form of professional development and evaluation for teachers is a courageous choice for any teacher, and certainly for almost an entire school to do so, is even bolder because it is a very public...
Around this time last year, Waiting For Superman was everywhere. If you hadn’t seen it, you were left behind. Practically every conversation about education began with where you stood on the movie. Even though WFS didn’t get the box office returns or Oscar nominations it was hoping for, it did leave a lasting imprint on the discourse— hardening into the mainstream the idea that public education reform was in the throes of an epic good (charter schools) vs. evil (teachers’ unions) battle for the soul of our country.
My reflections on Waiting for Superman are extensively detailed on the Huffington Post,...
By Kristoffer Kohl
Kristoffer Kohl is a former classroom teacher working currently as a policy associate at CTQ to further the vision of TEACHING 2030. He previously collaborated with a team of accomplished teachers to produce the report “Transforming School Conditions: Building Bridges to the Education System that Students and Teachers Deserve.”
...
One of the key points that my Building a Professional Learning Community at Work co-author Parry Graham and I often make is that the learning teams in any given building develop at different rates.
As a result, they need different support and are ready to tackle different tasks at different times.
Just like we are pushing for differentiation and a customized approach to the individual learners in our classrooms, school leaders must take the same approach when working with professional learning teams.
...
Ross Smith—the director of Window’s Core Security at Microsoft spotlighted in The Innovator’s DNA (2011)—knows a thing or two about structuring collaborative groups.
Responsible for managing almost 70 teams focused on Window’s security issues, Smith noticed that one group—the Defect Prevention team—had been the most innovative for five straight years.
Specifically, this six-person team had developed a series of productivity games designed entertain...
Blogs
The Implementing Common Core Standards (ICCS) team blogs about best practices for integrating common core standards into the classroom.
The TeacherSolutions 2030 team blogs about improving the teaching profession between now and the year 2030.
Megan M. Allen is a National Board Certified Teacher and the 2010 Florida Teacher of the Year. She is a proud fifth-grade teacher in Tampa and a 2012-13 CTQ teacherpreneur.
Barnett Berry is the Founder and President of the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ), Inc., based in Carrboro, NC. CTQ seeks to dramatically improve student learning by advancing teaching as a 21st-century, results-oriented profession. He wrote TEACHING 2030 with 12 accomplished teachers.
Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. His writing has also appeared in The Boston Globe, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, and Education Week. He is a co-author of TEACHING 2030.
Jessica Cuthbertson is a teacherpreneur who divides her time between teaching 6th-grade literacy in Aurora, CO, and supporting teacher leadership through the Denver New Millennium Initiative.
Bill Ferriter teaches 6th grade language arts in North Carolina, where he was named a Regional Teacher of the Year for 2005-2006.
John Holland is an artist, a teacher, a writer, and an innovator. After 12 years as a preschool teacher, John began working at Early Head Start/Head Start Program as a child development specialist. He is a co-author of TEACHING 2030.
Jessica Keigan is a secondary language arts teacher at Horizon High School in Thornton, CO, and a teacher leader for the Denver New Millennium Initiative.
Ryan Kinser is a 6th grade English teacher in Hillsborough County, Florida. After a career in television production, Ryan taught in urban Washington as a D.C. Teaching Fellow. He is a member of the Hillsborough New Millennium Initiative.
Renee Moore has taught English and journalism for 20 years in the Mississippi Delta region at both high school and community college levels. She is National Board Certified, a former state Teacher of the Year, and a co-author of TEACHING 2030.
Dave Orphal is a teacher in Oakland, CA. Dave serves as a veteran teacher leader for the Bay Area New Millennium Initiative and works with the California Teachers Association's Institute for Teaching.
Ariel Sacks teaches eighth grade English at a middle school in Brooklyn, NY. She has published articles about her work in Teacher Magazine and is a co-author of TEACHING 2030.
Mark Sass has taught public high school for 18 years and has been involved in various leadership positions and policy discussions in Colorado. Mark is a member of the inaugural Aspen Teacher Leader Fellows.
In addition to our regular transformED bloggers, we frequently feature guest posts written by teachers involved in CTQ communities. We welcome teachers to share their reflections and expertise on transformED.
Jose Vilson is a math teacher, coach, and data analyst for a middle school in the Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. He is a co-author of TEACHING 2030.
Noah Zeichner is a National Board Certified Teacher in Seattle. He currently serves in a hybrid teaching role, dividing his time between teaching social studies and supporting CTQ's global teacher leadership initiatives.
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