Teaching & Learning Blog

Teacher in a Strange Land

From January 2010 to September 2018, Nancy Flanagan, an education writer and consultant focusing on teacher leadership, wrote about the inconsistencies and inspirations, the incomprehensible, immoral and imaginative, in American education. She spent 30 years in a K-12 music classroom in Hartland, Mich., and was named Michigan Teacher of the Year in 1993. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: teacher leaders.

Education Opinion STEAM-Roller
I like a snappy multiplication-facts rap as much as the next guy, but the fact is--it's not easy to integrate rich arts practice or content into science and math instruction. Especially when the assumption is that good curriculum begins with "core subjects," the arts acting as a kind of color commentary.
Nancy Flanagan, October 31, 2013
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5 min read
Education Opinion What's In a Name?
This is a story about dignity, love, acceptance, and compassion. It is about identity and the small things we can do that go a long way. It presents the importance of what is means to develop compassionate individuals who understand the dignity that exists in every human being, what it looks like to respect and honor that.
Nancy Flanagan, October 27, 2013
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8 min read
Education Opinion The Purpose-Driven Education
First, answer the question yourself: What is the core purpose of publicly funded education in America? Then, ask yourself: Would most Americans agree with you?
Nancy Flanagan, October 16, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion Gettin' Tough! Or Not.
There are plenty of students who have coped with failure and adversity from the outset. What's motivating to them is a little honest success. Not more stress.
Nancy Flanagan, October 1, 2013
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5 min read
Education Opinion My Research Is Better Than Your Experience
The sticking point in utilizing research findings to make grand pronouncemnts about how schools should operate, or how teachers should teach? We leave out the most important voice, that of the people doing the actual work, and the ideas they find useful.
Nancy Flanagan, September 24, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion "Reign of Error:" Who Should Read It?
Teachers often come away from their tour of Ed Policy World dismayed by the things policy "experts" are saying. Frustrated at being left out of a dialogue where their hard-won practice expertise is undervalued, even scorned. Good news. Diane Ravitch has written a book for them.
Nancy Flanagan, September 17, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion Truth, Anger and the National Conversation about Ed Reform
Somebody's got to get angry and speak passionately about what's happening in education "reform."
Nancy Flanagan, September 15, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion Ready for School? A Tale of Two Realities
It is an unexpected relief to move past this level of work--scavenging--on to the big questions--who are my students, how do they learn best, what can we do to engage them meaningfully in building a classroom community?
Nancy Flanagan, September 9, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion A Cranky Review of "Teach"
I did appreciate the film's efforts to highlight the intellectual complexity and intense humanity of teaching. But the subtext is troublesome.
Nancy Flanagan, September 7, 2013
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2 min read
Education Opinion Go Ahead--Grade My Character!
Character matters. A lot. Here's where I get off the bandwagon, however: grading students on character as a means of highlighting and developing these critical qualities.
Nancy Flanagan, September 4, 2013
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3 min read
Education Opinion First Day of School: Talking Back to Harry Wong
What students want most is to know that they belong somewhere, that they'll be accepted and valued by their classmates. Consistency? The last refuge of the unimaginative.
Nancy Flanagan, August 26, 2013
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6 min read
Education Opinion Run Schools Like Businesses? Sure. Here's How.
Improve the quality of our public schools by applying various management strategies used in the business world? Model business lessons, heralded as tough, effective reform, don't always look like the strategies being seen in business-to-business advice about managing systems and working effectively with people.
Nancy Flanagan, August 16, 2013
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4 min read
Education Opinion Winning the Common Core
If test scores improve as a result of the imposition of CCSS, it will be because teachers decide--one at a time, school by school--to reshape their own instruction, conforming to these national standards and the aligned tests. Not the standards themselves.
Nancy Flanagan, August 8, 2013
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5 min read
Education Opinion I've Got a Beautiful Feelin'...
Why should 21st century students use their valuable time building sets, memorizing corny dialogue and hoofing inexpertly across the stage?
Nancy Flanagan, July 31, 2013
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4 min read
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