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 This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: teacher leaders.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 The Power Elite
Do elitist credentials improve the odds that teachers will be more effective? If so, there must be more to accomplished teaching than most people think.
Nancy Flanagan, August 25, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion Whitney Tilson, Banana Republic & Public Education
Our kids--and our nation--deserve a better way to genuinely invest in public education than a 5% kickback on cargo shorts for missionary teachers.
Nancy Flanagan, August 23, 2010
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2 min read
Education Opinion Credentials, Credibility--and Ed School
It's become kind of hip to take potshots at the collective IQ of the teaching pool and teachers' training models. Are we going to pay for that, eventually?
Nancy Flanagan, August 21, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion The Token Teacher
Is it essential for a good teacher--the kind of teacher who will raise achievement in tough schools--to have fluent mastery of these common standards, assessments, curriculum benchmarks, 21st century skills, and so on...? Apparently, yes.
Nancy Flanagan, August 16, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion Big Ideas vs. Little Bits
What did you learn in high school? Has it lasted 40 years? Why not?
Nancy Flanagan, August 11, 2010
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4 min read
Education Opinion It's My Party
Improving and investing in public education should never be a partisan issue. It's a vital economic issue and pigeonholing ed policy into partisan camps is moronic.
Nancy Flanagan, August 7, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion Moving Special Education to the Virtual World
Can't handle outbursts? Do we send our special education students to virtual school instead?
Nancy Flanagan, August 5, 2010
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4 min read
Education Opinion Miss America and the Race to the Top
Anybody else notice the striking similarities between the Race to the Top, Part Deux, and the traditional Miss America Pageant?
Nancy Flanagan, July 29, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion Lead? Follow? Mostly, Get Out of the Way
Leadership:It's what you do, not how you look. Know the people you're leading. Public speeches and op-eds don't matter much. Persist. Take responsibility when you're wrong.
Nancy Flanagan, July 27, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion Groupies
Who stands to lose when kids are heterogeneously grouped for graded projects? The student who's always been the shining star, ahead of the pack.
Nancy Flanagan, July 22, 2010
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2 min read
Education Opinion Fair and Unbalanced
Is letting some students take an academic-mulligan cheating? Or a way to increase learning?
Nancy Flanagan, July 18, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion Pay Me For My Merit
Nancy Flanagan believes in merit pay, but finds the single-salary schedule broken.
Nancy Flanagan, July 13, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion Are You Better Off than You Were Two Years Ago?
Remember when federal lawmakers saw education as a state and local issue, with the feds limited to issues of civil rights, equity and economies of scale? No more.
Nancy Flanagan, July 9, 2010
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3 min read
Education Opinion See Me After Class: an interview with Roxanna Elden
"Teaching is a shift from your first-name self to your last-name self, not a complete character overhaul." Sage observations from Roxanna Elden.
Nancy Flanagan, July 2, 2010
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7 min read
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