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 This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: teacher leaders.
Student Well-Being
Opinion
Happy Halloween! Be Playful and Artistic in School on Holidays
Dressing up and playing (often challenging) "scary" music is good curricular and instructional practice. It encourages young adolescents to be kids again in an increasingly frightening adult world—playful and artistic, sharing their burgeoning talents with their community.
Standards
Opinion
In Defense of (Some) Standards
The funny thing is this: while Reformsters and policy-makers and researchers write and rewrite standards, benchmarks and assessments (or change the names of state standards to avoid the taint of "Common Core"), teachers go on teaching, standards or no standards.
Education
Opinion
Why the Librarian Is Right to Reject Melania Trump's Gift of Dr. Seuss
Public schools have not only a right, but an obligation, to look every gift horse squarely in the mouth. Because it's the children they are responsible for who are riding.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
Should 5th Graders Be Studying the KKK?
Will difficult student conversations go awry and get muddled? All the time. But that's the precise reason why we ought to be holding them now, with our young citizens. One of the central purposes of public education is developing core understandings of democracy and hey---no time like the present for that.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Do Perks for Teachers Compromise Their Integrity?
Schools and teachers are the objects of commerce and policy, not co-creators or idea-generators or genuine partners. We get "gifts" from business, if we are producing what they need.
Equity & Diversity
Opinion
What It Takes for Families to Support Public Education
When it comes to education, we've certainly allowed all kinds of predators and vandals to chip away at America's best idea: a completely free, high-quality public education for every child. No matter what they bring to the table.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Who Is the Ideal Teaching Candidate?
Where do good teachers come from? How do we pick promising candidates out of the crowd? What is the secret to putting the right people in the classroom?
Teaching Profession
Opinion
What Is a Personalized Education, and Why Doesn't Everyone Get One?
When you strip all peer interactions out of learning, you're left with bare facts and theorems and instructions. Or, in competency-based learning, a screen, the next quiz and maybe, if you're lucky, a digital badge.
Recruitment & Retention
Opinion
The Many Ways We Are De-Professionalizing Teaching
The policy goal here is de-professionalizing teaching, establishing it once and for all as a short-term, entry-level technical job designed to attract a revolving door of "community-minded" candidates, who will work diligently for cheap, then get out because they can't support a family or buy a home on a teacher's salary.
Student Well-Being
Opinion
Self-Esteem Is Not a Hoax
The self-esteem egg comes before the integrity, courage and patriotism chicken, not to mention academic skills and knowledge. It's hard for students to build character and resilience when they have no self-concept. It's hard for them to learn, when they don't trust themselves or believe in their own capacity.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
The War on Teachers and the End of Public Education
We have genuinely reached a tipping point, one where we're struggling to get young people to go into teaching as professional career (as opposed to two-year adventure before law school). Our state legislators are openly declaring that teaching is now a short-term technical job, not a career, and thus public school educators don't really need a stable state pension. That's not only a war on individual teachers, but a war on teaching itself.
Assessment
Opinion
Top of the High School Class? Not Good Enough!
There seems to be a social movement (or at least a book) suggesting that success in a professional career is not enough, that valedictorians are merely conformists, hard workers, even suck-ups, not the kinds of disruptive movers and shakers who change the world. But--should they be disrupters?
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Fidget, Jiggle, Twiddle, Wriggle: Bring Back Activity in Schools
With ADHD, there's money to be made, books to be written, tests to be developed/normed/administered and data to be analyzed. It's the usual American approach to health: deal with the symptoms, not the causes. And make a buck while you're at it.
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Can We Trust Policymakers to Make Good Decisions for Schools?
Can we trust policymakers to make beneficial decisions for schools? Can we rely on their deep understanding of the issues, their moral compass, their desire to craft policy for the common good?