The Teaching Now blog explored the latest news on the teaching profession, from practical classroom tips to raging policy debates. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: teaching, teaching profession, and curriculum.
Standards & Accountability
Crashing the Servers: Common-Core Assessment Update
We knew there was a lot interest/trepidation out there about the planned common-core assessments, but this headline (from our Education Week colleague Catherine Gewertz) puts things in a whole new light: "Sample Common-Assessment Items Released, Traffic Crashes Server."
Federal
Ranking the World's Most Beautiful Schools
Ever been to a children's museum? Perhaps like this one or this one? They tend to be colorful, friendly buildings. Now contrast that with an image of a typical public elementary school. Remove the bulletin boards and posters at the school, and you're likely left with a dark, dank, monochrome edifice.
Curriculum
Teachers Stocking Up on Ayn Rand Books
According to the Ayn Rand Institute's Books to Teachers Program, teachers requested more than 400,000 copies of the author's books in the 2011-12 school year, a 30 percent increase in requests from the 2010-11 school year.
Teaching
Back-to-School Spending Burdens for Teachers
A piece in The Shreveport Times recently described the challenges that elementary school teachers are facing with back-to-school expenses. In Caddo Parish Schools in Louisiana, the stipends that teachers usually put toward supplies were recently halved to $100 per teacher.
Teaching Profession
Defining the Classroom Rules
One of the inevitable first-day-of-school tasks for elementary teachers (and many secondary teachers) is introducing the class rules. So it's no wonder teacher-bloggers have taken up the topic this week.
Reading & Literacy
Grammar Becomes Debateable
English teachers take note: Grammar—yes, grammar—has been making headlines this summer.
Classroom Technology
Is Connected Educator Month an 'Echo Chamber'?
On the new Smartblog on Education, Tom Whitby, contributing editor and former a high school English teacher, highlights a potential glitch with the Connected Educator Month idea: Almost by definition, most of the teachers who are aware of it are already, well, connected educators.
Job Hunting Tips & Advice
The Digital Future: Schools Without Teachers?
In response to what he sees as multiplying signs of public schools'—and teachers'—failures, David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, envisions the rise of "local Internet schools." These, he explains in a Wall Street Journal piece, would be one-room neighborhood schools in which students from a range of grades would learn mainly from high-quality online courses, with occasional help from patched-in tutors and teaching assistants. Actual classroom teachers would be expendable:
Science
Are Science Teachers Spreading Invasive Species?
According to a new study that surveyed 2,000 teachers across the United States and Canada, one out of four science teachers who used lab animals in their classrooms released the organisms into local environments after they were done using them for instructional purposes.
Federal
Holocaust Survivor Designs Resources for Teachers
A few weeks ago, we received a letter from Holocaust survivor Peter Fischl, who has spent the last 18 years sharing his history and working to promote Holocaust education. We looked through Teaching Now and realized that it hadn't included coverage on Holocaust education before, so we decided to give Fischl a call.
Teaching Profession
Classroom Cheating in the Digital Age
Digital technology has made it both easier for students to cheat and for teachers to catch offenders, according to a recent piece in The Chicago Tribune. But overall cheaters maintain the upper hand.
Special Education
Going Chairless
A 4th grade teacher in Indiana has swapped out all her students' chairs for exercise balls.
School & District Management
SOS Event Draws Small Crowd, Focuses on Organizing
In sharp contrast to last summer's celebrity-attended rally and march to the White House, the Save Our Schools gathering this year proved a quiet, 150-person affair.
Classroom Technology
Are Today's Students Too Lazy for Schools to Improve?
Writing in the Deseret News, Theresa Talbot, a Utah teacher in her 25th year, says that the real problem with education today is that students are, well, lazy and recalcitrant. Among the examples she cites: