Teacher Leadership Today
Educational Leadership has published its web-only
Summer Edition, which not only has great content but is
completely free to the public. TLN Forum member Cindi Rigsbee
has a featured article, "The
Relationship Balance," which was highlighted in the
ASCD Inservice
blog this week. Cindi addresses the question: "So what is
the relationship balance in a classroom? Where is that exact point at
which students feel cared for . . . but know that they must respect the
teacher and they are expected to learn?" It's a perspective many teachers will appreciate and may be especially helpful to novice educators who will soon find themselves trying to answer these very questions. Cindi, a finalist for national teacher of the year in 2009, brings her 20-some years of classroom experience — and her recent work mentoring new teachers — to the answers.
Also in the EL summer issue: Teacher leaders will likely find the article by retired teacher and teacher educator Susan Allred irresistable. It enumerates the qualities of "The Best Teachers I Have Known."
Another article by Jay McTighe and Allison Zmuda makes the case for regional online troubleshooting guides for teachers that "codify predictable instructional rough spots and instantly offer
tried-and-true solutions that are based on research and best practice." Intriguing.
The new staff-written blog at Teacher Magazine -- Teaching Now -- is a fun and informative read, put together by folks who spend most of their work time keeping up with teacher issues and bring a pro teacher leadership slant to their blogging. If you're interested in teaching quality, teacher voices and the progress of the teaching profession, it's a no-brainer subscribe (which you can did via a blog reader or by email). You can follow the daily posts on Twitter, too!
It’s high time the New York Times Learning Network made some
to-do over TLN member and teaching resource impresario Larry Ferlazzo, who was invited this
week to guest-post at the NYT Learning Network blog.
The introduction highlights Larry’s interesting background as a
community organizer before becoming a high school English/ELL teacher six years ago
in middle age.
In his guest column, Larry takes his five-step Organizing
Cycle for engaging English Language Learners and gives them a Times
spin, connecting each step to resources available in the Learning
Network. Very cool. Congrats, Larry – this is the big show. Here's
hoping your appearance encourages more folks to learn about your book
and discover its empowering approach to teaching immigrant students.
“Without a common understanding of what constitutes teaching quality
and how teachers should be evaluated, any further conversation about
improving teaching will be inconsequential,” say the authors of what we
believe may be a first-of-its-kind report on state-level
teaching policy -- written by a virtual community of expert
California teachers who have used the Web and social networking tools
to organize an independent statewide advocacy organization.
A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: An Evaluation System that
Works for California is the first in a promised series of policy
papers written by members of Accomplished California Teachers (ACT), a
group organized in 2008 with funding from the Stuart and Hewlitt
Foundations and support from the Stanford U. School of Education.
The report calls on state decision makers to redesign California’s
approach to teacher evaluation by incorporating the best elements
already in place into a new system framed around the best research on
good teaching. Co-author David B. Cohen, an English teacher and academic advisor at Palo Alto High School, summarized the report's key principles in a recent post at the organization's blog InterACT.
They include:
- Teacher evaluation should be
based on professional standards. - Teacher evaluation should include
performance assessments to guide a path of professional learning
throughout a teacher’s career. - The design of a new evaluation
system should build on successful, innovative practices in current use. - Evaluations should consider
teacher practice and performance, as well as an array of student
outcomes for teams of teachers as well as individual teachers. - Evaluation should be frequent and
conducted by expert evaluators, including teachers who have
demonstrated expertise in working with their peers. - Evaluation leading to permanent
status (“tenure”) must be more intensive and must include more extensive
evidence of quality teaching. - Evaluation should be accompanied
by useful feedback, connected to professional development opportunities,
and reviewed by evaluation teams or an oversight body to ensure
fairness, consistency, and reliability.
We predict that as teacher leaders continue to use social media tools to organize themselves in state-level virtual communities, more policymakers will have the opportunity to benefit from the insights of accomplished teachers on the front lines of school reform.
Be sure to check out our companion blog, TLN Teacher Voices, for recent views of books that may be of interest to teacher leaders.
Massachusetts special ed teacher Laurie Wasserman finds the latest Chicken Soup for the Soul book for educators, titled Teacher Tales: 101 Inspirational Stories from Great Teachers and Appreciative
Students, to be a much-needed restorative for her teacher spirit. The short-essay collection, which includes (among others) contributions from all of the 2009 state teachers of the year, "is the perfect book to pack in your book bag to read at
school with lunch during a stressful day, savor with a cup of tea or
coffee on a Sunday morning, or read on a plane."
New York teacher Elizabeth Stein reviews a recent book by San Francisco education prof Stanley Pogrow, Teaching
Content Outrageously: How to Captivate All Students and Accelerate
Learning. While Stein thought the book could have been better, she agrees with Pogrow that teachers need to shake up their instruction in strategic ways that help students "connect to the content so that they can make sense of it,
and, ultimately, transfer it."
You'll also enjoy the review by Georgia high school teacher Gail Tillery of Finding Mrs. Warnecke: The Difference Teachers Make. It's the account by Cindi Rigsbee, a recent finalist for national teacher of the year, of her search for a primary school teacher who made a huge difference in her young life -- and their ultimate reunion on ABC's Good Morning America. It's also a book, Tillery says, "which sends a message of the positive power which
every teacher can tap into—if only we can learn to find it."
It's something of a Facebook phenomenon in education circles. Teacher Letters to Obama began in late 2009 as a grassroots effort to offer a counter-narrative about school reform from U.S. teachers who believe they are equally committed to the success of all students but question whether federal policy will produce the results promised to the American public.
The group has grown in size and diversity over the past six months. Its latest membership bump, which pushed the number of participants over 2000, came in late May after a dozen participants convinced U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to join them in a 30-minute conference call to discuss USDOE's proposed Blueprint for the reauthorization of ESEA, the Elementary & Secondary Education Act, better known over the last decade as "No Child Left Behind."
TLO's latest initiative is a summer series of education policy "teach-ins" for educators and anyone else interested in discussing school improvement strategies with an independent community of teachers. The first live web conference is scheduled for June 14, with guests Monty Neill, a long-time critic of standardized testing; former Nebraska state superintendent Doug Christensen, who led the development of statewide alternative assessments during his tenure; and education scholar Yong Zhao, a professor at Michigan State University who questions whether over-standardization of education threatens American creativity and freedom of thought. Based on reports about who's signing up for the live webinar, it promises to be a lively exchange among an audience with diverse points of view.
Most of us know about National Teacher Week, celebrated each May. California being California, it has its own separate celebration – The Day of the Teacher – which fell on May 12 this year.
Members of the Teacher Leaders Network were inspired by Kelly Kovacic, California's 2009-10 TOY, to pen thank you letters and "job recommendations" for some of the most important teachers in their lives. Over at our TLN Teacher Voices blog, you can read more than a dozen of these inspiring messages -- each one different and profound in its own way. Here's a sample, from Alabama elementary teacher Taylor Ross:
I will never forget the many hours we spent after school and on weekends
in rehearals and preparations, but mostly I remember how most of us
were dedicated because it meant we could share more time with you. You
encouraged me to always expect more from myself, to be honest and
compassionate when dealing with others, and to use my gifts and talents
to make the world a better place. As a student in your classroom, I
never dreamed I would end up in the same profession as you..but in all
honesty, I don't think I would have if you hadn't shown me the impact
one teacher can have. Thank you for being the teacher you are – and
were – to students who needed you the most.
At Teacher Voices, you'll also find a link to a Teacher Magazine article, where we shared even more of these important messages to the colleagues who came before us.
TLN blogger Renee Moore is one of 50 essayists chosen from among
more than 700 submissions who will appear in a 2011 book edited by Sam
Chaltain, national director of the Forum for Education and Democracy.
It’s part of the Forum’s multi-year Rethink Education Now
campaign, which has collected hundreds of stories about
teaching and learning at its Rethink
Learning Now community website. While there are many
contributions from teachers, the community is wide open and you’ll find
powerful commentaries from every kind of American.
It’s a collection that speaks to the
power of Web 2.0 to create a national mosaic. In addition to stories by
national figures like Gloria Ladson Billings, Deborah Meier, Arne
Duncan, and Al Franken, there are also heartwrenching posts from young people who have obviously been failed by the system. As Chaltain has said: “There are stories from politicians,
celebrities, teachers, students, and people from every walk of life.
There are stories about 3rd grade classrooms, church missions, prison
terms, and unforgettable teachers.”
Visitors can contribute their own stories to this
remarkable and positive affirmation of learning (which may remind you of
NPR’s StoryCorps project). Other TLN-related
contributors include Elena Aguilar, Ken Bernstein, Anthony Cody and Barnett Berry.
(Sam Chaltain is also the author of American Schools: The Art of
Creating a Democratic Learning Community, which TLN'er Ken Bernstein reviewed for Teacher Magazine last
December.)
If you haven’t spotted the spring issue of Education Week’s Professional Development Sourcebook, it’s well worth your attention, with many useful articles about Response to Intervention (RTI), including an interview with Richard Allington who says the initiative may be “our last, best hope” for achieving full literacy in the U.S (although he’s not all that optimistic that it will happen).
Best of all, from our perspective inside the Teacher Leaders Network: There are two articles featuring members of our daily discussion forum. First, there’s a bylined article by Elizabeth Stein, giving her take on RTI from inside the classroom and from her perspective as a special education teacher on Long Island NY. Her article was highlighted in a recent issue of the CEC SmartBrief published by the Council for Exceptional Children.
There’s also a substantive interview with TLN’er Donalyn Miller and her Keller TX principal Ron Myers about their school's RTI implementation story. Donalyn, author of the popular book and blog The Book Whisperer, offers a frank and nuanced view of RTI’s promise and potential pitfalls. "The important thing," she says, "is that, if there’s not a common understanding of what good quality instruction looks like, then it really sets a program like RTI up to fail in a school."
The entire PD Sourcebook is full of smart stuff about a timely topic. Here's the index.
TLN Forum member Larry Ferlazzo's popular teaching resources blog began with a strong focus on teaching English Language Learners, then exploded into one of the best general resources for teachers across the K-12 spectrum.
A community organizer turned ELL teacher himself, Larry is now sharing key ideas from his own classroom in a new book, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work. He proposes that the best way to empower ELL students as they master English is to abandon the "deficit model" common in many schools and develop their self-efficacy and leadership skills. He elaborates in a recent article for Teacher Magazine:
During my organizing career, I participated in efforts that won many
concrete community improvements in jobs, affordable housing,
citizenship, and child care. But the most important results were seeing
how dramatically people changed themselves based on what they
learned through community organizing—how to give and receive
constructive critique, how to lead and guide diverse groups, how to
confidently confront challenges, and how to take the initiative to
create change. Many developed a burning desire to learn, and often
surprised themselves with their capacity to excel with difficult tasks.
Seeing these kinds of results caused me to wonder how much better
people’s lives could be if they developed effective leadership skills at
a younger age. I wanted to help people learn to think critically and
act confidently as they were growing up, rather than waiting until they
were adults. That desire, and my belief that many of the organizing
strategies that worked successfully with adults could benefit teenagers
and younger children, prompted my decision to become a teacher.
In his book and in this Teacher Magazine piece, Larry describes a five-part Organizing Cycle that "can help students become co-creators of their education, without being
constrained by their limited English skills. I have used it successfully
in my classes for the past six years." The steps in the cycle include: (1) Build strong relationships with students: (2) Access prior knowledge through stories; (3) Identify & mentor students’ leadership potential; (4) Promote learning by doing; and (5) Model reflection.
If you agree that ELL and other students considered "high-need" are often treated as individuals with deficits to be addressed rather than potential to be developed, you'll find important messages in this article and In Larry's latest book.
