An interesting email landed in my inbox this week from Amanda Gladin-Kramer, a policy associate at the Center for Teaching Quality.  Committed to redefining teacher leadership, CTQ has a long history of innovative projects designed to elevate teacher voice into important policy conversations.

CTQ’s most recent project is a full length book being published by Teacher’s College Press that lays out a vision for what teaching might look like in the year 2030.  Built from the voices of my brilliant Teacher Leaders Network colleagues and coordinated by Barnett Berry and TLN moderator John Norton, this book promises to be the first teacher led conversation about the future of our profession. 

Amanda wanted to pick my brain a bit about a concept that may be new to you:  Teacherpreneurism. 

She wrote:

As we’re working on the book on the future of teaching and learning, we’re trying to share a few present examples of advanced teacher leadership and “teacherpreneurism” - teachers who have found the flexibility and influence to act as social entrepreneurs in a way, both marketing their own skills and being catalysts for change.

We have in mind things like teachers blogging and Anthony Cody’s Teachers Letters to Obama project – and also the platform you’ve build through your blog and doing consulting work and writing your book with Solution Tree. We’re making every effort to share teachers’ direct voices as much as possible in the book, and here’s one area I’d love to get your thoughts on.

Amanda went on to ask me a series of questions about my work as a teacherpreneur beyond the classroom.  I figured I’d convert my answers into an interview-style post here on the Radical.  I hope you enjoy it.

AGK:  How did you make the connections and build the platform that led to your current professional development work and book authorship?

BF:  I think the first step in becoming an active teacherpreneur is embracing visibility.  Our nation has literally millions of teachers working with children behind closed doors every single day.  The work that we do is simultaneously remarkable and easy to ignore because there are few structured opportunities to be recognized by anyone other than the small handful of students that we serve every year.

That being said, teachers possess an intimate knowledge about our profession that is impossible to mimic.  Everyone—policymakers, publishers, professional developers—tends to understand the value that one accomplished teacher can add to their work. 

When they find a teacher who can translate lessons from the classroom to other settings—publications, policy implications, concrete proposals for professional development—they are almost always willing to embrace those teachers as intellectual equals and to create avenues for growth beyond the classroom.

The trick for budding teacherpreneurs is confidently taking first steps to break down the walls of their classrooms.  For far too many years, teachers have been viewed as replaceable cogs in the education machine—an impression that has forced us to question whether or not we really have anything of value to add outside of the work that we do with students. 

What’s more, we work in an egalitarian profession where everyone is seen as an equal.  To move beyond the classroom and to seek a platform for expressing your professionalism is seen as an insult to your peers—a risk that many teachers are unwilling to take.  With a bit of moxie, however, it’s not that difficult to turn teacherpreneurism into a rewarding second career. 

AGK:  Now it seems like your blog has become a major source of opportunity for you.  How did you build an audience?

BF:  I’d have to disagree with you a bit here, Amanda.  My blog isn’t the source of opportunity for me.  My insights, perspectives and ideas about teaching and learning are.  My blog is simply the tool that I’ve chosen to use to make those insights, perspectives and ideas public.

What’s really interesting is that building an audience has been easier than I ever imagined.  As a teacher, I stand at the forefront of every major policy initiative in education.  I’m living our shift from an isolated profession to a profession focused on collaboration.  I’ve struggled with making data a more important part of my practice.  I’ve worked diligently to find ways to incorporate new digital tools into my instruction.  I’ve been punished by standardized testing and coercive accountability.

And I write honestly about all of these topics.  Through my bits, readers—regardless of what role they fill in education—can see the impact of their actions.  They can rethink policies.  They can redesign their instruction.  They can restructure their schools and/or districts.  I offer a looking glass into the hearts and minds of classroom teachers—and that’s a looking glass that concerned professionals everywhere are dying to peek into. 

The whole process of writing reflectively, by the way, has improved who I am as a teacher, a leader and a learner.  Knowing that others are going to read my work, I think carefully about everything that I write.  Generally, before I even publish a strand of thought, I’ve revised both my practice and my presentation to the point where I’m proud of what I’ve done. 

Then, I wait for the feedback which inevitably improves my thinking.  Readers push against my original thoughts, challenging, prodding and outright disagreeing.  Sometimes that feedback forces me to revise my original positions.  Other times, it forces me to find new ways to articulate what it is that I know about teaching and learning.  Always, I improve as a thinker and a teacher. 

Wild, isn’t it?  In some ways, teacherpreneurs are intellectually selfish, aren’t we?  Not only are we sharing with our audiences, we’re learning from them too. 

AGK:  Eventually, though, Bill, you turned that audience into concrete opportunities.  You write for several major publications.  You moderate ongoing conversations between authors and their readers.  You’ve published two books and you’re starting to offer professional development sessions.  How did all of that happen?  

BF:  Strangely enough, Amanda, EVERY opportunity that I’ve embraced as a teacherpreneur has come to me!  Early on, the Center for Teaching Quality spotted potential in the thoughts that I was posting in the Teacher Leaders Network conversation and asked me if I’d be interested in spending a summer as a Teacher in Residence studying the results of North Carolina’s Teacher Working Conditions survey.

Editors from both NSDC and ASCD spotted my writing online and asked me to write full-length articles and regular columns for their magazines.  Publishers from nearly every major publishing house have contacted me to gauge my interest in writing books for them after seeing something that I’d written posted online. 

I’ve never gone looking for opportunities simply because I haven’t needed to!  Making the choice to be visible and being committed to freely sharing what I know about teaching and learning—recognizing that my knowledge and experience has value—has brought others to me.  

AGK:  I’m guessing you don’t see being a dedicated teacher and a professional compensated for your talents as mutually exclusive – and that this is a good thing for education in the end. Why?

BF:  It would be impossible to argue that teacherpreneurism is a bad thing for education.  At the simplest level, being professionally compensated for my talents beyond the classroom has enabled me to stay in the classroom full time for far longer than I ever dreamed possible. 

As the primary breadwinner for my family, making ends meet on the ten paychecks that I get as a classroom teacher each year is simply impossible.  Writing and presenting beyond the classroom is my way of working full-time.  Without the extra pay that I make, I would have moved on—into administration, into full-time consulting work, into the policy arena—a long time ago. 

But I see benefits for teacherpreneurism that stretch far beyond my own wallet.  Every time I create a new resource for classroom teachers working on professional learning teams or trying to integrate technology into their classrooms—decisions that I make based on my desire to be compensated for my ideas—I know that my peers will have access to quality tools built from the experiences of another full-time practitioner instead of the professional dreamers that haven’t set foot in a classroom in decades. 

How can that be bad for teaching and learning?

I also know that every time I post a thoughtful reflection or criticism of an under-informed educational policy—another decision that I make based on my desire to be compensated for my ideas—that there is hope those ideas will seep into the local, state and/or national debate on what works in schools. 

I kind of see my work as a teacherpreneur as that of an activist.  Sure, I want to be noticed because being noticed means opportunities for compensation will come my way.  But each time I’m noticed, I have access to new audiences—and access to audiences means I can work to insert the voices of teachers into important conversations about what our schools will become. 

Does any of this make sense?

This week was a real humdinger for me.  I spent the better part of it buried under hateful emails from a district technology director in Louisiana who had read my recent post arguing that Interactive Whiteboards were a waste of money. 

I was really taken aback by the venom and spite in his words.  His first email expressed “shock” that “someone like me” could ever be named Teacher of the Year in any district.  He called me “self-centered and self-serving” and suggested that my writing was a “poison” corrupting conversations about technology.

He went on to suggest that my resistance to learning “modern technology” was failing students and that I should be ashamed of myself for my ignorance.

Me?  Resistant to learning modern technology? 

I’m assuming he’s never looked through my Digitally Speaking wiki, my monthly column on technology in Educational Leadership, or the stand alone articles that I’ve written on technology for Educational Leadership and Solution Tree.

I’m also assuming he won’t be buying my upcoming book—Teaching the iGeneration:  Five Ways to Introduce Essential Skills with Web 2.0 Tools—which is due to be published in June. 

Now, his central argument throughout the week was that Interactive Whiteboards can revolutionize learning in the classroom for students with learning disabilities.  I’m just not going to rehash that argument, considering how many times I’ve written about it recently (see this post or this post—and read the extensive comment sections in each—if you want to learn more). 

Instead, I wanted to show you how I’d spend the $5,000-$6,000 that a good IWB package—including a board, data projector, set of student responders, mounting kit, and a tablet for the teacher—will cost you.  From that point, you can decide whether IWBs for every classroom are worth your investment.

Give me $5,000-$6,000 to spend on a middle school classroom with 25 students and I’ll buy:

5 Netbook Computers  Cost:  $1,250

The most motivating lessons that I’ve ever taught give students the opportunity to interact in small groups around content.  There’s something about social interactions and communication that results in engaged students and more learning.  Yet we continue to invest in tools like Interactive Whiteboards that don’t enable any kind of group work or social interactions.

Give me one netbook for every 5 kids in my classroom and I can create instant workstations for groups.  I can also create remediation and enrichment stations for students.  Both are responsible models of instruction that we say we want to see in our schools.

The best part about having sets of netbooks is that you don’t even need to buy student responders.  Instead, you can use free polling tools like Poll Daddy to administer quick surveys designed to collect formative assessment information on your classroom instruction.

5 YEARS of VoiceThread for my Students   Cost:  $300

While I haven’t done as much with Voicethread this year as I typically like to do, it remains one of my favorite tools for structuring asynchronous conversations between students.  With little digital skill, kids of all ages can interact in Socratic style conversations on school related topics with one another both in and out of school. 

Essentially, Voicethread allows teachers to steal the online attention of their kids.  Given a meaningful school based conversation, they’ll turn away from the junk-food browsing that they do every afternoon and start talking with one another about content. 

As an aside, I don’t think this investment should even count against my $5,000. After all, if you decide to buy the IWBs that everyone loves, you’ll have to replace the bulb in your data projector every 4 years.  That’ll cost you $400. 

Wouldn’t a never-ending subscription to a constantly improving tool that encourages conversations between kids be a better use of that cash?

And in the interest of full disclosure, this purchase is a bit frivolous.  After all, you can get a completely free educator account for Voicethread that works just as well but doesn’t allow for individual student accounts.  I spent the first 18 months of my Voicethread experience working with a free account.  It was no sweat. 

5 YEARS of Brainpop Access for my Classroom  Cost:  $731

Brainpop is a service that creates short (3-5 minute) animated videos on topics across the curriculum.  Each video is paired with an activity and a review quiz, allowing teachers to easily monitor progress. 

There are math videos covering concepts ranging from ratios, proportions and percentages to graphing and statistics.  The social studies section is full of videos covering important events in World History.  Science videos on concepts ranging from the Carbon Cycle to Natural Selection and English videos on tricky grammar principles round out the ever-growing collection.

And while Brainpop videos aren’t designed to be the primary tool for in-depth studies of any topic, they make GREAT tools for remediation and/or enrichment.  Teachers with access to Brainpop in their classrooms can easily extend or reteach concepts without the burden of tons of extra planning. 

(If you’re adding along with me, I’m at $2,281.  That’s just a bit more than what you’d pay to buy this PolyVision Whiteboard WITHOUT any kind of projection tool, student responders, or slates for teachers.)

5 YEARS of Access to Poll Everywhere  Cost:  $645

Now, this is another frivolous purchase for me considering that there are PLENTY of completely free polling tools that teachers can pair with computers to collect information about their classrooms, but considering that I haven’t even come close to spending the $5,000 that I’ve got to spend, I figured I’d throw 5 years of Poll Everywhere into my shopping cart.

What makes Poll Everywhere—an online application that allows teachers to create and deliver quick surveys—unique is that students can respond to surveys via text message from their cell phones, making the need for student responders obsolete in most middle school classrooms considering the number of students carrying cell phones to school each day.

You can also track responses in Poll Everywhere at the individual student level, providing the EXACT SAME level of feedback that you’ll get from a class set of clickers. 

I also think that this price shouldn’t count against me if you’re planning on buying student responders with your whiteboards either simply because you’re going to have to replace batteries and broken devices over time.  I’m not. 

What’s more, my tool is going to constantly improve as Poll Everywhere adds new features.  Yours will be a dinosaur in no time.

That’s got to be worth something, right?

A Mid-Range Data Projector   Cost:  $595

Now, I’m not foolish.  I know there are going to be times when direct instruction to an entire group of kids is an important teaching strategy in every classroom.  As a result, I’d definitely want to have an LCD projector in my room. 

That way, I could show Brainpops to the entire class, we could instantly see the responses to Poll Everywhere surveys and we could look at interesting strands of conversation in ongoing Voicethread presentations together.

But I don’t need any high end Cadillac projector—and unlike classrooms where you’re planning on pairing a projector with an IWB, I don’t need any ceiling mounting hardware.  That’ll save me about $125—which I’d use to buy another year’s worth of Poll Everywhere.

Camtasia Screencasting Software   Cost:  $179

This is another frivolous purchase considering the wide range of completely free screencasting tools that are available online.  I’m not even really sure why I’m putting it on my shopping list.  After all, Screentoaster is free and it works fine. 

But considering that I’ve still got money to burn, I figured I’d add it to the list.  Camtasia allows teachers to create easy tutorials that they can post to the web. 

Want to show kids how to diagram a sentence?  Work it out on your computer screen and record it with Camtasia.  Want to talk kids through the elements of a great essay?  Work it out on your computer screen and record it with Camtasia.  Want to show kids how the order of operations work?  Work it out on your computer screen and record it with Camtasia.

Do I need to go on? 

At this point, I’ve spent $3,680—just over the price that you’d pay for this Smartboard/refurbished projector combo which doesn’t come with any student responders or slates. 

For the same price, I’ve gotten computers that I can use for group work or stations, services to promote ongoing conversations beyond school, services to collect formative assessment data on my students, services to provide remediation and enrichment to my struggling students, and a software package to record tutorials from my computer screen.

Now, I’ve still got anywhere from $1,310 - $2,310 to spend before I get to my $5,000-$6,000 ceiling.  My temptation is to continue to add years to my Poll Everywhere, Voicethread and Brainpop subscriptions or to buy a few more netbooks.

But I think I’ll put that money in reserve.  After all, who knows how technology will change in the next five years.  I don’t want to drop tons of taxpayer cabbage on tools that will be antiques in just a few years.  That IS one of my criticisms of tech directors who are drinking the IWB Kool-Aid, after all. 

Better yet, maybe I’ll give my remaining cashola BACK to the taxpayers.  That’ll catch ‘em by surprise!

Any of this make sense?  What would you add to my list of purchases?  What would you take away?  What am I forgetting about here?

Being a bit of a data junkie, I really look forward to the release of the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher each year.  Working to collect the kinds of tangible information that policymakers can use as a window into our profession, I see The Met as one of the most important tools that us teacher-types have when advocating for change in our profession. 

Part one of this year's MetLife survey was released this week and it covers a topic likely to be near and dear to the hearts of anyone working in a school:  Effective teaching and school leadership.  Collecting the perspectives teachers and principals working across grade levels and social demographics, the results paint an interesting picture of the state of collaboration within the American schoolhouse.

While there were dozens of findings that caught my eye, none was more important than this:  Principals and teachers STILL see core issues like "empowerment" and "teacher leadership" quite differently. 

Need proof?  Then check out the response rates to the following two statements:

Download Met Survey Table

Talk about shocking, huh?!  Anytime you've got perception gaps ranging from 20 to 30 points, there's DEFINITELY a problem.

The thing is that in almost every survey where the perceptions of principals and teachers are gathered, the same kinds of gaps exist.  North Carolina's Teacher Working Conditions Survey is a great example.  Similar questions to the Met's are asked every two years, and every two years, principals are consistently more positive about the levels of empowerment and shared decision-making in their buildings than teachers are.

Now, I'm not surprised by the disconnect.  Principals are, after all, generally good people who are working hard to create the kinds of schools that attract motivated teachers and that tap into the human capital of their faculties.  Most principals understand that shared decisions are more informed---and more reliable---than those made by "the boss."  They also believe in the ability of their teachers.

But I'm also not naive enough to overlook the consequences of this disconnect, either.  When principals strongly believe that they are empowering their teachers and creating schools where shared decisions are common, little is going to change.  Can we really expect to see more attempts to empower teachers when most principals are already convinced that their teachers ARE empowered?

In the end, these kinds of discrepancies between the perceptions of principals and teachers are collaboration killers.  Teachers recognize early on whether investing time and energy into crafting shared decisions or into shaping the direction of a school is worth their while. 

When true empowerment exists---represented by a balance between teacher and principal perceptions on the kinds of questions that the Met is spotlighting this year---there is a synergy around schools that is contagious.  Every adult checks their title at the door and works together to drive change.  Innovative thoughts and approaches are encouraged and powerful new discoveries are common. 

But when empowerment is nothing more than a buzzword embraced by those who hold all of the power to begin with, innovation dies.  Rather than invest energies into shared decisions that are likely to be overruled and/or ignored, teachers retreat into the apathetic, blue-collar world that we've spent the past two-decades railing against---and students suffer.  

I guess my advice to school leaders would be simple:  Carefully reflect on exactly how empowered your teachers are.  Touch base with the most motivated teacher leaders on your staff and ask them whether or not your decision-making processes encourage collaborative efforts and innovation. 

Think about how the most important initiatives in your building were selected and implemented.  Did teachers have the chance to voice any dissent?  Were their thoughts actively collected and considered?  What would the consequences be if they chose to work in another direction?

When you're own hands are tied by decisions made at the district or state level and teacher voice is ignored through no fault of your own, make that reality transparent to your faculty.  Teachers are often too buried under the day-to-day reality of the classroom to see beyond the school.  Honestly pointing out the places where shared decisions are replaced by mandates that no one can ignore will raise awareness and decrease resentment. 

In the end, know that preaching about empowerment while making important decisions from the top---a trend that this year's Met data seems to suggest----leads to collaborative efforts that are likely to be half-hearted at best.

Does any of this make sense?

The past week has been an interesting one to say the least.  On Sunday morning, I wrote a riff titled All Hail the Mighty Media Specialist that asked one central question:  Do media specialists inadvertently turn off reading teachers in their advocacy for their positions? 

Comments poured in for about 72 hours—on my blog, in the Twitterverse, in personal conversations and in countless emails that landed in my inbox.  Many were thoughtful.  Others were wholly inappropriate and hateful.  The most shocking—which came in an email on Sunday afternoon—went a little something like this:

Are you kidding me?  You really believe that you know as much as your media specialist?  How can you possibly introduce students to novels as well as we can?  What do you know about information literacy?  We do this for a living, you idiot. 

And if you don’t like your job, that’s not our fault.  Don’t blame us for your problems.  Your whining doesn’t help anything.  Get over it or get a new job. 

Thankfully, things started to settle down ‘round about Wednesday—and better yet, really thoughtful media specialists started to stop by and share their thoughts.  Unlike the knee-jerked-ness of some of their peers, they showed a willingness to listen and an ability to push back without emotional attacks.  It was cool. 

The whole experience has left me with a TON of questions. 

Here they are.  Why don’t you grab on to one and see what kind of answer you can craft—and what kind of conversation we can have—in the comment section:

Questions for media specialists:

Are you systematically considering the consequences of your advocacy? 

Your position is so much different than mine because in many districts, you have to fight just to keep your jobs.  That leads to systematic advocacy and attempts to persuade.  How careful are you when choosing your words to make sure that you’re not alienating reading teachers?

How should the contributions that media specialists make to the development of skilled readers be measured? 

Should your professional organization(s) be pushing to have media specialists paired with reading teachers in interdisciplinary teams responsible for the performance of students on standardized reading exams—an idea that SRB detailed thoughtfully in this comment? 

Is it enough to simply rely on external research studies, or should media specialists be held accountable in more tangible ways, too? 

Do some of your standards leave you open to criticism? 

Nothing seemed to set more people off than my assertion that media specialists are measured by fluffy standards—but I stand by my argument:  Some of the standards set by the AASL look pretty darn loosey-goosey to those of us working outside of the media center. 

(I highlighted some in this comment.)

Wouldn’t it make sense for a profession that is constantly trying to prove itself to outsiders to hack these kinds of warm fuzzies out of their standards document?  In a time where policy-makers are always trying to save a buck, don’t you make yourself vulnerable when your own organization paints a vision for your contributions that can be easily questioned?

Questions for classroom teachers:

What kinds of value do you think media specialists add to the work done in your reading classroom?

How well do you understand the unique set of skills that media specialists bring to the table?  What kinds of things do you rely on your media specialists for currently?  What kinds of things would you like to rely on them for? 

How are media specialists helping you to develop young readers or to prepare your students to navigate new reading environments?  Has your need for the media specialist grown or decreased over time? 

What are the barriers that are preventing meaningful collaboration with media specialists? 

The comment sections of the posts that I wrote this week are loaded with language about teams, aren’t they?  Time and again, media specialists have expressed a willingness to collaborate with classroom teachers in almost any capacity, and I believe that in the best circumstances, this kind of collaboration is rule.

But I also believe that in most circumstances, meaningful collaboration between the media center and the regular reading classroom is the exception.  Why is that?  What’s keeping teachers from working closely with the media specialist in your building?  Does collaboration work for some teachers but not others?  Why? 

If things are working well in your building, what structures and/or processes do you have in place to make shared work possible? 

How has accountability changed the way that you feel about your colleagues working beyond the classroom?

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m jealous of anyone who works in an untested subject.  While they’re still judged based on qualitative measures like observations and performances, I’m judged based on test scores alone—and no matter how many times y’all push the “we’re a team” speeches, “we” becomes “you” as soon as negative numbers come back from the testing office. 

The results have really been ugly over the past few years.  I can sense a shift in the way that I feel towards anyone working in an untested subject or a position beyond the classroom.  Resentment is building as I buckle under the pressure of being “held accountable.” 

Am I the only one who feels this way?  Has the testing movement created any divides in your faculties?  If not, what have you done to make sure that the teamwork you talk about is real and not just a super nifty slogan to make everyone feel good?

Better yet, how much do your colleagues in untested positions know about the pressures of accountability? 

Questions for everyone:

Are we being divided by accountability and alternative compensation programs?

My favorite comment all week was posted by WWMS who wondered whether or not the accountability and alternative compensation movement in our country was intentionally designed to divide and conquer educators. 

Now, like WWMS, I’m not sure that the accountability and alternative compensation movement is intentionally designed to divide—that would depend on policy makers having an actual understanding of schools and teachers—but I am pretty convinced that division is the end result.  I see it in my own feelings towards my peers.

So how do we change that?  What would accountability and compensation plans that actually encouraged teamwork and shared commitment look like in action?  Can educators working at the school level take steps towards these kinds of healthy practices outside of their districts/states/unions?

Who owns a blog conversation?

One of the more interesting twists this week was the beating that I took after pulling my original post down—something that I did in response to the sea of negative commentary that I was buried in.  I wanted to save my mental energy for my wife and baby instead of coming home angry about a conversation gone awry. 

Lots and lots of people questioned that decision, though.  Some encouraged me to stand by my words because they had merit.  Others saw my decision as a sign of weakness and attacked with sarcasm.  Everyone, though, had an opinion!

So what’s yours?  Did I have a right to pull down my original entry or did the conversation belong to my audience as soon as it was posted?

Looking forward to hearing what y’all think.  Here’s to hoping the dialogue is a healthy one!

When I woke up this morning and decided to write about the tension that exists between the kind of instruction possible in the media center versus the kind of instruction possible in my language arts classroom, I knew that there was going to be pushback.  I've advanced this line of thinking before and been buried in angst more than once. 

What I see every time is a defensive reaction from people who have spent the better part of their careers facing budget cuts that have the potential to take their positions.  In an attempt to make sure that today's conversation was about ideas instead of emotions, I started with these words:

During the course of my sixteen year teaching career, I’ve worked
with a ton of GREAT media specialists. 

In fact, one of the
thinkers that I admire the most in my own school district is a high
school media specialist named Kerri Brown-Parker who is doing great
things to support teachers interested in integrating technology into
their instructional practices.  And the media specialists in my current
school are both wonderful women who work hard with classroom teachers
and students alike.  They are thoughtful and innovative—and
well-respected by everyone as a result.

I also believe that
media specialists can play an important role in any school community. 
When they’re skilled, they teach students to manage information fluently
and how to judge the reliability of sources.  They help students to
sift through heaping cheeseloads of content to make sense of what they
are learning. 

Finally, they often find ways to help teachers
integrate media literacy skills into their required curriculum and do
the heavy lifting on shared projects that are at once motivating and
essential for students.  All of that work adds value in the schoolhouse
and yet it can be easily overlooked and/or underestimated.

Continuing to stress the importance of media specialists, I wrote this later in my post:

Now I get it:  Media positions are on the chopping block
all the time.  Standing up for your profession is always admirable—and
I’d hate to see schools lose the services of the most accomplished media
specialists, who are an irreplaceable resource that can save teachers
time, reach handfuls of struggling students, and support colleagues who
are unprepared for the demands of a changing digital age.

And in the comment section, I wrote this:

EVERY media specialist that I've ever worked with has been INCREDIBLY
willing to collaborate around projects with classroom teachers. In
fact, at times, they've come to us BEGGING to help us with the work
we're doing with students.

I don't doubt their intentions or their abilities in any way.

But I still spent the past nine hours dealing with emotional responses.  People expressed surprise at my unwillingness to be a team player.  They questioned my intentions.  They thought my comments were hurtful and unproductive. 

Which has caused me to do something I've never done here on the Radical:  I pulled the post. 

Ask anyone who knows me how momentous that decision really is.  I'm a "speak your mind" and a "stick to your guns" kind of guy---and generally there's a good measure of truth in everything that I write, even when it's uncomfortable to hear.  I've ruffled more than a few feathers in my day and backing down isn't in my nature, but honestly, I don't need the stress.

My only goal was to talk honestly to media specialists.  I wanted you to see how comments that you often make while advocating for your profession can come across to reading teachers.  While I'm certain that the vast majority of y'all have nothing but great respect for reading teachers, that doesn't always come across in the language that you use to describe your work.

I figured that was something you'd want to know because I'm certain that I'm not the only classroom teacher who feels that way.  I'm just dumb enough to write about my thoughts openly. 

For those of you who had the chance to read my post, I hope it challenged you to think differently.  It was intended to spark reflection and to give you some insight into what it is like to be a reading teacher in a tested world----and I hope that it helped you to recognize that "teamwork" feels a whole lot different when the members of the team are not judged equally.

As long as that message came across to one or two of you, then today's drama may have been worth it.