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Thinking and Linking

Teachers of color aren’t magic solution

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 15, 2017
2 min

Teachers of color aren’t magic solution

Teachers of color are the latest magic bullet for our education woes, writes Alina Adams on New York School Talk. Black teachers allegedly “get” black students. Students of all races prefer teachers of color, reports NPR. Adams is raising three children with her husband, who is African-American and a teacher. Her daughter “loved having one teacher who was Black and Jewish – just like her,” Adams recalls. But “the teachers of color my children have learned from the most . . a

Best place to teach? Bentonville, Arkansas

Joanne Jacobs

Jun 1, 2017
1 min

Best place to teach? Bentonville, Arkansas

Aidan Booker, 8, goes over her project with her teacher Amber Lichlyter at Willowbrook Elementary School in Bentonville. Photo: Anthony Reyes Bentonville, Arkansas tops the 2017 list of Best Cities for K-12 Teachers, according to GoodCall. Teachers earn 68 percent more than the median income for the area. Seven of the top 10 cities were suburbs of Chicago and Detroit: Teachers earned at least 60 percent more than the median, parents are educated and crime rates are low. State

Teach the controversy — but how?

Joanne Jacobs

May 28, 2017
2 min

Teach the controversy — but how?

In The Case for Contention, Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson argue for the Enlightenment tradition, writes David Steiner in an Education Next review. “Leading students in discussion of controversial issues can be regarded as essential to effective and efficient education,” writes Steiner, a Johns Hopkins education policy professor. Discussing controversial issues teaches students to “formulate and evaluate arguments.” Teaching controversy always has been difficult, writ

Teacher: Workforce prep isn’t my job

Joanne Jacobs

May 19, 2017
2 min

Teacher: Workforce prep isn’t my job

When Ohio Gov. John Kasich proposed requiring teachers to serve an “externship” at a business to renew their teacher’s licenses, there was little support for the idea, reports Cincinnati.com The job shadowing proposal has been dropped. Kasich wants to get businesses more involved with preparing students for 21st Century jobs. Ian Avery, a high school English teacher, believes it’s not his job to prepare my students for the workforce. He read Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn with h

Most teachers get bad deal on pensions

Joanne Jacobs

May 18, 2017
1 min

Most teachers get bad deal on pensions

Pensions are a bad deal for most teachers, conclude Bellwether’s Chad Aldeman and Kelly Robson in an Education Next article. While some teachers do well, most get nothing at all. In the median state, only a minority of teachers vest in their pension plan, they write. In 49 states, a majority of teachers will receive future pension payments worth less than their retirement contributions. Pension plans have unintended and undesirable effects on teacher retention, the authors fi

Diamonds in the rough — or roughnecks?

Joanne Jacobs

May 8, 2017
2 min

Diamonds in the rough — or roughnecks?

Rebels and rule-breakers may be original thinkers who will change the world, writes teacher Ashley Lamb-Sinclair in The Atlantic. Albert Einstein was a teacher’s nightmare in his school days, she writes. One of her students, “a brilliant creative writer” and reader of “highly intellectual books, articles, and authors,” is failing two classes. He rolls his eyes at anything he deems as busy work, comes into class and intentionally sits with his back to me, and continues to chat

Is teacher tenure on the way out?

Joanne Jacobs

May 1, 2017
2 min

Is teacher tenure on the way out?

Tenure is on the way out in universities, writes Checker Finn. Seven out of 10 university instructors are contingent employees; most work part time.Is this the end of teacher tenure in K-12 schools? he asks in Education Next. Not yet, he concludes. “It’s still virtually impossible to fire bad tenured teachers.” “A onetime tenured university professor who cheerfully gave it up for more rewarding pursuits,” Finn doesn’t think anyone — other than appellate judges — should get li

Study: Merit pay works

Joanne Jacobs

Apr 24, 2017
1 min

Study: Merit pay works

Merit pay for teachers can lead to higher test scores for students, reports Ed Week‘s Teacher Beat. In the U.S., teacher participation in a merit-pay program was linked to three extra weeks of schooling, concluded a Vanderbilt meta-analysis of 44 studies. Incentive-pay programs that provided on-the-job training for teachers –a requirement of the federal Teacher Incentive Fund — had little effect on student achievement, the study found. The authors did find that merit-pay prog

NCTQ names Great Districts for Great Teachers

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 15, 2017
1 min

NCTQ names Great Districts for Great Teachers

District of Columbia Public Schools and Gwinnett County (Georgia) Public Schools top the list of Great Districts for Great Teachers, announced by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). Also in the top eight for recruiting, encouraging, supporting, and retaining great teachers are Boston Public Schools Broward County Public Schools (Florida) Denver Public Schools New York City Department of Education Pinellas County Schools (Florida) Pittsburgh Public Schools NCTQ ana

Joanne Jacobs

Mar 4, 2017
1 min

Not a hero, not a hack

The documentary Teacher of the Year showcases a North Carolina social studies teacher who’s neither a hack nor a hero, writes Andrew Simmons in The Atlantic. Raleigh high school teachers Rob Phillips and Jay Korreck made their colleague Angie Scioli the star of their movie, which premiered this week at Wake Forest University. “To suck the public in,” the movie starts by establishing Scioli as a good teacher, she tells Simmons. “Then in the second part of the movie, you learn

Kid-friendly ‘Martian’ teaches science

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 26, 2017
2 min

Kid-friendly ‘Martian’ teaches science

An astronaut is stranded on Mars, nobody knows he’s alive and rescue is four years away, far longer than his food supply will hold out. “Gosh darn it!” he says. Science teachers are using a profanity-free classroom edition of The Martian to teach physics, astronomy and chemistry, reports Alexandra Alter in the New York Times. It’s the same story with less cursing. (The astronaut doesn’t really say “gosh darn it.”) To survive on Mars, astronaut Mark Watney must “solve a series

Learning to spot ‘fake news’

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 23, 2017
1 min

Learning to spot ‘fake news’

Is it real or is it malarkey? Vicki Davis at Cool Cat Teacher is offering 3 Fast, Free Lesson Plans to Fight Fake News. #criticalthinking #fakenews #teaching

Teachers outsource grading

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 14, 2017
1 min

Teachers outsource grading

Teacher have outsourced grading at two Michigan public schools that are “teacher-powered,” reports Education Week Teacher. Washtenaw Educational Options Consortium schools, say paying an outsider to do the grading frees teachers to design curriculum and work more closely with students. Dan is lead teacher at Washtenaw International High School (WIHI), an International Baccalaureate school that hires graduate students as aides and graders. Sarah works at Washtenaw Alliance for

British teachers try police-style body cameras

Joanne Jacobs

Feb 8, 2017
1 min

British teachers try police-style body cameras

British teachers are wearing police-style body cameras to deter and document disruption by their students, reports the BBC. Two schools are experimenting with body cameras. “Where the teacher feels there’s a threat to themselves or to another student, then there will be evidence of that incident,” said Tom Ellis, a criminal justice researcher at the University of Portsmouth. More than a third of teachers said they’d wear body cameras to gather evidence of student behavior, a

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 27, 2017
1 min

Teacher posts ‘shooting’ Trump video

“A high school art teacher in Dallas posted an Instagram video of herself ‘shooting’ an image of Donald Trump with a squirt gun and screaming ‘die’ during Friday’s inauguration,” reports Town Hall. It apparently was shot in her classroom, though it’s not clear if students were present. The posting included: “Watching the #inauguration in my classroom like…#no #stop #denial #squirtgun #hypocrisy #powerless #saveusall #teachthembetter #atleastitsfriday.” The teacher has been pl

Joanne Jacobs

Jan 7, 2017
1 min

Take away the takeaway

Diana Senechal criticizes our cultural emphasis on takeaways, “the surety squeezed from things unsure,” in a TEDx talk. Teachers must teach lessons with takeaways that will fit on a poster, she says. Bound to standards-linked objectives and student-centered teaching, they design vapid lessons. For example, students might read Polonius’ advice to his son: “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” They spend

DC focuses teacher training on (!) teaching

Joanne Jacobs

Dec 21, 2016
1 min

DC focuses teacher training on (!) teaching

D.C. Public Schools’ teacher training was a waste of time, Kelly Vergamini told the Washington Post. “But after spending 90 minutes each Wednesday morning for the past four months with other teachers at H.D. Cooke Elementary, Vergamini said the new approach to improving teachers’ skills feels different,” reports Alejandra Matos. LEAP is “tailored to improve a teacher’s instructional skills,” she writes. Teachers meet weekly with colleagues teaching the same subject and a coac

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