Each biography also provides links to additional accessible resources on the people described.
These biographies are good just as stand-alone reading or (and this is what I particularly like about them) being adapted as clozes (fill-in-the-gap) exercises.
Pop! Tech looks very similar to TED Talks. It brings in “big thinkers” to give short presentations.
The major drawback, however, is that, unlike TED Talks, Pop! Tech uses Vimeo to host their videos, which means that most school content filters will block access. There are certainly ways to use them in schools (see The Best Ways To Access Educational YouTube Videos At School), but it will take more work than the TED Talks, which host their videos on their own site and is usually unblocked.
I just sent out my free monthly email newsletter (I did, however, incorrectly date it as January, 2009 instead of 2010 — gotta’ get used to the date change coming up)
I’ve been sending it out for three years, and have about seven hundred subscribers now. You can see all the past issues here, and subscribe to it here.
The Sacramento Bee today has an extensive article and slideshow about the 400 Bhutanese refugees who have settled here this year and the 600 more who are on their way.
We haven’t yet gotten any Bhutanese students at our school, but I suspect that might change. If any teachers have specific recommendations or resources that might be helpful, please leave a comment on this post.
Earlier this week our principal initiated a discussion at the School Site Council on Small Learning Communities (SLC’s). His thinking was that we’ve been doing them for six years, and take them for granted, but that it’s important to reflect on their usefulness periodically.
I think his point is well-taken, and we had a very good discussion at the meeting. I also realized that I’ve never really shared in this blog about how our school is organized into Small Learning Communities, and how I (and the vast majority of our teachers, students, parents and administrators) believe that it’s a critical piece of our schools’ success.
The idea of SLC’s is to create “schools within schools.” We have a total population of 2200 students that are divided into seven Small Learning Communities of about 300 students and twenty teachers (very roughly) each. Those students and teachers — for the most part — stay together year after year. There are some “global” classes where students from different SLC’s take classes together, but all English, Math, Social Studies and Biology classes are taught exclusively within these SLC’s. Students also take one class each year that specifically relates to the theme of that SLC (Information Technology — which is where I teach — Construction & Design; International & Environmental Studies; Medical & Health Sciences; Public Services; Law & Social Justice; and Arts & Communications). Also, for the most part, the SLC’s are physically-located in different sections of the school. Each SLC has their own counselor, and the teachers and counselor meet as a group twice-a-month for an hour-and-a-half (academic departments meeting twice-a-month and all faculty meet every-other month). Each SLC also has a “Lead Teacher” who functions as a de facto teacher/administrator and who handles student scheduling for that SLC and has other responsibilities.
The benefits behind this organization are almost too numerous to mention. Really, no student falls through the cracks. There’s plenty of research (I share much of it in my upcoming book, English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work, that highlights the importance of relationships in learning, and SLC’s are a huge asset in developing those. I not only interact with my students in class, but I see them all day as they walk to different classes, and I’ll maintain that communication for all of their four years at school. If a student is having some challenges one day in the morning, I can let his/her next teachers know since they’re only a few feet away. If a student did something particularly noteworthy that morning, I can let other teachers know so they can make comments to the student throughout the day. At every SLC meeting, we discuss students and can develop joint interventions. And, of course, students themselves can develop more solid relationships with their peers.
There are many schools that use SLC’s, though not all necessarily maintain the same level of “purity” (keeping so many classes with only students from that SLC). It can be expensive. It costs our school nearly $1 million above what we get from the standard funding formulas this year (which were obviously reduced from previous years). Those funds have come in the past from restructuring grants the district has received, and now from the Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA).
It’s worth every penny.
You can get more information on Small Learning Communities in general here and here.
I haven’t posted a whole of of math resources on this blog, but I did want to remind readers that I have a fairly extensive Math section on my website. It’s filled with links that, in addition to providing good student self-access to links for math learning, also combine it with English language-learning opportunities.
In addition, I’ve compiled three “The Best…” lists that are math-related:
Lastly, I also have a more extensive Math page on my website that includes math resources that do not necessarily also contribute to language development.
Interactive infographics show data in a visual way, and make the information much more accessible for English Language Learners — and everybody else.
Interactive infographics are especially engaging because they allow users to customize the data they see. Even though most of the links on this list are to infographics that are interactive, I’ve also included a couple of “static” infographics that I think are especially well-done.
I haven’t ranked them by preference — except for the last two, which I think are the very best ones. You’ll find that number-one ranked infographic at the bottom of this post.
Here are my choices for The Best Interactive Infographics — 2009:
U.S. Hispanics: On the Upswing is an interactive map from The Wall Street Journal tracking the growth of the Hispanic population in each state. You can track it from 2002 to 2008.
The Cost Efficiency of Transportation is a great, and accessible, infographic comparing the cost of transporting a passenger by jet, truck, bus, train, car, hybrid, and scooter.
Summertime gets real hot here in the Sacramento area. The Sacramento Bee put together a simple informative, entertaining and accessible interactive graphic titled “How Hot Is Too Hot?” Did you know that grass stops growing at 95 degrees Fahrenheit?
Did you know it takes 5,500 gallons of water to produce two pounds of roasted coffee? That’s one of a number of amazing water statistics you can find on a Wall Street Journal interactive graphic they published today. I don’t know how it is in your area, but Northern California is in its third year of drought, and this kind of information is thought-provoking…and accessible to English Language Learners.
The New York Times has published the Immigration Explorer. It shows — by geography and time period — where immigrants from various countries have settled in the United States over the past 130 years. My only disappointment is that, though it includes immigrants from Vietnam, it doesn’t have specific categories for others from different parts of Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, it will be a very useful resource.
Woman’s Day Magazine has an online infographic on The Evolution of the Household. It traces the changes in the “typical” American household through every decade since the 1950’s. It’s really quite engaging.
TIME Magazine has published an infographic titled Leading Cause of Death. It’s a pretty amazing piece of work chocked full with data about smoking cigarettes.
Seeking Refuge is a good infographic from The Wall Street Journal showing the “the top countries of origin for refugees.”
Inaugural Words from The New York Times, I believe, was one of the more useful resources that was created for the inauguration of President Obama. “Word clouds” highlighting the most-used words in each inaugural address can be seen. In addition, words that were used in each address much more than in the other ones given in history are identified. Plus, by clicking on each word you are shown how it was used in a sentence. Comparing the words and even just using them as a vocabulary-building exercise for English Language Learners make this an excellent resource.
…a nifty interactive graph that charts a stacked time series of reported occupations in the US from 1850 to 2000, normalized by percentage
That sentence, however, doesn’t begin to give it justice. It’s worth checking out both the Fast Company article and the application itself.
Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller? is an interactive graphic from The New York Times that shows women — in practically every occupation in the United States — make less money than men. It also gives a very brief explanation of the reasons why, including, of course, discrimination.
The New York Times published an interactive graphic titled Broad Unemployment Across the U.S. It shows both the official unemployment rate, and what the rate would be if it included “ipart-time workers who want to work full time, as well some people who want to work but have not looked for a job in the last four weeks.”
The Associated Press has an Economic Stress Index which shows, in an interactive graphic form, what is happening to every county in the United States economically. It measures bankruptcies, home foreclosures, and unemployment, and then interprets it into what they call a “stress index.”
Here’s a very interesting chart showing unemployment levels by education level. Here is its conclusion: “…for those 25 and older, education-level is correlated with rates of unemployment: the more educated you are, the less likely you are to find yourself unemployed.”
MSNBC has developed what they call an Adversity Index. It’s an animated map that “measures the economic health of 381 metro areas and all 50 states.” It’s pretty intriguing, though would probably require some initial explanation before English Language Learners could fully decipher it. Right below the Adversity Map, you can also find a “Map:Recession-resistant areas” that highlights communities in the U.S. that have escaped the recession’s effects.
The Geography of Jobs is an excellent animated map demonstrating the loss of jobs in different parts of the United States during the recession.
Here’s the second-best infographic this year: Is the World Getting Better Or Worse? is, I think, a truly exceptional infographic. Plus, it’s accessible to English Language Learners, though it is a bit “busy.” Instead of explaining it further, just go check it out.
And now, here’s the the number-one ranked Interactive Infographic of the year: The New York Times published a fascinating infographic titled How Different Groups Spend Their Day. Here’s how they describe it: “The American Time Use Survey asks thousands of American residents to recall every minute of a day. Here is how people over age 15 spent their time in 2008.” It actually shows what people did every hour of everyday — sleeping, watching TV, eating, etc. And the numbers are divided by ethnicity, age, education-background and more. I could easily see having my students first do a similar analysis of their days and then comparing it to this infographic.
I realized last week that I hadn’t done much follow-up since the initial self-control lesson. So, today, as part of our regular “Friday Reflection” I asked students to share the last two times they “didn’t eat the marshmallow” (the last two times they wanted to do something that they knew they shouldn’t do, but resisted) and how they felt about it afterwards. I’m going to start incorporating this question into these end-of-the-week reflections twice-a-month, though I will also explicitly ask students to share what strategy/thinking-process they used to help them resist the temptation. After I had students share with partners, we “lifted-up” some successful strategies people used, and I think that worked out to be an excellent teaching opportunity. We discussed the importance of thinking through consequences and trying to distract one’s self.
Here are some student responses (from both my mainstream ninth-grade English and my Intermediate English class):
I wanted to steal an iPod but I didn’t do it because I thought of something different.
The time when I didn’t eat the marshmallow was the time I wanted to steal from the snack bar because I didn’t want to spend my $5.
A time that I wanted to hit Cheng, but I stopped because I remembered we were friends. If felt much better afterwards because I didn’t hit him.
The time I want to hit my little sister but I stopped myself. I felt that if I did hit her she was going to tell my mom and I was going to get into a lot of trouble.
Last week there was a piece of pie that I wanted so bad, but I thought that if I took it I was going to get into a whole lot of trouble afterwards. So I walked away from it and it felt good to do something good.
VISUALIZING SUCCESS
Since the initial lesson, I’ve been having students take twenty seconds twice each class to visualize themselves being successful in the academic activity that we were just about to begin — reading, writing, speaking, listening. I’ve given people the option to do it with their eyes closed or open, along with the option not to participate (though, if they choose that option, they need to sit silently while others do so.)
We’re giving monthly clozes (fill-in-the-blank) assessments to my class and another Intermediate English class that is not doing this exercise to see if there are any effects.
As part of today’s Friday’s reflection, I asked students to answer the question “Are you participating in the visualization activity? If so, what do you see?” I made it clear that it was okay to say “No.”
It appears that about forty percent of my mainstream ninth-grade English class are doing it, and over sixty percent of my Intermediate English students are.
Here is a sampling of responses from the students who said “yes”:
“Yes, I see a lot of different words that come from my mind when I close my eyes.”
“Yes, I see me writing very well and reading very well.”
“I see myself speaking English.”
“Yes, I see myself reading very good.”
“Yes, I see myself studying and doing my best. But when I do it, it’s not easy.”
“Yes, I see myself speaking to many people.”
I’ve also begun asking students to see themselves achieving the goals they set for themselves as part of our goal-setting lesson earlier this week.
So, all in all, I’m feeling pretty good — not just about the initial lessons, but also the follow-up.
I’ll keep people posted. And, of course, if anybody has suggestions for additional follow-up activities, I’m all ears….
The title of this “The Best…” list is pretty self-explanatory. What you’ll find here are blog posts and articles this year (some written by me, some by others) that were, in my opinion, the ones that offered the best practical advice to teachers this year — suggestions that can help teachers become more effective in the classroom today or tomorrow. Some, however, might not appear on the surface to fit that criteria, but those, I think, might offer insights that could (should?) inform our teaching practice everyday.
For some, the headlines provide enough of an idea of the topic and I haven’t included any further description.
Here are my choices for The Best Articles (And Blog Posts) Offering Practical Advice To Teachers — 2009 (not in order of preference):
(If you’re viewing this post on Facebook or via a Feedblitz email subscription, you might have trouble accessing some of the links listed here. People reading it through their RSS Reader shouldn’t have any difficulties. If you having a problem, just go directly to my blog and all the links will work fine. I’ve recently figured out what the problem is, and it shouldn’t happen very often in the future, but I’m just to lazy to redo posts that I’ve already completed)
Feedback is always welcome.
The Best Teacher I Ever Had was published years ago, but was new to me this year. It’s a lesson that reminds us one about one of the key ideas our students should be learning from us.
When we want to evaluate our work as a teacher (which is probably a good thing to do everyday), here’s a good question to ask ourselves.
The Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes is an excellent post by by Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University and Rebecca Brent, Education Designs, Inc. It’s geared towards college-teaching, but much that’s discussed in applicable to K-12.
When I was fifteen, I met a man who had worked with Gandhi in India. He told me, “Larry, the key to Gandhi’s success was that he looked at every problem as an opportunity, not as a pain in the butt.” Hearing that advice, and taking it to heart, has improved the quality of my life immeasurably.
I was reminded of that quote when I just re-read an interesting article in the Atlantic from the summer titled “What Makes Us Happy?”
The director of a study on happiness is described like this:
“Vaillant says his hopeful temperament is best summed up by the story of a father who on Christmas Eve puts into one son’s stocking a fine gold watch, and into another son’s, a pile of horse manure. The next morning, the first boy comes to his father and says glumly, “Dad, I just don’t know what I’ll do with this watch. It’s so fragile. It could break.” The other boy runs to him and says, “Daddy! Daddy! Santa left me a pony, if only I can just find it!”
It struck me that this would be another good topic for the “life-learning” lessons I’ve been trying-out in my classroom, sharing on this blog, and writing about in my third book.
Over the past twenty-four hours, readers have been extraordinarily generous in their response to my request for student-accessible readings on a “Blaming Others” lesson I’m putting together. I thought I’d put out another call for suggestions on the topic of this post.
Do you have suggestions of short readings that would illustrate the idea of looking at problems as opportunities?
Everybody’s suggestions, with acknowledgments, will be included in a future post, and those whose I decide to use will be recognized in the book.
Of course, I’ll post the lesson plan I eventually use, along with a report on how it went.
The criteria is the same as it has been in previous years. They have to be:
* Free
* Engaging and accessible to English Language Learners
* Provide English-language development opportunities as wells as science or math content
I’m not listing them in any order of preference, except for at the very end of this post. There, I’ll highlight the number one site for both Science and Math this year — it’s the same for both.
Here are my choices for The Best Science & Math Sites — 2009:
SCIENCE:
Planet Quest is a pretty amazing multimedia timeline of space exploration that begins at 500 B.C. In addition, it provides audio support for the text.
The INDEX Award winners for this year were announced in August. It’s a Danish-based effort that provides large cash prizes for “designs to improve life.” You can also read more about it at this San Francisco Chronicle article. It’s really a neat idea, and a great site. If you click on any of the categories at the top of the Index page — Body, Home, Work, Play, Community — it will bring you to very short multimedia presentations on each invention, and they’re very accessible to English Language Learners.
Share Your Ideas is a neat feature on the California Academy of Science website. Users can easily leave their ideas on how to help the environment, which then appear on sort of a bulletin-board like page. You can read more about the site here.
The Discovery Channel has come-up with just about the most creative way imaginable to help students remember the names of the planets in our solar system. It’s called the Solar Symphony Game. I really can’t explain it — you have to check it out for yourself. It also has relatively accessible nuggets of information about each planet, too.
NASA At Home & City is a terrific interactive where NASA shows the practical implications of how space travel has affected out lives. It’s very well done, and audio support is provided for the text. It’s quite accessible to English Language Learners.
The BBC has put together a nice summary of NASA”s Fifty Years In Space. It’s mainly a collection of short video clips highlighting key moments.
Before and After Humans is an intriguing interactive with images from MSNBC that forecasts various paths human evolution might take in the next few million years. The vocabulary is going to be challenging — even for advanced Intermediate English Language Learners — but the images and potential paths are going to be intriguing enough, I think, for students to “fight through” for understanding.
MATH:
Max’s Math Adventures is from Scholastic, and offers a variety of relatively simple math games. The key feature, though, that makes it so useful to English Language Learners is that audio support is provided for much of the text.
Learning Clip provides a ton of free interactive math activities. First, students listen to a brief cartoon video explaining the concept (the British accent might make things difficult for some students). Then, users play games reinforcing the idea. You have to first register for the site. It’s worth a visit. They do have a notice, however, saying that some of their exercises will only be available for paid subscribers after January 16th, 2010. I hope most of them are still accessible for free.
CyberChase from PBS has a great online talking calculator. It’s a perfect way for English Language Learners to do their math and, through listening skills, developing their language abilities.
THE NUMBER ONE SITE FOR BOTH SCIENCE & MATH:
The BBC has recently announced a new website in their exceptional “Bitesize” series. This one is called KS3 Bitesize. It includes activities for Math, English and Science. What makes it truly exceptional — at least for English Language Learners — is that all the neat exercises listed as an “Activity” on the site not only are very engaging and informative, but have subtitles which make them more accessible to English Language Learners.
You might want to look at the other over 350 “The Best….” lists, including many related to Science and Math.
The actual voting site for the Edublog Awards is slightly confusing (only slightly — I was a bit confused at first, and I see others on Twitter who might have been, too — it’s just that they wanted to rightfully show all the nominees, too), so I’m going to follow the lead of other bloggers and post the direct links to each category. You can click on it and then easily vote for whoever you want:
As regular readers know, I’ve been putting energy this school year into creating lessons where my students can (I hope) more explicitly learn and develop concepts/habits that, for lack of a better term, I’m calling “life” learning. I written about them here — on what physically happens to the brain when it learns something new; on self-control, and goal-setting.
I’ll be expanding on them in my upcoming third book, and will be using this blog to help write it. I’ll be sharing more about that after Christmas.
Today, though, I’d like to ask readers help in developing a new lesson on “blaming others.”
Several recent studies have recently been done which show that blaming people is contagious — that reading about people who blame others for their mistakes and shortcomings makes people more likely to blame others for their own mistakes. These same studies, though, show that the opposite is true, too — those that read about people who accept responsibility for their mistakes are more likely to take responsibility for theirs.
I’d like to identify newspaper articles and stories, or short book excerpts, where people accept responsibility for their mistakes that I can have students read.
Can you share some ideas in the comments section? I’ll compile them in a future post, and also report what I specifically do in the lesson I’m developing and how it goes. I’ve found quotes related to the topic, but no narratives so far.
I was honored to be nominated in several categories (thank you to all you nominated me!), but the really important thing about these awards is that they provide an opportunity for everybody to learn about great blogs and other resources out there that can be helpful to our teaching.
There’s an “embarrassment of riches” in the education blogosphere!
As is the case in all my lists, some of these sites might have been around prior to 2009, but they were new to me this year.
Here are my choices for The Best Social Studies Websites — 2009 (that are accessible to English Language Learners):
Number nineteen: This is actually several links. LIFE Magazine has unveiled newly discovered color photographs of Adolf Hitler. They’re pretty amazing. LIFE has divided these color photos into several slideshows:
Number eighteen: The Watertown Public Schools have put together an exceptional overview of early American History at American History Central. It’s complete, accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners, good images, and is organized very well. Too bad it stops at the year 1800!
Number seventeen: Miniature Earth is a slideshow that uses statistics to reduce the world to 100 inhabitants, and shows how that plays out demographically, who uses what resources, etc. They periodically update the statistics.
Number sixteen: Raising Walls is an intriguing feature from The Wall Street Journal highlighting famous….walls in history and around the world. The interactive graphic is supplemented by a slideshow, video, and article focused on walls being built around slums in Rio de Janeiro.
Number fifteen: Geographical Media is the newest addition to The Best Tools To Help Develop Global Media Literacy list. After you register (which is a free and easy process) you can see which topics are being covered in the news media in different parts of the world, and compare the differences. The site seems to have a number of other features — and it’s not particularly intuitive how to navigate through them — but the site has a lot of potential.
Number fourteen: Photos That Changed The World posts a new photo each day that had a major impact on….the world. In addition, there’s a short description of the image and the circumstances surrounding it. Obviously, the photos are accessible to all English Lan guage Learners, and the texts can be read by Intermediates. (this site is not longer working. Instead, go to The Best Sites To See “Photos That Changed The World”)
Number thirteen: The Constitution For Kids has three “levels” of explanations about the U.S. Constitution. An English Language Learner — from high Beginning to Advanced — can choose which one he/she finds most accessible.
Number twelve: Career Aisle is from the South Carolina PBS Station, and has many short, and accessible, videos on different careers. There are a number of other activities and resources related to jobs there, too.
Number eleven: Project Label is a new site that I’m adding to The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”. The site provides “social nutrition” labels to corporations based on a number of criteria including safety, nutrition, values, etc. The labels in large part are determined by users on the site who vote on the usefulness and validity of articles on the corporations that other users upload. Students can write their own articles to add, or can leave comments on the articles that others contribute, in addition to voting.
Number ten:America In The Twentieth Century is a new series of online videos (the site will soon also be offering additional teacher support materials). It looks like an exceptional resource.
Number nine: The Virginia Educational Wizard is a cool interactive guide to careers and colleges. It’s obviously geared towards students in Virginia, but their Interest Assessment is one of the most engaging ones I’ve seen and would be a useful tool for any students exploring potential careers.
Number eight: Timelines is a neat tool that lets users contribute towards making “timelines” of historical events with text, photos, and videos. People can then vote on which ones they like best, though everyone’s contributions appear to remain displayed. It’s extremely easy to contribute — much, much easier than to something like Wikipedia. Timelines is a great place for students to write for an authentic audience, which is why I’m adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”.
Number seven: Map Battle is a very easy-to-use tool to create geography games online. It’s like a less-fancy The Traveler IQ Challenge game.
Number six: Newsy is a site that — in short videos — compares how major news events are covered by media throughout the world. I’m adding it to The Best Tools To Help Develop Global Media Literacy list. In some ways, it’s similar to Link TV, which is also on the list. Newsy, though, isn’t quite as interactive, though you can leave comments if you’re registered. For that reason, I’m also adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Write For An “Authentic Audience”. The speaking is pretty fast and relatively high-level, so it’s probably only accessible to advanced English Language Learners.
Number five: In The Best Sites For Students To Create Budgets, I talk about the best site for students in California to get a grasp of what the real costs are of living on your own. It’s the California Reality Check. If I had to design a site for English Language Learners, it would be close to how this tool looks. It has a step-by-step process for developing a basic budget, and it includes the different specific costs for living expenses in all the major California cities. The drawback, however, is that it only shows the income needed if you are in a California community. Now there’s a site that will provide you with a localized budget of what you need to live in any city or town in the United States. It’s called The Living Wage Calculator, and has been developed by people at Pennsylvania State University. Note that the budget is shows is their calculation of the basic costs that a family will have, not necessarily one that will provide what is commonly called a “middle class lifestyle.”
Number four: Culture Crossing is a unique resource for information about different countries. It provides some basic demographics, but it also shares details about communication style, dress, gestures, etc. It’s unlike any other source of information about countries that’s on the web. I’ll certainly be having my students use it now when they develop reports about countries.
Number three: Hypercities is a neat “mashup” of what various cities have looked like over the past several hundred years. By using a “slider,” you can choose a year, and then various images of that city from that time are shown. It’s pretty ingenious, and certainly the basics are accessible to English Language Learners.
Number two: Tony Cassidy has compiled a great list of online Social Studies games. There are too many to list here but, trust me, you want to check them out!
Number one: The BBC has unveiled an exceptional new History site. It’s targeting primary learners, and, to quote their description:
“It covers 6 primary history topics – Ancient Greeks, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Children in Victorian Britain and Children of WW2 – with a photo and video library and an interactive timeline, plus quizzes, activities and games.”
It’s very accessible to English Language Learners, and the games have audio support for the text. The only disappointment is that the videos aren’t available to watch if you’re in the United States.
I welcome comments on this blog — suggestions, affirmations, critiques. Recent comments are highlighted on the sidebar. I thought it would be helpful to share my present “policy” (which is always open to feedback and revision) on comments.
I generally respond to comments very quickly by emailing the person who left the comment. I often don’t, though, respond back in the comment section itself because I think people don’t often check the option that allows them to receive follow-up comments. I want to make sure they do indeed hear back from me.
Another reason I often don’t copy my reply to the comments section is sheer laziness.
I will, however, respond publicly if it appears to me that other readers might find the response helpful.
Though I generally approve comments from the owners of sites who want my readers and me to check-out their websites, I typically will not respond to them.
My posts on the In Practice blog are a different matter. Those posts are usually designed to initiate a public conversation about the topic of the post, and comments from readers and my responses are published in that blog’s comment section.
As regular readers know, I post a monthly feature called “Interview Of The Month.” It’s focused on people in education who I want to know more about. You can see previous interviews here.
This month, I’m interviewing John Norton, director of The Teacher Leaders Network. I was invited to join TLN this year, and it’s helped me become both a better teacher and better thinker on education issues. I knew of John earlier through his generous sharing of resources through Middleweb, one of the “granddaddies” of ways to share education resources on the web. You can also follow John on Twitter at @middleweb.
1) You’re known as the co-founder and moderator of the Teacher Leaders Network, and you’re also involved in other projects that support classroom teachers. What’s your own background?
I’m A graduate of a small southern high school. BA in English; most of an MA in history. I spent the best part of 25 years bouncing between roles as an education journalist and a staffer for non-profit education groups, several of which advocated on behalf of what were then called “disadvantaged students.” I’m old enough that some of this took place during the intense years of school desegregation.
In the mid-90s I went to work for myself and continue to write, edit and (in the 21st century) support virtual communities of educators. In the course of my career, I’ve written in-depth about schools in Long Beach CA, Louisville KY, Chattanooga TN, and many districts in Alabama and South Carolina. I guess I’ve interviewed more than 1000 teachers and several hundred principals. I received a first-place prize for investigative reporting back in the 1980s from the Education Writers Association, where I later served on the board of directors.
2) Can you describe the Teacher Leaders Network and how you become its moderator? And what exactly is the Center For Teaching Quality, which sponsors TLN?
Let me turn that around and tell you something about the Center for Teaching Quality first. It was an outgrowth of two fairly famous teaching policy reports from the mid-1990s, “What Matters Most” and “Doing What Matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching.” The effort behind these reports, led by Linda Darling-Hammond at Stanford and others, was the first big push to position teachers as the most critical factor in students’ success AT SCHOOL. I capitalize that because the research doesn’t say teachers alone can overcome all the outside factors that influence student success. But the message of those reports and the follow-up work inspired by them has been that teachers are the essential component of public education and they need to be supported at the highest levels to do their jobs well.
The “Matters Most” reports was written by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. After the report came out, the Commission supported several initiatives to spread its ideas. One of those was to establish the Southeast Center for Teaching Quality at the University of North Carolina. Barnett Berry launched the Center which became a private non-profit a few years later, with Barnett as its CEO. CTQ’s “pledge” is to advance the teaching profession – in part by promoting teacher leadership and teacher voice in important decisions that impact the daily professional work of classroom educators.
So creating the Teacher Leaders Network was a logical step for CTQ to take. Barnett and I had been friends and colleagues for many years. He and I were instrumental back in the 1980s in starting the South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruitment — a state-supported organization with few bureaucratic entanglements that was an early advocate for teacher voice and leadership (now known as CERRA). I was SCCTR’s first director and Barnett its first major consultant. One of our chief accomplishments was establishing a Teacher Cadet honors course in more than 100 high schools, where academically able students learned about the complexities of the profession and had a chance to work with accomplished teachers. I think the number of HS students who’ve completed the course is now approaching 40,000.
When Barnett and I began working together again in 2001, we had a teacher voice/agenda in mind. By 2003, thanks to Barnett’s great skill at fund-raising, we found enough financial support to launch a national virtual network with a sample of accomplished teachers from across the USA. We never had the idea of creating a membership organization like an NEA or NCTE – too expensive and cumbersome to manage. Instead the idea has been to invite a few hundred teachers from among the hundreds of thousands of excellent educators in the United States and ask them to commit some time and effort to exploring important education issues that bear on teaching success. We have members leave us and we invite new members to replace them, but we try to keep membership at around 300-400.
What do we do? First, we talk all the time, in a 24/7/365 private community, using social networking tools. You’re a TLN Forum member so you know about that. We publish excerpts and other “teacher voice” material in a public blog. This discussion can be quite powerful and over months and years, our members have become both well educated about many policy issues and more likely to exert leadership within and beyond school walls. The Forum serves as a ever-ready pool of savvy professionals who write and blog in public places, serve on important policy panels, and participate in what we call “TeacherSolutions projects,” which involve careful study of a major issue affecting teaching and learning, followed by a major report that adds the voices of expert teachers to the debate. Our latest initiative in this area is around the importance of school working conditions on teacher effectiveness.
When we began TLN, it was very difficult to find philanthropic support for the teacher leadership/voice idea. Six years later, the curve seems to be catching up with us – many more foundations and education groups are beginning to see the wisdom in asking teachers for ideas about the right ways to improve schools. We’re always interested in hearing from outstanding teachers who might be willing to commit some time to the TLN work. Right now, we’re especially interested in recruiting some outstanding younger teachers in the first decade of their careers. Anyone who’s interested can email me – including a resume or background info would be good.
3) I understand the Center For Teaching Quality is doing a project with the National Education Association focusing on “high needs” schools. What’s that all about?
As you know, a lot of the so-called “teaching quality debate” tends to circle around high-needs schools. All of the issues we may raise about the kinds of supports and commitments teachers need to do their jobs count double for those working in high-needs schools, urban or rural. CTQ produced a paper recently for NEA that looks at all the best research on what it will take to recruit, retain, develop and sustain teachers who are both eager and well prepared to serve kids who so often see their teachers come and go through a revolving door. The NEA is launching several initiatives to address these issues and CTQ’s paper and continuing advice are part of that.
4) How would you characterize any differences between the concerns and questions raised by teachers with whom you’ve worked between ten or twenty years ago and now?
Well, that’s a dunk-shot question! Let’s all say it together: No. Child. Left. Behind. Not the idea of it – not the dream of making school better for all kids that led many well-meaning progressive reformers to fall for it. But the reality of it. I’ve always felt that the well-meaning group of folks who supported NCLB (there’s a less well-meaning group too, as we know) fell for a bait-and-switch. The bait was “we need to help these kids get an education and get out of poverty.” The switch was that instead of placing the blame for their condition where it belongs – on our entire society and our culture of haves and have-nots – somebody switched the villain in the story to the American public school teacher.
Of course I realize that NCLB has impacted teachers across the board, not just in our highest needs schools, but that’s how it started and teachers in those schools still bear the greatest brunt of the top-down sanctions and general professional humiliation. The teachers I hang out with every day at the Teacher Leaders Network are truly top-notch educators. They set the highest standards for themselves and their profession. They’re not in the business of protecting “weak teachers,” they just understand that the real problems in our public schools are not going to be addressed by an “off with their heads” strategy.
These are teachers who are eager to get policymakers to listen and learn about the genuine core problems – and some expert solutions. But it’s a hard go. It’s much easier to grab the public’s attention these days with a cartoon villain — and her/his counterpart, the heroic teacher who is defying the status-quo simpleton teachers who have somehow taken over our schools en masse when the public wasn’t looking. That’s meant to be sarcasm, in case anyone is thinking of sending me a blistering email or tweet.
5) What’s your “take” on the recent “Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today” survey that says 40% of teachers are disheartened?
See the previous question for part of my answer. But you know, I have great hope. When that report from Public Agenda hit the streets this past October, there was a LOT of discussion about in our TLN community and in the many blogs published by our various members. The report divided teachers up into three groups: disheartened, contented, and idealists. Many of our folks thought about that awhile and came to the conclusion that they fell into all three of those categories. It depended on which day you surveyed them.
I have the luxury of pontificating from outside the classroom, so take this with that in mind. But I see some real movement lately in the level of respect for teachers and (more importantly even than that) the level of willingness to turn to teachers and say, “Hey, you work in schools don’t you? What do YOU think would help?” Yes, “duh, what took you so long?” But better late than never. In the midst of a semi-depression, budget-cutting, and deep growling all around us, it’s hard to see it. But there could be a tunnel and there could be light down there at the end. And not a train!
6) What do you think are the things that seem to get teachers in the Teacher Leaders Network most energized, and can that be extrapolated to teachers in general?
I’m not sure about “teachers in general,” but I am sure – since I have contact with many other teachers in all the different work I do – that there are hundreds of thousands, maybe several million, teachers who would be energized by the news that they would all be held to the same standards, that they and their peers would devise those standards, that the standards would recognize the particular work they do, that they would be compensated at a professional level and in a professional way (with rewards for excellent performance that they help design), and that hybrid roles would be created that would keep them in classrooms working with kids throughout a career, but also give them time to pursue other leadership work directly related to improving schools, students and teaching. How’s that?
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