One of the top experts and longtime proponents of educational testing, Gene Glass, has added his voice to the legions of Americans calling for an end to our national testing obsession. “When measurement became the instrument of accountability, testing companies prospered and schools suffered,” he wrote on his blog, reprinted in the Washington Post. What…
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I have been teaching high school for 26 years, and I cannot tolerate bored, disengaged teenagers. I've spent my entire career developing student engagement strategies that work and abandoning lessons that don't work. As a result, my students frequently comment that they are "never bored" in my class. I'm proud of that -- and of my students' outstanding performance.
I'll use this blog to talk about engagement strategies as well as other issues facing teachers, students and everyone who cares about education today. I hope you find it interesting.
The myth of learning to learn
Too many teenagers – and adults – are under the impression that they don’t need to learn facts anymore. Ask them a question, and they can just look up the answer. It’s all right there on the internet. Unfortunately, the idea that you can “learn to learn” and pick up facts on a need-to-know basis…
Read MoreFailure really isn’t fun
I have a love-hate relationship with tennis. When spring weather finally comes to Minnesota, I can’t wait to get out on the courts. I love hitting a powerful serve. I love a strong, low groundstroke. I love a surprising shot at the net.
And I hate losing. Unfortunately, I tend to lose a lot, and it’s a huge source of frustration. I want to get better at this game, and it’s very hard to make progress. Sometimes I even avoid playing because I don’t want to lose.
When I re-read Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, this summer, I realized she was talking about me. When Dweck wrote about children with a fixed mindset avoiding challenges because they didn’t want to fail, I thought, “Yeah, I get where those kids are coming from.”
When she wrote about making excuses for failure, that was me, too. My foot hurt; I haven’t played for a while; the weather is too hot; the weather is too cold. I sound just like a teeanger.
Read MoreIs PD a Mirage?
Billions spent and little to show for it. That’s what TNTP’s new report, The Mirage, concludes about professional development for American teachers. I wonder if any teachers will be surprised.
TNTP (originally The New Teacher Project, founded by Michelle Rhee) studied three large public school districts and one charter network for two years, looking for teachers who improved substantially and trying to identify what worked for them. They concluded that no specific strategies were effective, although teachers were “bombarded” with help.
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MARTHA RUSH 