Most American teenagers don’t talk about politics — not at home, not with their friends, not even at school. Nowhere in their daily lives do they engage in substantive discussions about critical issues like immigration reform or trade protection, or even hot button issues like gay rights, gender equality or police brutality. Last week, Prof.…
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The technology that could replace us
Most of the claims that new technology will make teachers obsolete are patently false. TED Talks, MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), educational videos, vast online databases and typical educational apps and games simply cannot replace an effective teacher in a classroom. But that doesn’t mean that nothing can. The technology tools with the greatest potential…
Read MoreYes, there are dumb questions
Teachers often tell students there is “no such thing as a dumb question,” but that’s not true. There are plenty of dumb questions, and we ask them as often as we answer them. Here are some dumb questions teachers ask: Do you understand? Students say yes, not knowing what they don’t know. Why didn’t you…
Read MoreIf Econ can change…
Economics is not an easy discipline, and it’s not a subject teenagers are itching to learn. Most college-educated adults look back on Econ 101 as a boring series of lectures, with too many graphs about “widgets” and “utils.” One of the best parts of teaching high school econ, though, is that so many professional economists…
Read MoreThey might not be paying attention
If you could secretly observe each of your students during class one day, what would you see them doing? I hope I would see my students all on task, listening intently to me (or their classmates), contributing to discussions, taking thorough notes, working collaboratively during group time, and getting the most they can out of…
Read MoreWhat I learned in 3rd grade
Have you ever wondered how your subject is taught to students at a lower grade level? When we think about these unseen colleagues in our elementary and middle schools, we usually don’t get past our aggravation with them. Middle school English teachers wonder: Why didn’t anyone teach these kids how to use punctuation? High school…
Read MoreThe “why” matters
We don’t talk enough about relevance. In one study of more than 300 teachers, motivation researcher Jere Brophy found that only 1.7 percent of them clearly explained the relevance of their lessons to students. The rest may have assumed that relevance doesn’t matter; after all, the students are required to learn this stuff. But it…
Read MoreMake them care
When I was an education reporter years ago, a school administrator in Kansas told me this: A major problem in education is that most teachers liked being students. You may wonder why that’s bad. Would we really want people who hated school to be put in charge? The problem is: Consciously or unconsciously, we teachers…
Read MoreFirst Day: The Job Interview
Teachers all over the country have already been back in the classroom for a few weeks, but here in Minnesota, the day after Labor Day is the official start of school. Welcome back! For too many high school students, that means a day of listening to six or seven different teachers review six or seven…
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MARTHA RUSH 