Teacher Leadership Today

Thinking about Collaboration - Collaboratively

At the invitation of the MetLife Foundation, several bloggers in the Teacher Leaders Network community are using the recently released 2009 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, "Collaborating for Student Success," as a springboard to develop posts about teacher collaboration.

Here are the Survey-related posts I've seen so far:

Renee Moore - Miscommunication?

Dan Brown - Collaboration among Educators is Not Optional

Larry Ferlazzo - The Saddest School-Related Statistic I've Heard in Awhile…

Heather Wolpert-Gawron - When the Aliens Attack Will Earth Unite?

Bill Ferriter - Learning from The Met: Collaboration Killers

Anthony Cody - Competition Can't Beat Collaboration

Cindi Rigsbee - Teacher Collaboration, Past and Present...

Ariel Sacks - Understanding Why So Few American Teachers Observe Each Other

The MetLife Survey is being released in three installments. These posts were all based on Part 1, "Effective Teaching & Leadership." Part 2, "Student Achievement," will appear in early March.

A Refreshing Look at International Competition and American Schools

In this 9-minute Edutopia video clip, teaching scholar Linda Darling Hammond sorts though all the international student assessment data and makes the case that education policymakers in the U.S. need to shift their focus to actions that support the teaching of higher order thinking and problem-solving, if we expect to compete in the global economy. And she does this without bashing teachers, principals or parents. That's refreshing indeed.

In her new book The Flat World and Education, Darling Hammond describes a system of teacher development and support that recognizes the central role of the highly trained teacher in success for all students. “This is very eye-opening,” wrote one teacher-commenter after viewing the video. “She is very clear and is not presenting some new trendy reform for improvement but excellent observations…relying on the foundation of data.”

Take this interactive whiteboard and . . .

TLN blogger Bill Ferriter, a.k.a. The Tempered Radical, stirred up a sort of "Emperor has no clothes" debate with his Teacher Magazine article of January 27, titled "Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards." When we last peeked in the room (it's rowdy in there), there were over 40 comments, many of them long, some of them passionate. Several folks with a natural urge to mediate suggested that IWBs, in wise hands, can deepen lessons and increase student engagement. But Ferriter's not having any of it, as you'll see in the comments he's sprinkled throughout the dialogue. What about you?