Teacher Leadership Today

Getting the Teacher-Student Relationship Right

Educational Leadership has published its web-only Summer Edition, which not only has great content but is completely free to the public. TLN Forum member Cindi Rigsbee has a featured article, "The Relationship Balance," which was highlighted in the ASCD Inservice blog this week. Cindi addresses the question: "So what is the relationship balance in a classroom? Where is that exact point at which students feel cared for . . . but know that they must respect the teacher and they are expected to learn?" It's a perspective many teachers will appreciate and may be especially helpful to novice educators who will soon find themselves trying to answer these very questions. Cindi, a finalist for national teacher of the year in 2009, brings her 20-some years of classroom experience — and her recent work mentoring new teachers — to the answers.

Also in the EL summer issue: Teacher leaders will likely find the article by retired teacher and teacher educator Susan Allred irresistable. It enumerates the qualities of "The Best Teachers I Have Known."

Another article by Jay McTighe and Allison Zmuda makes the case for regional online troubleshooting guides for teachers that "codify predictable instructional rough spots and instantly offer tried-and-true solutions that are based on research and best practice." Intriguing.

Check out "Teaching Now"

The new staff-written blog at Teacher Magazine -- Teaching Now -- is a fun and informative read, put together by folks who spend most of their work time keeping up with teacher issues and bring a pro teacher leadership slant to their blogging. If you're interested in teaching quality, teacher voices and the progress of the teaching profession, it's a no-brainer subscribe (which you can did via a blog reader or by email). You can follow the daily posts on Twitter, too!

Larry Ferlazzo's ELL Insights

It’s high time the New York Times Learning Network made some to-do over TLN member and teaching resource impresario Larry Ferlazzo, who was invited this week to guest-post at the NYT Learning Network blog. The introduction highlights Larry’s interesting background as a community organizer before becoming a high school English/ELL teacher six years ago in middle age.

In his guest column, Larry takes his five-step Organizing Cycle for engaging English Language Learners and gives them a Times spin, connecting each step to resources available in the Learning Network. Very cool. Congrats, Larry – this is the big show. Here's hoping your appearance encourages more folks to learn about your book and discover its empowering approach to teaching immigrant students.

Accomplished California Teachers Speak Out about Professional Evaluation

“Without a common understanding of what constitutes teaching quality and how teachers should be evaluated, any further conversation about improving teaching will be inconsequential,” say the authors of what we believe may be a first-of-its-kind report on state-level teaching policy -- written by a virtual community of expert California teachers who have used the Web and social networking tools to organize an independent statewide advocacy organization.

A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: An Evaluation System that Works for California is the first in a promised series of policy papers written by members of Accomplished California Teachers (ACT), a group organized in 2008 with funding from the Stuart and Hewlitt Foundations and support from the Stanford U. School of Education.

The report calls on state decision makers to redesign California’s approach to teacher evaluation by incorporating the best elements already in place into a new system framed around the best research on  good teaching. Co-author David B. Cohen, an English teacher and academic advisor at Palo Alto High School, summarized the report's key principles in a recent post at the organization's blog InterACT.

They include:

1. Teacher evaluation should be based on professional standards.
2. Teacher evaluation should include performance assessments to guide a path of professional learning throughout a teacher’s career.
3. The design of a new evaluation system should build on successful, innovative practices in current use.
4. Evaluations should consider teacher practice and performance, as well as an array of student outcomes for teams of teachers as well as individual teachers.
5. Evaluation should be frequent and conducted by expert evaluators, including teachers who have demonstrated expertise in working with their peers.
6. Evaluation leading to permanent status (“tenure”) must be more intensive and must include more extensive evidence of quality teaching.
7. Evaluation should be accompanied by useful feedback, connected to professional development opportunities, and reviewed by evaluation teams or an oversight body to ensure fairness, consistency, and reliability.

We predict that as teacher leaders continue to use social media tools to organize themselves in state-level virtual communities, more policymakers will have the opportunity to benefit from the insights of accomplished teachers on the front lines of school reform.

New Book Reviews from Teacher Leaders

 Be sure to check out our companion blog, TLN Teacher Voices, for recent views of books that may be of interest to teacher leaders.

Massachusetts special ed teacher Laurie Wasserman finds the latest Chicken Soup for the Soul book for educators, titled Teacher Tales: 101 Inspirational Stories from Great Teachers and Appreciative Students, to be a much-needed restorative for her teacher spirit. The short-essay collection, which includes (among others) contributions from all of the 2009 state teachers of the year, "is the perfect book to pack in your book bag to read at school with lunch during a stressful day, savor with a cup of tea or coffee on a Sunday morning, or read on a plane."

New York teacher Elizabeth Stein reviews a recent book by San Francisco education prof Stanley Pogrow, Teaching Content Outrageously: How to Captivate All Students and Accelerate Learning. While Stein thought the book could have been better, she agrees with Pogrow that teachers need to shake up their instruction in strategic ways that help students "connect to the content so that they can make sense of it, and, ultimately, transfer it."

You'll also enjoy the review by Georgia high school teacher Gail Tillery of Finding Mrs. Warnecke: The Difference Teachers Make. It's the account by Cindi Rigsbee, a recent finalist for national teacher of the year, of her search for a primary school teacher who made a huge difference in her young life -- and their ultimate reunion on ABC's Good Morning America. It's also a book, Tillery says, "which sends a message of the positive power which every teacher can tap into—if only we can learn to find it."

Teacher Letters to Obama

It's something of a Facebook phenomenon in education circles. Teacher Letters to Obama began in late 2009 as a grassroots effort to offer a counter-narrative about school reform from U.S. teachers who believe they are equally committed to the success of all students but question whether federal policy will produce the results promised to the American public.

The group has grown in size and diversity over the past six months. Its latest membership bump, which pushed the number of participants over 2000, came in late May after a dozen participants convinced U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to join them in a 30-minute conference call to discuss USDOE's proposed Blueprint for the reauthorization of ESEA, the Elementary & Secondary Education Act, better known over the last decade as "No Child Left Behind."

TLO's latest initiative is a summer series of education policy "teach-ins" for educators and anyone else interested in discussing school improvement strategies with an independent community of teachers. The first live web conference is scheduled for June 14, with guests Monty Neill, a long-time critic of standardized testing; former Nebraska state superintendent Doug Christensen, who led the development of statewide alternative assessments during his tenure; and education scholar Yong Zhao, a professor at Michigan State University who questions whether over-standardization of education threatens American creativity and freedom of thought. Based on reports about who's signing up for the live webinar, it promises to be a lively exchange among an audience with diverse points of view.