Monthly Archives: August 2012

Reality Check

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Education, Elementary, Teacher Leadership

Bursting BubbleWhat do you say when someone tells you they want to be a teacher?

You’ve probably had this conversation: some starry-eyed young college graduate starts to tell you about how he’s going to become a teacher so he can inspire his students and help the parents and do all these great projects and…

I remember when I was that young teacher how deflating it was to hear veteran teachers grumble about how things have changed and all the joy has been taken out of teaching. As a novice teacher, I vowed to never get all bitter and grumbly.

And now?

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Who Are The Real Reformers?

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DamBy Tom

Last winter, Nick Hanauer famously called Washington State “an education reform backwater.” It’s a curious insult. Strictly speaking, a backwater is a stretch of river that moves slowly, due to a dam or other obstruction. It’s water that’s “backed up.” Washington’s geography, of course, is dominated by the Columbia River, which winds its way slowly from the Canadian border to the Pacific, through 11 hydroelectric dams, which render it, for all intents and purposes, a 745-mile “backwater,” a label that belies the fact that it provides power and irrigation for most of the northwest.

But that’s not what Hanauer had in mind with his insult. He was complaining that education reform tends to move slowly here in Washington State, due mostly to the obstruction of the Washington Education Association. If only he could have seen what I saw this summer.

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