By Tom

A recent editorial by Seattle Times columnist Lynne K. Varner caught our attention. She argues for school reform, specifically in the Seattle School District.  I like what she says about teacher evaluation, I agree (to a point) with what she says about firing bad teachers, but I take exception to what she has to say about merit pay.

And as Meatloaf famously told us, "Two out of three ain't bad."

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By Kristin

I haven't seen "Mike" in class for four days and the online attendance system shows he's skipping most of his classes, so I phone his mother during my prep period to let her know.  Mike and his mom don't have internet, and she's not home when the automatic system calls to report an absence.  This is the third time I've called her in two weeks; she is not happy to hear from me, and I don't really blame her. 

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By Mark

Scientific American recently posted an article with mild criticism of education's current focus on prizing right answers over thinking and learning processes.

While we educators know that repetition and practice is one path to learning, this article is a good reminder of something else we ought to be intentionally fostering in our students: thinking.

Learning from "failure" is important, as is learning from wrong answers. This may seem like a silly question, but its an important one in our present climate where snapshot high stakes tests and summative data form critical assessments of both student and teacher success: What do you do as an educator or parent to take advantage of "wrong answers" in order to help children learn to think?

One of the decisions which has made me the educator I am today is my decision to always put my kids first. By my kids I mean MY kids: the three boys who call me Dad. I am finding that a balance between parenthood and teacherdom has made me more effective in both realms; when the two are out of balance, they both suffer. And of course, the two seem to overlap in many ways. I chose teaching not only because of my love of learning and the desire to help young people learn, but also because teaching as a profession offers me the kind of schedule that enables me to be invovled in my own kids’ lives.

Though I don’t believe I should be obligated to sacrifice my life and my family for my job, I do work hard to devote my entire professional life to impacting student learning whether in my own classroom or in the classrooms of my peers. In 2014-15, I’ll be in my third year in a hybrid role teaching high school English half time and working half time as a TOSA to facilitate professional development experiences for teachers around content literacy and effective practice, as well as to support new teacher induction. I teach in a suburbanish-rural community high school, and am very lucky to be in a community which consistently supports its schools. 

I was born, raised, and public-school educated in Oregon. I grew up in a tiny farm town situated in the blank part of the map of Oregon (out in the everbrown), then managed to be one of only a handful in my graduating class to go on to college. After an undergrad degree from Oregon State and an MAT from Willamette, I started teaching secondary English in 2002-03. I earned my National Board Certification in Adolescent-Young Adult English Langauge Arts in 2006. 

I am open minded and, though opinionated, I know I have a lot to learn. I am always willing to consider (and adopt) new perspectives as I learn more–and I do not consider the willingness to change one’s position on a matter in light of new information to be a sign of weakness. If I can teach that to my kids, and MY kids as well, I think I just might have done something right.

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by Brian

My wife owns her own business, a home decor shop, and I think I first heard the phrase "value-added" from her.  She talked about finding an article at an estate sale, adding something to it to increase its value, marking up the price, and making some money.  Value-added.

Now the phrase is being used with respect to evaluating teacher performance:  when you get a student in September she knows something.  Measure that and compare it to what she knows in June.  If she knows more in June, value has been added.  If she knows a lot more in June, there is real evidence that effective teaching has occurred.  If there is little improvement from September to June; well there's the rub, because there are a myriad of reasons to keep a student from advancing that are outside of a teacher's control.  So the largest teachers' unions (the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers) have been reluctant to endorse any kind of value-added component for teacher evaluation.  But doesn't this make more sense than measuring last year's class against this year's?  Or this year's against next year's?  The idea that each year the class we are testing should do better than the class we tested last year is so dumb it's not even wrong.

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By Rena

According to the August 2009 Draft of The State of Washington OSPI Committee for Gifted Education, the purpose of gifted programs is to provide all highly capable students, including those at-risk, with differentiated opportunities for learning. Programs shall be designed to identify, nurture and encourage students who posses extraordinary talents and abilities.

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By Tom

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