Tag Archives: dilemmas of teaching
Cartoons: Parent-Teacher Conferences
Anyone who has taught for more than a year in the U.S. remembers those formal occasions when the school invites parents to confer with their children’s teachers during an evening or afternoon. In Canada and Australia, they are called “parent-teach … Continue reading
Filed under dilemmas of teaching
A New Teacher’s Dilemma*
In her first year of teaching English in a middle school where 90 percent of the students were minority, Elsie had planned a lesson that had students rotating through five stations answering different reading comprehension questions at each one. She … Continue reading
Filed under dilemmas of teaching, how teachers teach
The Puzzle of Student Responsibility for Learning*
Physicians, psychotherapists, social workers, and professors–the helping professions–are responsible for the expertise they share with their patients, clients, and college students. But expertise is insufficient. Patients, clients, and college students are responsible for getting better and learning. That is the two-way … Continue reading
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Some Thoughts on Teaching and Music (Kenneth Bernstein)
From his profile as a blogger at Daily Kos : “Kenneth J. Bernstein is now proudly 65 years young, teacher in DC metro area, Quaker liberal – and still passionate about learning with his students.” Some thoughts on teaching which … Continue reading
Filed under dilemmas of teaching, how teachers teach
Teachers as Classroom Policymakers: The Case of the Kindergarten
Watching a policy travel from the White House, a state capitol, or a big city school board to a kindergarten teacher in her classroom has been compared (see my post September 9, 2009) to metal links in a chain, the … Continue reading
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Data-Driven Instructional Practice in Action (Part 2)
Studying the daily practices of those teachers whose students register high standardized test scores in reading and math has begun to alter preparing, selecting, and evaluating teachers. Journalists (here and here) and researchers ( Allington) have reported (and shown on … Continue reading
Filed under dilemmas of teaching, how teachers teach
Data-Driven Instruction and the Practice of Teaching
I like numbers. Numbers are facts: blood pressure reading is 145/90. Numbers are objective, free of emotion. The bike odometer tells me that I traveled 17 miles. Objective and factual as numbers may be, still we inject meaning into them. … Continue reading
Filed under dilemmas of teaching, how teachers teach
The Promise of Implementing Project-Based Learning (Steven Davis)
Steven Davis is in his tenth year teaching English to high school sophomores and seniors in a large northern California urban school district I have reached a turning point where I can implement the day-to-day standards-based curriculum for most of … Continue reading
Filed under dilemmas of teaching, how teachers teach
Respect for Teaching: One Person’s Tale
Amid current disrespect for teaching I recall an incident that occurred to me 40 years ago when I worked in the Washington, D.C. schools. Sure, four decades ago is ancient history so readers will have to judge whether the attitudes … Continue reading
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“The Flight of a Butterfly” or “The Flight of a Bullet”: The Impossible Dream of Transforming Teaching into a Science
According to many policymakers and researchers, teaching should be more like the “flight of a bullet” rather than the “flight of a butterfly.”* Using the latest social science findings, they are determined to re-engineer teaching to make it more efficient, … Continue reading
Filed under dilemmas of teaching, how teachers teach
