Teacher in a Strange Land
From January 2010 to September 2018, Nancy Flanagan, an education writer and consultant focusing on teacher leadership, wrote about the inconsistencies and inspirations, the incomprehensible, immoral and imaginative, in American education. She spent 30 years in a K-12 music classroom in Hartland, Mich., and was named Michigan Teacher of the Year in 1993. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: teacher leaders.
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Sing On, Children! How the Arts Help Social Movements Take Flight
An urgent call to teach our children this: Making and appreciating art that reflects our collective joys and sorrows is part of what it means to be human. Art helps human movements and causes take flight.
Teaching
Opinion
Ten Things We Shouldn't Expect Public Schools to Do
I'm hardly the first person to say this, but we expect way too much from our schools, which are only as good as the steadfast people who show up to work in them. Schools can't re-order the mess we've made of our democracy or work individual miracles on every undernourished child.
Education
Opinion
Will We Follow the Stoneman Douglas Students?
Why do adults appoint themselves arbitrators, limiting and defining the voice and credibility of teens and young adults?
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Every Day We Fail to Take Action, We Choose This Fate
We live in a country that turns its back on our very future: our public schools, the precious children who attend them, and the teachers who sacrifice their energy, spirit and personal resources to keep these children safe and growing.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
What Is a 'Quality' Curriculum?
Using a range of materials, and, more important, creating hands-on experiences and interactions with big ideas within a discipline, helps students construct and apply knowledge.
Education
Opinion
The Amazing Power of a Plain Old Arts Education
What's the purpose of an arts education? Is it soaking up specific knowledge and polishing technical skills? Or are there other, more subtle benefits to studying the arts?
School & District Management
Opinion
Should Teachers Invite Policymakers Into Their Classrooms?
In my teaching career, I have had more than the usual number of opportunities to have outsiders (including media, education organizations, researchers and, yes, legislators) visit my classroom. And I can testify that most visitors don't come to learn something new from an hour or two walking in the teacher's shoes. They come with an agenda.
Special Education
Opinion
Redefining Giftedness
What tangible benefits have there been, for all of us, in categorizing children and offering enrichment to those with high potential?
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Teacher in a Strange Land: The Best and Worst of 2017
Angst is not what teachers, parents and school leaders are looking for in their op-ed/blog reading. Inspiration, perhaps—or confirmation that their observations and ideas are shared. Thoughts about coping, adapting, revising—it's what teachers do, and have always done. But this has been an extraordinary year. The entire realm of education policy is up for grabs (and grabs is the correct word).
School & District Management
Opinion
The Best Books I Read in 2017
Why are there no mushrooms, mold or mice where wealthy white children go to school? Freedom demands a collective effort to engage the young people of Detroit in building a new world, for themselves and us, in which we do not permit human beings to be poisoned in the first place.
Student Well-Being
Opinion
Why We Need Hygge Classrooms in America
As a nation, we have linked simple human well-being to wealth, and sealed it with the tamper-proof cap of low opportunity.
Student Well-Being
Opinion
Are Schools Responsible for Teaching Boys to Respect Girls?
There isn't a teacher in America who has been able to avoid what happens on CNN or Fox News--children bring their families' values into the classroom. And the easiest path for educators is to reproduce the cultural norms of the communities where they teach. But maybe these past few days represent a sea change in national thinking about gender inequality.
School & District Management
Opinion
Talking About Public Education: The Good, the Deceptive, and the Destructive
We have the human capital, the resources and the technical knowledge to transform public education over a generation. What we lack is the public will to do so—for children other than our own, at least.
Education
Opinion
When Teachers Use Shame as a Disciplinary Tool
Teacher judgment about what to do and say when a child is out of line is critical expertise. Such judgment is not easily or quickly learned. Nevertheless, a skillful, sensitive teacher beats a 100-page handbook full of escalating discipline guidelines and procedures any day.