All Discussion Topics
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Are You Prepared for the Common Core Standards?
To date, all but four states have adopted the Common Core State Standards, designed to prepare students for success in college and the workforce. The common standards aim to increase rigor, critical thinking, and communication skills in America's classrooms.
Many believe the standards offer unprecedented opportunities for teachers to collaborate on refining instruction. But states and districts are struggling with the tension between imminent plans for Common Core implementation and awareness that teachers need professional development and resources to adjust instruction.
As a practicing teacher, what are your hopes for implementation of the Common Core Standards? How will your own planning and instruction change? What kinds of support and professional development will be necessary for transition to the standards to be successful? What should district and building administrators understand about that transition? How do you think the Common Core Standards will (or will not) help teachers better prepare students for the future?
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Career Path Dilemmas
Traditionally, the career path set for most teachers has been flat. If a teacher wanted to move ahead professionally, he or she generally had to leave the classroom.
In recent years, however, that paradigm has come into question, in part due to evolving teacher expectations and pressures on school systems to leverage "human capital." At various points around the country, new "hybrid" roles have been developed for master teachers, teacher-coaches, or teacher leaders. In these roles, teachers may spend part of the day in their own classroom and the remaining time observing other teachers, analyzing student data, leading professional learning communities, or performing other leadership tasks. Separate tracks for short-term teachers and "career" educators have also been considered.
As a practicing teacher, are you satisfied with the career-advancement opportunities currently available to you? In your view, how could teacher career paths and school-staffing arrangements be transformed to improve learning in the 21st century and to better accommodate the talents and ambitions of educators?
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How Has Technology Changed Your Teaching?
Many experts believe that advances in information technology have the potential to transform classroom teaching—for example, by providing alternatives to the standard lecture format and by giving students immediate access to a wealth of high-quality interactive resources and tools. But schools have been inconsistent in implementing instructional technology initiatives, evidence of effectiveness has been murky, and some teachers have been resistant to wholesale efforts to re-orient instruction around computers.
In what ways have you found digital technology transformative in your students' learning? What opportunities and challenges do high-tech advances present to schools and teachers today? What advice would you give policymakers or administrators on implementing classroom technology? What role should teachers have in developing classroom technology and apps? What do you think the classrooms of the future will look like?
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How Would You Change Teacher Prep?
In an Education Week Commentary last year, Linda Darling-Hammond wrote that teachers "reach the profession through a smorgasbord of training options, from excellent to awful." Regardless of your stance on the efficacy of alternative routes vs. traditional college-based programs vs. residencies, there's no denying that all teacher preparation programs have room for improvement.
Looking back, what do you wish you'd learned or experienced during your preservice preparation? In what areas do you think teachers tend to have deficits when they first take on classrooms of their own? What aspects of your teacher preparation have you found particularly helpful in your own teaching practice? In your opinion, how will teacher prep programs need to change over the next few decades to meet evolving student and school needs?
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Is Parent Involvement the Missing Link in School Reform?
According to a recent survey published by Scholastic and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, teachers rank increasing family involvement in education as the school-improvement effort with the greatest potential to boost student achievement. Meanwhile, this year's MetLife Survey of the American Teacher found a strong correlation between parent involvement levels in a school and teachers' job satisfaction.
Do these findings surprise you? Why do teachers place such a high value on family involvement? What can schools and teachers do to increase family and parent engagement in sustainable ways? What's worked for you? What does the engaged school community of the future look like to you?
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What Are the Best Ways to Measure Student Learning?
Today's school-reform initiatives often center on using measures of student learning to gauge school and teacher effectiveness. This focus on accountability has in some ways taken away from the more basic purpose of assessment: to figure out what students know and need to learn.
Many schools deal with this gap by instituting benchmark or interim tests, which often mimic the final standardized tests, or tracking specific skills through progress monitoring. Teachers also design their own formative assessments, including anything from informal class questioning to written tests to performance-based tasks.
How do you assess what your students know and are able to do? What tools or methods do you find most helpful in measuring student learning? Are you in favor of school-wide benchmark testing? How can schools and districts support teachers' efforts to reliably gauge student learning? How must assessments evolve in order to measure the knowledge and skills needed for 21st-century success?
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What Does Effective Professional Learning Mean to Today’s Teachers?
Professional development is a phrase that's used within many careers, but it seems to hold special weight for the teaching community. PD can take many different forms, from expert-led workshops to professional learning communities to one-on-one instructional coaching to participation in Twitter chats.
When tailored to meet individual teachers' needs, PD can have an overwhelmingly positive impact on teacher satisfaction, student achievement, and school culture. However, when ill-conceived or delivered poorly, professional development can seem like nothing more than a frustrating requirement, and a waste of precious time.
How should districts, schools, and/or teachers themselves determine what professional learning is necessary? What is the best professional development you've experienced, and why? How has technology changed professional learning? What's your vision for professional learning—and how could schools change to achieve it?
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What Should Teacher Evaluations Look Like?
Long governed largely by inertia and school convention, teacher evaluation has recently become a focal point of education reform. Many states, under prodding from the federal Race to the Top program, have begun to implement new, comprehensive evaluation systems that incorporate student test-score data and more rigorous observation protocols. School systems are also working to tie evaluation results more closely to teachers' tenure status and professional advancement.
However, early models of the revamped evaluation systems (in Tennessee and New York, for example) have come under criticism for being haphazardly implemented, inconsistent, and process-heavy. Many teaching groups and advocates have also questioned the validity of relying heavily on standardized test scores to judge teachers' skills and capabilities. A related source of concern is how the new models can be applied equitably with respect to teachers in nontested subjects and grades.
As a classroom teacher, how do you think teachers' performance should be evaluated? How can evaluations best be used to improve teaching and learning without creating undue complexity? What role should student test scores and other performance data play? What will the best teacher evaluation systems look like 10 years from now?
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About the Contributors
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Jessica Shyu
Jessica Shyu is Vice President of Regional Affairs and Training & Support at Teach For China, a part of the Teach For All global network. In this r...
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Liana Heitin
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Patrick Ledesma
Patrick Ledesma is a middle school technology specialist and special education department chair with Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. A N...
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Larry Ferlazzo
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Lori Nazareno
Lori is in her 24th year of teaching and is a dually certified National Board Certified Teacher in Science. She is currently the co-lead teacher at...
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Renee Moore
Renee has taught English and journalism for 20 years in the Mississippi Delta region at both high school and community college levels. She is Natio...
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Carrie Kamm
Carrie Kamm is a mentor-resident coach with the Academy for Urban School Leadership's Chicago Teacher Residency Program. She is also a co-author o...
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Dave Orphal
Dave Orphal is a teacher and small learning communities coordinator at Skyline High School in Oakland, Calif. In his free time, he serves as a mem...
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Noah Zeichner
As a teacherpreneur, Noah divides his time evenly between teaching social studies at Chief Sealth International High School (Seattle, WA) and suppo...
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Noah Patel
Noah Patel is a 7th-year middle school math teacher in the Boston Public School District. He received his bachelor of arts and master of education ...
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Jessica Hahn
Jessica Hahn has taught elementary grade children for six years in Phoenix and New York City. She has a master’s degree in literacy from Teachers C...
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Rebecca Schmidt
Rebecca Schmidt is in her fifth year of teaching in D.C. Public Schools. She is team leader of the 3rd grade at Bancroft Elementary, and also runs ...
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Bill Farmer
Bill Farmer has been teaching biology and chemistry for nine years at Evanston Township High School in Evanston, Ill. He is currently serving his t...
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Ryan Kinser
Ryan Kinser is a 6th grade English teacher at Walker Middle Magnet School for International Studies in Tampa. He is a member of the Hillsborough Co...
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Dan Brown
Dan Brown teaches high school English in Washington, D.C. He is the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Ju...
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Sarah Henchey
Sarah Henchey is a 6th grade language arts teacher in Orange County, NC. This year she is collaborating on two initiatives with the Center for Teac...
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Marsha Ratzel
Marsha Ratzel is a National Board-certified teacher in the Blue Valley School District in Kansas, where she teaches middle school math and science....
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Jessica Keigan
As a teacherpreneur, Jessica divides her time evenly between teaching English at Horizon High School in Denver and supporting results-oriented effo...
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Michael Moran
Michael Moran is a former sixth grade teacher currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Washington's Evans S...
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Ryan Niman
Ryan Niman teaches English and Social Studies in the Edmonds School District north of Seattle, Washington. Ryan is a member of the Washington New M...
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Megan Allen
Megan Allen is a National Board Certified Teacher who is the 2010 Florida Teacher of the Year and a finalist for 2010 National Teacher of the Year....
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Ilana Garon
Ilana Garon has been teaching high school English (and math, in emergency situations) in the Bronx since she graduated from Barnard College in 2003...
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Anna Martin
Anna L. Martin is the resource teacher at Lee Mathson Middle School, a public school in an urban high-needs district in San Jose, Calif. A National...
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Kate Mulcahy
Kate Mulcahy, a Boettcher Teachers Program graduate, has taught for five years as an English & English Language Learner teacher at Northglenn High ...
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Ariel Sacks
Ariel Sacks teaches 8th grade English at a middle school in Brooklyn, N.Y. An alumna of Bank Street College of Education, she is a co-author of TEA...
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Linda Yaron
As an English teacher in an inner-city high school in Los Angeles, Linda Yaron has spent the last nine years working to increase opportunities for ...
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Bill Ferriter
Bill Ferriter (@plugusin on Twitter) carries about a dozen different titles around with him each day. He's a member of the Teacher Leaders Network,...
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Robert Pronovost
Robert Pronovost is a 2nd grade teacher and MOUSE Squad student tech advisor at Belle Haven Elementary in Menlo Park, CA. Robert has been a teacher...
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Nancy S. Gardner
A renewed National Board Certified Teacher, Nancy Gardner teaches senior English at Mooresville High School in Mooresville, N.C. She is also chair ...
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Karl Ochsner
Karl Ochsner is a 7th and 8th grade science teacher at Blessed Pope John XXIII Catholic School in Scottsdale, Arizona, and teaches classes on K-12 ...
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Joel Malley
Joel Malley teaches AP literature, along with mass media and film production, at Cheektowaga Central High School outside Buffalo, NY. He is an acti...
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Jennie Magiera
Jennie Magiera is a 4th and 5th grade math teacher and a technology and mathematics curriculum coach in Chicago Public Schools. A Teacher Leaders N...
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Lauren Hill
Lauren Hill teaches AP Language and Composition and 9th grade English at Western Hills High School in Frankfort, Kentucky. A National Board Certif...
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Todd Rackowitz
Todd Rackowitz has been teaching math for 19 years in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, and for the past 11 years at Independence High Schoo...
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Alison Crowley
Ali Crowley teaches Algebra 2 and AP Calculus at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kent. A National Board-certified teacher with 11 years of expe...
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David Ruenzel
David Ruenzel is an English teacher at the Athenian School in Danville, Calif. From 1992-2001 he was a senior writer at Teacher Magazine and contri...
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Bill Ivey
Bill Ivey teaches 7th grade Humanities, French, and music at Stoneleigh-Burnham School in Western Massachusetts. He is a member of the Teacher Lead...
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Cheryl Suliteanu
Cheryl Suliteanu has taught elementary school students in Oceanside, Calif. for 15 years. She is a National Board-certified teacher with certificat...
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José Vilson
José Vilson is a math teacher, coach, and data analyst for a middle school in the Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood of New York. A poet, web d...
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Jennifer Barnett
Jennifer Barnett is an English and social studies teacher and technology specialist in Talladega County, Ala. She is a co-author of Teaching 2030: ...
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Delonna Halliday
Delonna Halliday is a 4th Grade teacher at Grant Center for the Expressive Arts in Tacoma, Wash. She has a background in TV/movie production, spent...
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Meenoo Rami
Meenoo Rami, a National Board-certified teacher, teaches her students English at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphiia. She also runs a weekl...
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Sarah Brown Wessling
Sarah Brown Wessling is a high school English teacher at Johnston High School in Johnston, Iowa. She is also serving as TCHr Laureate for the Teac...
Discussion Topics
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Are You Prepared for the Common Core Standards? (13)
To date, all but four states have adopted the Common Core State Standards, designed to prepare students for success in college and the workforce. T...
See Posts >
-
Career Path Dilemmas (13)
Traditionally, the career path set for most teachers has been flat. If a teacher wanted to move ahead professionally, he or she generally had to le...
See Posts >
-
How Has Technology Changed Your Teaching? (15)
Many experts believe that advances in information technology have the potential to transform classroom teaching—for example, by providing alterna...
See Posts >
-
How Would You Change Teacher Prep? (15)
In an Education Week Commentary last year, Linda Darling-Hammond wrote that teachers "reach the profession through a smorgasbord of training opti...
See Posts >
-
Is Parent Involvement the Missing Link in School Reform? (13)
According to a recent survey published by Scholastic and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, teachers rank increasing family involvement in educ...
See Posts >
-
What Are the Best Ways to Measure Student Learning? (14)
Today's school-reform initiatives often center on using measures of student learning to gauge school and teacher effectiveness. This focus on accou...
See Posts >
-
What Does Effective Professional Learning Mean to Today’s Teachers? (14)
Professional development is a phrase that's used within many careers, but it seems to hold special weight for the teaching community. PD can take...
See Posts >
-
What Should Teacher Evaluations Look Like? (14)
Long governed largely by inertia and school convention, teacher evaluation has recently become a focal point of education reform. Many states, unde...
See Posts >
Project Partner
MORE TO SAY?
Join @teachingquality for a live twitter chat about professional learning, Thursday, 5/17/12, 8:30-9:30 p.m. ET, Chat hashtag: #teaching2030
TEACHING 2030 advances conversations about the future of teaching and learning. Explore the big ideas of our recent book (coauthored by 12 teachers and Barnett Berry, CTQ's CEO) by watching this four-minute animated video.
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