Teaching Lessons

Protecting School Safety

Letter to our Texas Legislature As our elected representatives, I urge you take a moment to consider taking action to protect life. Your previous legislation to protect the unborn child is now on the books. Why are you reluctant …

Let's get busy making a difference!

A Simple Proposal to Save Education   Everyone in the country seems to know how to solve our educational problems in K-12. Charters were going to save us, and then it was vouchers, and then standardized testing. For the past t…

Building Great Schools!

Three Little Things Three things drive the improvement of our schools, resources, incentives, and culture. There are other things that affect how schools operate but these three elements are the key factors that can d…

An Incomplete Perspective

I attended an education legislative summit a while back. The people that attended are concerned about education and want to make it better. The morning panels talked about goals and needs of schools They had not surveyed educators as to what teachers thought about the needs of schools in the future. I suggested that teacher input would be valuable to the discussion.

I approached the moderator to apologize for interrupting the panel. We had a good conversation but something she said stung, “Teachers never come to these meetings. We don’t hear from teachers.” My response was that teachers “are busy teaching students when these conferences are held.”

We spoke past each other. I felt a bit hurt that teachers were not included in the process and she seemed to mean that, if teachers cared about these issues, they would attend the conference.

There was a panel on teacher recruitment and retention. My expectation was that we would get down to discussing how to improve the quality of teachers. I was disappointed. The next speaker did a twenty minute slide show detailing some of the causes and problems with the teacher workforce.

There was silence. All day long we had heard how teachers are critical to improving schools. Now that we were talking about how to improve teaching, no one had anything to say. After the presentation was completed, the conference was closed and the information was not discussed or argued.

We spent the entire day talking about how to improve education. No panel discussions were held concerning how to create a more effective teaching profession for our students. We did not take a significant time, analyzing how to recruit top-notch people to teach our children.

Teachers need to get involved in these kinds of events. We need to show up in large numbers and offer our insights into how we can improve our schools. It was strange to attend a legislative summit on education and did have a meaningful conversation . The participants did not see teachers as critical decision makers in building more effective schools. That perception has to change.

Teachers need autonomy to create great schools!

Let Teachers Teach!   Years of experience teaching students appear to be useless. Parents, legislators, business people, and practically everyone in your town know more about teaching than you do as a teacher. …

Building Schools for All Students!

Fundamental Change in Education In a career that has spanned almost four decades, I have seen a large number of silver bullets that were going to “save” education. A special learning program, a computer at every desk, or a new s…

Testing will not improve Education!

Nothing New Here Schools, this year for the first time, are receiving a letter grade from A-F. TEA has promoted this change as a way to help parents evaluate schools more effectively. In the past, we had the expec…

Making Schools great for all our students.

Academic Community   It does not matter what kind of school in which you teach, culture matters. I recently read a book, entitled, “How The Other Half Learns” by Robert Pondiscio that provided an interesting ta…

Creating Great Schools

Teacher Leaders Teacher Leaders Billions of dollars a year are spent every year in our educational system to “supervise” teachers. Administrators are busy holding teachers accountable. They spend cou…

Key elements in building schools for our future.

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Creating great schools requires a clear mission!

Mission Confusion Creating great schools is difficult. In terms of time and energy, American Education is not primarily focused on improving academic achievement. Our system is distorted with multiple goals that d…

We need to build a constituency for learning in our schools.

Learning Constituency Learning Constituency Some people are interested in promoting an ideology in schools. Others are concerned with advancing a particular type of school, public, private, or charter. Large companies…

Teachers need the support of Parents to teach students effectively.

The Changing Parental Mindset Parents have a powerful effect on school performance. They set the table for the educators that will follow them as their child’s next teacher. Student values and beliefs are set in the fir…

Source of my Passion I am often asked at events or online why I am so passionate about the fate of our schools. People feel that I am pushing too hard or that I come across a bit dogmatic. Most of these comments are …

Outstanding schools cost but they are worth it.

Excellence Costs! I was discussing with a legislator the process of creating a realistic evaluation system for teachers in our schools. I laid out, at his request, how the new system would work. I closed with the …

Teaching Lessons has a key story for making America great again!

A Teacher’s Testimony President Trump and others have laid the blame for teaching American children to, “hate their country” at the feet of teachers. The claim that teachers spend “countless hours tea…

Check out these ideas that are the real reasons that students are failing to learn in our schools.

Credentials versus Knowledge The worldview of students is important in teaching students because their motivation is driven by that paradigm. A student’s perception concerning the purpose of school is essential in motiva…

Political Will is necessary to create great schools?

Do we really want great schools? We are not willing to do the hard things to create great schools.  It is clear by any measure that our schools are not doing well.  They were failing before the pandemic and that situatio…

Let's talk about the real solutions for our schools!

Three Little Things Three things drive the improvement of our schools, resources, incentives, and culture. There are other things that affect how schools operate but these three elements are the key factors that can d…

Check out my book, Teaching Lessons.

Excellence Costs! I was discussing with a legislator the process of creating a realistic evaluation system for teachers in our schools. I laid out, at his request, how the new system would work. I closed with the …

Here is my latest post from my book, Teaching Lessons.

A Teacher’s Testimony President Trump and others have laid the blame for teaching American children to, “hate their country” at the feet of teachers. The claim that teachers spend “countless hours tea…

Check out this sample from my book, Teaching Lessons.

Credentials versus Knowledge The worldview of students is important in teaching students because their motivation is driven by that paradigm. A student’s perception concerning the purpose of school is essential in motiva…

This is my latest blog in support of my book, Teaching Lessons.

Do we really want great schools? We are not willing to do the hard things to create great schools.  It is clear by any measure that our schools are not doing well.  They were failing before the pandemic and that situatio…

The book is available on Amazon and BN.COM Check it out!

The Ignorance Bubble As the pandemic fades over the next few months, key questions remain about where our schools go from here. It is clear that during the pandemic students lost a large amount of learning during the c…