Pathways to Hope

From the Marshall Memo #436

“Many young people dream the American dream, believe it can be achieved, and haven’t a clue how to make it a reality,” says Shane Lopez, who runs the Gallup Student Poll, in this Kappan article. “Students generally are confident. They think ‘I can do anything!’… But, where there is a will, there is not always a way. Students often lack strategies to…

Making Schools Work

By DAVID L. KIRP

NY Times

Published: May 19, 2012 

With Teacher Evaluation Rubrics, Less Is More, Says Mike Schmoker

From the Marshall Memo #436

In this punchy Kappan article, writer/consultant Mike Schmoker criticizes some widely used teacher-evaluation rubrics/frameworks as unwieldy, time-consuming, and anxiety-producing. “No one has asked the obvious questions,” he says: “Does this innovation have a track record? Could it have unintended…

Phil D'Elia.

Phil successful guessed that the school pictured below was the famous English private school Eton.

Phil also knew that the famous fictional villain who was said to graduate from Eton was Captain Hook!

Congratulations…

The Danger of Mindlessness

For the “Connected Educator” Twitter can be a mainstay for information and sources. In order to build up a steady flow of information and sources, one need only to establish a list of people to follow on Twitter who put out the tweets, or messages, that contain links, URL’s, to that information or source. In Twitter terms these people are called “Follows”. They are the people one follows. An educator using Twitter for professional reasons would follow educators, since they put out education…

Getting teacher evaluation right

Suzanne Parker Hall who correctly determined the school below was Whittier Union High School in Whittier, CA.  It was used as the school (Hill Valley HS) in Back to the Future.  By the way, this was also Richard Nixon's high school.

If You Teach or Write 5-Paragraph Essays--Stop It!

Part I: Introduction

For  decades, too many high-school teachers have been instilling persuasive writing skills by teaching students the five-paragraph…

McGill: Rating won’t help teachers or kids

Published: May 11, 2012 12:40 PM

By MICHAEL MCGILL

Photo credit: Illustration by Christopher Serra |

The State Education Department has mandated a new evaluation scheme for New York‘s teachers. In what Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo describes as a…

Student surveys for children as young as 5 years old may help rate teachers

By Sarah Butrymowicz, Published: May 13

Kindergartners in Georgia — many of whom don’t yet read — could soon play an important role in deciding which teachers get raises or get fired. Under a new pilot program, 5-year-olds will be guided through a survey that includes such statements as “My teacher knows a lot about what he or she teaches” and “My…

The following is drawn from elements presented at a Regional Literacy Conference for educators.  I started by reading The Three Questions by Jon J. Muth.  Based on the work of Leo Tolstoy, Muth’s brilliant picture book tells the story of a young boy trying to be the best person he can be.  In it the boy asks:

When is the best time to do things?

Who is the most important one?

What is the right thing…