After six years of teaching, Josh Waldron gave up. He was perfectly qualified, an excellent teacher,  smart and sincere, everything we want in the classroom. But he had not anticipated all the hoops he would have to jump through, all the ridiculous paperwork he would have to fill out, all the  trivial requirements he would have to attend to.  He finally had to make a practical decision on how to best serve his family and himself.

 At the time I first heard about Josh…

Identify the needs that are most important and find a private sector partner that understands the local workforce needs and has a vested interest in the success of the local community. The most successful partnerships are between organizations with similar goals. This allows both partners to contribute their expertise and resources to create measurable and enduring value. An ideal partner will provide the resources to begin a program and see it through to successful and sustainable…

Engagement Does Not Always Equate to Learning…

Kids Get Enough Tech Outside of School—Shouldn’t the Classroom Offer Them Something Different?

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

One thousand hours: That’s approximately the number of instructional hours …

Partnerships between the private sector and education have the ability to leverage a unique set of resources, talent, involvement, and know-how from each partner that can maximize collective efforts. In this two part series on school-business partnerships, bloggers Ann Myers and Jill Berkowicz asked the same set of questions of Dr. David Evans, NSTA Executive Director and Blair Blackwell, Manager of Education and Corporate Programs at Chevron Corporation. Today's answers come from Dr. David…

14 Virtual Tools for the Math Classroom

The Common Core and PARCC debacle continue to rage at conferences, in articles and blogs, at board meetings, in faculty meetings, PTA meetings, and in living rooms and legislative hallways. Actually we think this is a good thing. The attention of parents, board members, teachers, community members, politicians, and candidates on the quality of education is certainly larger than in recent memory. There are questions about the value of national standards, the appropriate nature of some…

In today’s modern world, almost all students have their own mobile devices to access the Internet. With the help of various tools that you can use online, life is much easier not just for students but also for educators. When you search the web, there is a wide array of platforms and tools that are specifically created to meet the needs of teachers and students. So, what…

I would submit to you that an elementary school's policy on recess tells you everything you need to know about that school's seriousness.

 Our Education Establishment for decades has flirted with a total lack of seriousness. How do we know this? Because they found many reasons to downplay or eliminate recess. That means you have millions of restless, unhappy kids who are unlikely to learn anything at all. And when these children squirm and complain, they are labeled ADHD and…

Stop Testing and Punishing Teachers

Mercedes Schneider is a high school English teacher and the author of "A Chronicle of Echoes: Who's Who in the Implosion of American Public Education."…