When I was a novice teacher, I knew I was on a path to becoming the World's Greatest Band Director. I gave my students challenging music (which they didn't play very well). I joked around in class (unlike their other, boring teachers). I wasn't stuck in a rut (see previous sentence). I was up on all the educational trends of the day: diversity and equality, the open classroom, unschooling. I was against tracking and for paying attention to the whole child.
If you had asked me to identify the best and worst teachers in my building, I would have done so. Although I had some humility around what I didn't know about being a successful music teacher, I also considered myself more up-to-date and engaging than many other teachers in my building. Even though I'd never visited their classrooms, saw them in action, or had a conversation with them about their guiding beliefs.
Had Teach Plus been around, in 1974, I would have sent in an application.
Given that today is a National Day of Action to support Seattle teachers refusing to give MAP tests (see updates here and here), it shouldn't have been surprising for Louisiana teachers to seethis article pop up in the Baton Rouge Advocate.
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