In the fiery reform movement that at best calls for greater accountability for teachers, and at worst demonizes and vilifies them, there are two analogies that help elucidate the profession for those who don’t really understand how to think about teachers. Kundera said, “Metaphors are not to be trifled with,” and part of what he meant is that the instant comprehension granted by the simplest metaphor is often powerful enough to do the impossible – to change a person’s opinion.

In this debate, there are two comparisons that those who have never taught must consider before attacking teachers. In the first, Joel Shatzky compares teachers to doctors. In the second, Dave Eggers compares teachers to soliders. These articles should be required reading for non-teachers who want to enter the debate.

These metaphors paint a vivid portrait of how we must reconsider our perception of the teaching profession. Both doctors and soldiers are considered the heroes and pillars of society, those doing their best against staggering odds, and when blame is placed, it is places on those commanding them or the bureaucracy that envelopes them. When they struggle, more support is provided, not tightened controls and more…

“Hey, get to class!”

“Only teachers can be in there!”

These are probably the most common statements that I get on a daily basis at Bucyrus Secondary School in Bucyrus, Ohio.  I’ll admit that I look young.  So young, I’m often mistaken for a high school student when traveling outside of my middle school wing.  I may look young and may be a newer teacher, but I have made great strides in my classroom in a short amount of time.

My name is Erika Spitler, and I’m a 7^th grade Language Arts teacher.  I teach English, English Honors, Reading, and Reading Honors.  My honors classes are “blocked,” so I call them my Language Arts Honors class, which I will be referring to many times in later blogs.  I attended Heidelberg University, and I’m currently working on my Masters of Classroom Technology through Bowling Green State University.

I absolutely love running with my German Sheppard, kick boxing, hiking, riding my motorcycle, scuba diving, and just about anything else that involves being outside. I am currently engaged and look forward to becoming Mrs. Orians this December. Here are a few adjectives my students typically use to…

Education is currently facing a lot of tough times.  The recession has not been kind to educators and their students, just like everyone else, but there are still a lot of things to be excited about, just go on Twitter and search the hashtag #edchat .  Some of those things are the tools that are now available that have never been here before.  However, it is also important to see these things as tools, not solutions to educational issues or problems, but tools that can improve the educational experience, for teachers and students alike.

Two of those tools are online learning management (OLM) and social networking. But, the real question is:

How can these tools be used to make students more successful and increase engagement?

In the 21st century, students will be required to make more and more creative choices, both personally and professionally.  In order to properly prepare students for that they need to be practicing in the classroom. Autonomy is the true secret to mastery.  Giving the students the responsibility to not only demonstrate their learning, but to decide the method in which it is demonstrated. Students need to feel as though they are connected to…

Teacher, husband, dog owner, educational technology supporter.

My name is Jeffrey Russell and I am an educator.

I hold a single subject credential in English in San Diego, California and teach 6th grade English and 6th grade drama. It is my goal to make students not only self directed, but self designed learners. It is my belief, and that of a growing number of educators, that if students are going to be successful in the 21st century they need to take control and make the creative choices that teachers have been making for them for years.

Ask Mr. Russell:

Have any questions for Mr Russell? Ask them here:

A couple of weeks ago, I went out for dinner and drinks with some friends. This wasn’t any ordinary gathering, though. When I went to our appointed meeting place, I knew who I was looking for, but I didn’t know what they looked like. I knew their names (I was pretty sure), but I definitely knew their avatars and their Twitter IDs. I was meeting this group of people for the first time, and once I finally figured out who they were and where they were sitting, it was like I had known them for a very long time. This was my first face-to-face meeting with some of the planners of EdCamp Omaha, and it was amazing to me that the depth of relationships could be there without ever having met before.

For those of you who may not know, EdCamp is a grass roots movement of passionate teachers taking responsibility for their own professional development. EdCamp follows the BarCamp model of participatory conferences. Attendees at an EdCamp are invited to prepare and attend sessions that are of interest to them and others. You can be sure that an EdCamp will provide a relevant, meaningful, and interesting professional development…

So much for global warming, especially in “Sunny” South Carolina. Some parts of the Palmetto State had the first White Christmas in most people’s recollection. A winter storm blanketed most of the state with snow and ice and created the world’s largest bumper car ride. Most schools in the state were forced to close for the better part of a week. Here in the southern part of the state we had to start school two hours later for a couple of days.  Some people still cannot get out of their driveway.

With the schools closed for a few days, some teacher friends in the affected areas express growing concern about what will happen to their students. Guess they think the kids can only have so much snow fun such sledding, building snowmen, and having snowball fights before getting bored. Actually, it is about keeping pace with lesson plans to prepare for the state mandated tests lurking over the horizon. On Facebook there was even discussion about using Moodle and other such methods so classes can keep going.

I have a simpler solution: try a learning social network such as Schoology.

This is an easy to…

Who should your resolutions benefit? Melanie shares with us her new look at making resolutions.

As I sit here during a snow day, I reflect back a week or two ago to a time when i was making resolutions.  There’s always the typical ones…health, money, and the like.  But is that all I have to think about nowadays?  Now I am a teacher…my students come first.  What are my resolutions for myself in relation to them?  What are my resolutions for them.  I stare out to the snow and wonder what’s the best for them…

I resolve to…

• Use my prep time wisely
• Be 100% ready to teach a lesson
• Smile at every student when they enter my classroom
• Tell them each how important they are to me at some point during the class
• Thank them for their hard work, even if they had an off day
• Remember that I may be the only person smiling at them that day, so throwing in a hug can’t hurt
• Pay attention to their questions or comments
• Answer their questions, whether i know the answer or i have to look it up
• Find something exciting to put in the lesson every day

…

Five years ago when I began teaching, I was given a gradebook in my new faculty folder. It was quite exciting as a new teacher – I was now holding the same spiral bound book with a brown cover that I had seen my teachers carry around with them like it was gold. It felt like a rite of passage, and just like those before me, I kept it close to me and carried it with pride. For me, its main function was to act as a storage place where I could record my grades, and then I would enter them into a program to calculate averages. First Excel at the beginning of my career, and then I eventually moved to GradeQuick. Like all teachers, I felt better having a back up copy of my grades – a hard copy in the gradebook, and a digital copy saved on my computer.

Additionally, when my school introduced a course management system, I posted grades there for students to see because I liked them to know where they stood (this replaced handling out printed copies every so often! )

While I was paranoid about the possibility of losing…