From Friedman’s Op-Ed “Teaching for America”, Arne Ducan is quoted:
“We have to systemically create the environment and the incentives where people want to come into the profession. Three countries that outperform us — Singapore, South Korea, Finland — don’t let anyone teach who doesn’t come from the top third of their graduating class. And in South Korea, they refer to their teachers as ‘nation builders.’ ”
From a Mikinsey & Co. study entitled “Closing the talent gap”:
…we review the experiences of the top-performing systems in the world—Singapore, Finland, and South Korea. These countries recruit, develop, and retain the leading academic talent as one of their central education strategies, and they have achieved extraordinary results. In the United States, by contrast, only 23 percent of new teachers come from the top third [of their graduating classes], and just 14 percent in high poverty schools, where the difficulty of attracting and retaining talented teachers is particularly acute.
Teachers are important influences in children’s lives. Duh. Interesting research has been conducted on the need to intelligently give praise, to tailor rewards such that they don’t interfere with intrinsic motivation to learn and take risks, and now that even the suggestion of gender bias can influence people’s performance on assessments.
Building a Better Teacher: Administrators and teachers alike would be crazy to ignore the implications of this research. For one thing, it should begin to inform teacher evaluation processes. For another, it should challenge the current shape of teacher training programs. And finally, it should excite teachers themselves who want to be better, who see gaps in their own methods, but don’t know how to fill them.
RateMyTeachers.com has 11 million ratings posted, and climbing. Many international schools are listed, and a growing number of teachers are being rated by students and parents (or colleagues.) Are you on the site? What impact will ratings sites like this have on teachers? What impact have anonymous ratings of schools and administrators (ISR) had on the int’l teaching scene?
Teachers are the most important professionals in the world. Shouldn’t they be paid fairly? Why are salaries based on antiquated notions of teacher effectiveness?
Check out the results of the Atlas Rubicon and Job Fair surveys, and discuss them in the forum. The number of respondents is growing (participate via the links in the sidebar). See what people are saying about your favorite online curriculum tool, and your favorite mid-winter hiring activities!
Writing well is as important as… good food? Well, it’s important, anyway. Teaching it effectively is difficult, but as William Zussner says, sometimes it boils down to clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. Get the lowdown on awesome books like “Telling Writing”, “Letters to a Young Poet” and “On Writing”.
Job season is in full swing, and hordes of teachers and administrators are heading to the job fairs. The things we love and hate about meeting potential bosses in their hotel rooms…
Lots of talk lately about the quality of a good teacher. But what
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