Why Teachers Should Be Paid Like Baseball Players

The California Teachers Association hasn’t spent an entire decade conspiring with the State Superintendent to mask its members’ illicit use of performance-enhancing drugs. Barring that, I see little difference between this association and that which represents the players in Major League Baseball.

Open Letter to Legislators and Government Leaders in Education

To Whom It May Concern:

Naturally, the state of education rests somewhat precariously upon the state of the economy; despite this, I view our current dilemma as a massive opportunity to finally fix what is broken in our instructional and assessment practice. Decisions regarding staff and program cuts test the true ethical priorities of our schools, districts, and our state and national leaders, too. No Child Left Behind certainly established a clear priority of rigorous education accessible to all students across all race, gender, cultural, social, and economic lines. This essential equity lies at the heart of the law’s mission; however, the proficiency targets laid out for all the various student subgroups run contrary to this cornerstone of fairness.

Values and Culture

If your family dog got run over by a car, would you cook it and serve it for dinner?

Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, posed this and other scenarios (all viscerally unpleasant, but not at all harmful) to subjects from a variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Upon studying the reactions, Haidt concluded that a traditional definition of morality didn’t adequately explain the variety of responses.

Building the Village

“I'm not talking about a dating site, I'm talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online.” The Mark Zuckerberg character in The Social Network uses this line to describe his burgeoning idea that would ultimately become Facebook. It’s an apt and fascinating metaphor for the ubiquitous site.

Passport

In twelve years of high school teaching, I have never taken any of my classes on a field trip.

I’ve studied Of Mice and Men with scores of freshmen yet never shepherded them to the Steinbeck Center. Eleven different Public Speaking classes; zero public speeches attended. My World Literature pupils, who break down the Renaissance at length and culminate their work in a historical research paper, never set foot in a museum. Is there a sordid tale of grand plans squashed by a savage administrator with a callous disdain for anything that put her legal arse at risk? Sadly, no. I’ve never even considered a field trip as a component of any curricular unit. While exploring how to build a school’s instructional program and the culture to support it, I’m compelled to reflect on my own instructional patterns.

Why haven’t I taken any of my students anywhere in a dozen years?