Diane Ravitch & Anthony Cody are collecting teachers’ president letters TODAY to send to Barack Obama. You can read several of them on Ravitch’s and Cody’s blogs – along with a pro-forma answer from Obama. Most take strong advocacy positions, mostly against Race to the Top and standardized testing. Here at Teachers Speak Up we’ve […]

NCTE’s National Day on Writing is Saturday, Oct. 20th. Our Illinois Writing Project is actually celebrating it on Wed. Oct. 17th, knowing that teachers need their Saturday to shop, do laundry, and get their life together after another intense week of supporting kids’ learning. This day was actually declared by the U.S. Senate, back when […]

The Hope Street Group has invited applications for $3,500 teacher voice fellowships to bring teachers’ input to the table on national and state education issues. We’ve linked to this group on our “Teacher Voice Groups and Collections” page because it is especially focused on helping teachers actively participate in policy decisions. Be aware that the […]

Can school principals and teacher voice live happily together? Read one smart administrator’s five reasons why teachers (and everyone in education) should blog regularly. Many thanks to Marilyn Hollman for calling my attention to this post. OK, so we know that not every principal is this forward looking, but notice how many principals are contributors […]

Diane Ravitch is launching a teacher letter writing campaign to bring our voices to the Obama administration. Don’t be left out! Write yours now. Here are Diane’s instructions.

Tune into high school computer science teacher Alan Kostrick’s explanation of an interdisciplinary high school teacher team, in a webinar sponsored by the Alliance for Excellence in Education. Here’s a teacher describing in a simple and professional way how his team works and learns from one another to achieve innovative HS education. Teachers in communities […]

The Atlantic website article on the rather narrow “writing revolution” at New Dorp High School inspired many thoughtful comments, most pointing out that there’s far more to good writing and teaching it (even in the new Common Core Standards) than just composing academic-style argument. But almost all the responses have been from university profs and […]

Read this collection of stories and strategies from teachers who ARE speaking up to inform the public about their work. One of the smartest ideas I haven’t seen before: teacher David Cohen’s students leading public book discussions. Very cool. But I’m a little jealous — waiting for some smart teachers to share such stories on […]

Six teaching ambassador fellows — chosen for the year by the US DOE — traveled around the country, talking with teachers in 80 separate meetings. Dan Brown, one of the six, blogged with the Huffington Post to briefly share their concerns. Read it, laugh, weep, and thank him for getting some teacher voices out there. […]

Don’t know how I missed this. While Freedom Writers Foundation is a fascinating organization, what caught my eye was founder Erin Gruwell’s story of her own classroom. And while it might be easy for people to regard her as a special case, there are certainly thousands, tens of thousands of stories like hers, teachers inciting […]