So there are more and more voices calling for teacher voice to be heard by the public and policy-makers. The latest is blogger K Michelle McGlothen in an ASCD post today. I’m heartened to hear more people urging this. What troubles me, though, is that just us advocates saying it should happen doesn’t necessarily make […]

Thank goodness I’m not alone trying to get teachers writing about their work for the larger community. Peter Smagorinsky, at the University of Georgia, provides another voice urging teachers to speak out. Visit the website “Teachers, Profs, Parents: Writers Who Care” to read his suggestions on getting your words out there. Peter describes how he […]

Yeah, I’ve been working away on planning for the TEDxWellsStreetED event in Chicago, scheduled for Sept. 28, so it’s been quiet here at Teachers Speak Up. But I saw yet another great Atlanta teacher portrayed by Peter Smagorinsky in the Atlanta Journal Constitution blog hosted by reporter Maureen Downey. So please read about Atlanta teacher […]

So the blogger Eduwonk has noticed that more teacher voices are making themselves heard — through advocacy groups like Educators 4 Excellence. You or I might not agree with all of the stands that they take, but these are teachers speaking up, 7500 in all, in Los Angeles, Minnesota, and New York. They form teams […]

Now that the long July 4th holiday is over, I’m back and up to no good. I just posted a writing prompt at National Writing Project iAnthology site, inviting teachers to write about a student who changed. I hope you’ll visit the site, but if you aren’t already a member you’ll need to sign up […]

Rachel Naomi Remen, is an outstanding doctor, medical reformer, and author. This doctor offers teachers a lesson about the importance of story. She gives us this lesson in a story in the DailyGood website. “In medicine,” she explains, “is often dismissed as ‘anecdotal evidence,’ a sort of second class data.” However, stories are the engines […]

I urge teachers to write about their teaching to build more support for their work, and get their stories out to the public in some way. But many ask, “What should I write about? How do I start?” Perhaps this is because so many of us have had our voices silenced, as one teacher describes […]

Dear Teachers Speak Up friends– I’ve just posted a third story from a teacher, on my Patch.com blog. Chicago teacher Robert Plonka describes the power of graphic novels vs classics in the classroom. We’re not out to denigrate the great literature of the past. But as Plonka explains so vividly, students also need to engage […]

I’ve started a new Facebook page called Teachers Speak Up on Testing. This one is designed specifically to gather teachers’ and others’ thoughts on the standardized testing that is being expanded so widely across the country. How is it working or not working in your school? What aspects of teaching and learning do the tests […]

It can be really hard to get positive education stories into the big newspapers. But I’ve started a blog to publish great teacher stories on the Patch news website – at least from the Chicago area. If you haven’t checked out Patch, it’s a system with separate news sites for various local neighborhoods across the […]