There’s more than one way to inform parents and community about the quality and value of the work teachers and schools are doing. An elementary school in Wisconsin has long held a reading fair for students every year — but now they’ve scheduled it in the evening so that their reading fair builds support with […]

OK, folks. Here’s a report (click here to read it) on a teacher who runs for school board because realizes that her local community, including the board, aren’t very well-informed on the good things — or the real needs — in the district’s schools. Sarah Kirby-Gonzalez is running for the position in West Sacramento, CA, […]

USDOE Teaching Ambassador Fellow, Mike Humphreys, explains how Virginia’s governor is proposing a state teacher cabinet to enable teacher voice in his administration, and says other states are also considering this. (Click here to read his post.) We hope these come to pass. And we hope they don’t just become ineffective, like so many ad-hoc […]

Some days I get up rather discouraged — there’s just so much violence, denial, rote restriction, and ill will around us, particularly around education. And then I read something that inspires me and reminds me that intelligence, respect for kids, and effective democracy just keep springing up in schools. So please read high school tech […]

The VIVA Teachers Project strives to gather teachers’ ideas on specific issues in locations around the country. Its website also features blog posts by teachers on various topics. Take a look at the posts on teacher voice itself — it’s well worth seeing thoughtful teachers struggle with how to best use their voice to inform […]

Michael Keathley, a fellow blogger urges teachers to write classroom memoirs. Nice to have another voice joining us to encourage this effort. Read his latest blog post with some good ideas about this — and resolve, in this new year to write, yourself. (We thank him for referring to this site.) Your piece can be […]

In the blog post we link to here, the Learning First Alliance pleads that a more thoughtful public dialogue on education is needed. They provide specific recommendations on constructive ways to speak on the subject. For example, they propose: Instead of “Our schools are failing,” let’s try, “Public schools need to get better at meeting […]

YES, YES, YESSS! Read Julie Conlon’s great story that explains why teachers must all tell our stories to people beyond our school. I can’t resist repeating just how Julie says it: I would brag about Shauna, who read a Louisa May Alcott novel in a day, and about Roberto, who wants to start a student […]

Happy New Year to all. Let’s start the year on this website with an especially timely matter. Many teachers worry that they’ll get in trouble with their principal if they speak out publicly. However, our voices are especially needed NOW at the start of this new year, as Congress wrestles with the Federal budget and […]

So here’s our last message before the new year. After urging everyone we could think of to get their voices out in public, it occurred to us that we hadn’t, ourselves, begun to practice what we were so incessantly pestering others to do. So we arranged, through an interested reporter to have 5 teachers meet […]