I don’t usually write more than one blog post per day. But I spent yesterday late afternoon with a wonderful group and I had better tell about it right now. After an intense day of teaching, a dozen teachers who research their classrooms to improve learning have gathered in a seminar sponsored by the Chicago Foundation for Education. A few of their topics:

• What happens when I teach my 3rd and 4th grade students how to generate, classify, and prioritize questions, and then research and present answers to these questions?
• What happens when readers are asked to take their reading lives online?
• What happens when I include the use of outside experts to teach students about inquiry?

How many citizens on the street are aware of teachers doing work like this to continue improving their teaching even when they are already accomplished educators? How do we let the public know these things so they can appreciate the hard — but rewarding — work we do? (Studies show teachers make over 2,000 separate decisions in their classrooms every day, in order to do their jobs well.) When will we and our school systems and the unions and the teachers themselves start explaining this in clear and effective ways to our elected officials and the wider world? When will we develop really meaningful measures that reflect and communicate the deep learning that these teachers lead students to experience?