Leading with the why:
The importance of a mission-driven school
While there has been a ton of press about giving families the choice to attend a better school, what we have not talked about is the fact that…
6 Minutes
Collective leadership: An approach, not a program
Why Collective Leadership Initiative? I am a firm believer that teachers will stay in a school only if they have a high quality leader in their…
6 Minutes
Teacher shortage reality: Numbers & names
Sometimes we look at numbers and ignore them for two reasons: We don’t see individual lives represented by the numbers. The numbers represent…
6 Minutes
Thoughts from the land of (dis)enchantment
I’m a teacher in New Mexico, a state that is distinguished by its low ranking at the bottom of all published qualitative measures for education and…
7 Minutes
Student betrayal, job abandonment, and Anyone Can Teach
Remember when our greatest stress was the shortage of substitutes? How we would wring our hands as we tried to manage empty classrooms during a…
5 Minutes
Prevent teacher shortages from robbing students of color
Pause your day. Take some deep breaths if it helps. Envision the teacher who changed your life. How did their classroom feel? What did their…
10 Minutes
Starving the lions of the teaching profession
In New York City, the lion is one of our most prominent symbols. Over the course of human history, the lion has stood for royalty, strength, and…
7 Minutes
(Un)certified struggle
No school could be run completely by uncertified teachers, but uncertified teachers are becoming commonplace in a lot of classrooms across our…
7 Minutes
Let's begin at the beginning
Let’s begin with the premise that teaching is hard work, and that good teaching is even harder. Bad teachers work hard, but fail through a deadly…
5 Minutes
Are teacher shortages the actual problem?
As a young teacher in the urban core of Kansas City, I was passionate about giving each of my students the opportunities they deserved by being a…
9 Minutes