Courage to Teach: SIS | duckduckgo.

Christopher Rufo: The Michigan Department of Education has adopted a radical gender theory program that promotes gender “fluidity” beginning in elementary school and encourages teachers to facilitate the sexual transition of minors without parental consent. I have obtained videos and internal documentation from the state’s training program, which first took place in 2020 and was repackaged for … Continue reading Taxpayer Supported Michigan’s Department of Education encourages teachers to facilitate child sexual transitions without parental consent. →

Christopher Rufo: I have obtained videos from a publicly accessible website that show that the conference went far beyond the school district’s euphemism about “issues facing the trans community.” The event included sessions on topics such as “The Adolescent Pathway: Preparing Young People for Gender-Affirming Care,” “Bigger Dick Energy: Life After Masculinizing [Gender Reassignment Surgery],” “Prosthetics for … Continue reading The School District of Philadelphia encouraged teachers to attend a conference on “kink,” “BDSM,” “trans sex,” and “masturbation sleeves.” →

Carly Mayberry: Christian legal organization First Liberty Institute is appealing the recent denial by the IRS to grant tax exemption status to a Texas Christian group that the federal agency alleges supports the Republican Party. In May the IRS denied 501(c)(3) status to the Texas-based prayer group Christians Engaged because it encourages its members to … Continue reading Civics: IRS Denies Tax-Exempt Status To Organization That Encourages Christians To ‘Pray, Vote, Engage’ Because ‘[B]ible Teachings Are Typically Affiliated With The [Republican] Party’ →

Daniel Willingham Virtually everyone would agree that a primary, yet insufficiently met, goal of schooling is to enable students to think critically. In layperson’s terms, critical thinking consists of seeing both sides of an issue, being open to new evidence that disconfirms your ideas, reasoning dispassionately, demanding that claims be backed by evidence, deducing and … Continue reading Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach? →

Joanne Jacobs: One early-elementary lesson proposed for the “teach in” encourages children to identify what they “will chant at a Palestine protest,” reports Jill Tucker in the San Francisco Chronicle. In an alphabet book titled P is for Palestine, the letter “I” represented “intifada,” which refers to armed uprisings by Palestinians against Israeli control of … Continue reading ”Let’s dump the curriculum and teach Palestinian propaganda instead” →

David Blaska: The teachers union laid down a gauntlet of demands — over two dozen! — before they would return, including (Surprise! Surprise!) that teachers union default: More Money, aka “hazard pay.” Socialist provocateur John Nichols had their back. When a former governor encouraged schools to reopen for in-class instruction, Comrade Nichols lit the match: “Scott Walker is exploiting the pandemic … Continue reading Learning loss and the teacher unions →

Robert Pondiscio: Campus radicalism is easy to spot—and condemn. Attempts to justify the atrocities committed by Hamas, and in some cases to celebrate it, have caused crises at dozens of universities, prompting deep-pocketed donors to publicly withdraw philanthropic support and threaten not to hire graduates. Even some stalwart liberals have been shocked by the depth and virulence of campus anti-Semitism. … Continue reading Schools aren’t up to the task of teaching students about the Israel-Hamas War →

Shaun Boyd: Some parents in Jefferson County say teachers are breaking state and federal laws and their union is helping them get away with it. At issue are student surveys about gender identity. While the school district says it’s unclear whether surveys about students’ preferred pronouns are illegal, there are several lawsuits regarding the issue. … Continue reading Controversy erupts in Jefferson County after the teachers union tells educators to destroy evidence of student surveys regarding gender identity →

Beckie Supiano This week I: Make new friends Martha Mullally set an unusual goal for the students in her biotechnology course last fall: Find a friend.

Kiera Butlers Ten years ago, Marilyn Muller began to suspect that her kindergarten daughter, Lauryn, was struggling with reading. Lauryn, a bright child, seemed mystified by the process of sounding out simple words. Still, the teachers at the top-rated Massachusetts public school reassured Muller that nothing was wrong, and Lauryn would pick up the skill—eventually. Surely … Continue reading Politics and teaching children to read: Mother Jones Edition →

Philip Amman: I think, first of all, primarily, we’re training them for their own sake, not for ours. Of course, community benefits will come out of the situation in some way. But mostly, it’s about their individual fulfillment that we’re here for when we’re educating them. How they find meaning in life, it’s up to … Continue reading Minhyong Kim is leading a new initiative called Mathematics for Humanity that encourages mathematicians to apply their skills to solving social problems. →

Wall Street Journal: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin won election in 2021 in no small part on education policy, including a promise to ban critical race theory in schools. His first executive order instructed the Superintendent of Public Instruction to review curricula and end the use of “inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory.” The Black … Continue reading A toolkit tells teachers how to push radical ideology on children despite Gov. Youngkin’s ban. →

Leslie Eastman: One language at a time. As an undergraduate, I studied German as part of the requirements for the science degree. When my son got bored with Spanish in high school, he asked to learn the language, and we spent a year with a fabulous instructor associated with the German Pacific School in San Diego learning … Continue reading Cambridge University Under Fire for Teaching ‘Woke’, Gender-Neutral German →

WILL: The News: Academic theories underlie the important classes that our children learn in every day at school. But these theories are more than an academic exercise – they shape the lens that students view the world. This is especially true in social studies. WILL is proud to partner with Scott Niederjohn and Mark Schug, … Continue reading Teaching Hope Instead of Critical Race Theory in Social Studies →

Shirin Ali: Florida has unveiled a new plan to address the state’s teacher shortage, with a focus on recruiting veterans to become temporary teachers.  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is directing the state’s Department of Education (DOE) to allow veterans to receive a temporary five-year teaching certificate while they earn a bachelor’s degree. The certificate … Continue reading Florida hopes to recruit veterans to address dire teacher shortage →

Shirin Ali: Florida has unveiled a new plan to address the state’s teacher shortage, with a focus on recruiting veterans to become temporary teachers.  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is directing the state’s Department of Education (DOE) to allow veterans to receive a temporary five-year teaching certificate while they earn a bachelor’s degree. The certificate … Continue reading Florida hopes to recruit veterans to address dire teacher shortage →

William J. Bennett: All Americans should be concerned about any indoctrination of children. But content addressing America’s difficult history of race relations, including today’s challenges, isn’t necessarily evidence of that. Achievements in the realm of civil rights have happened through an imperfect process spanning more than two centuries. The struggles of Americans like King and … Continue reading Teaching all aspects of the U.S.’s story will help de-politicize education and foster democracy. →

Jonathan Chait: Over the last decade, evidence has grown increasingly strong that public charter schools create better educational outcomes, especially for low-income, minority students in cities. The question hovering over the Biden administration has been whether it will encourage and work to improve charter schools, as the Obama administration did, or instead try to smother them, as teachers unions … Continue reading The Education Department chooses teachers unions over poor kids. →

Christopher Rufo: Evanston–Skokie School District 65 has adopted a radical gender curriculum that teaches pre-kindergarten through third-grade students to celebrate the transgender flag, break the “gender binary” established by white “colonizers,” and experiment with neo-pronouns such as “ze,” “zir,” and “tree.” I have obtained the full curriculum documents, which are part of the Chicago-area district’s “LGBTQ+ … Continue reading Evanston–Skokie’s school district adopts a curriculum that teaches pre-K through third-grade students to “break the binary” of gender. →

Left Voice: Our union members were going in. Some people stopped responding to our chat after the first day. They needed their paycheck, or they didn’t want to ruffle feathers, whatever their reason, they turned their back on us. This was happening everywhere. Since this wasn’t an official strike, people did not see the problem … Continue reading A post mortem on the Chicago Teacher walk out that fizzled →

Abigail Shrier Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target … Continue reading Leaked Documents and Audio from the California Teachers Association Conference Reveal Efforts to Subvert Parents on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation →

Michael Watson: The National School Boards Association (NSBA) messed up big time. It sent a letter to the Biden administration calling on the Justice Department to investigate protesting parents under the PATRIOT Act, among other federal anti-terrorism laws. In so doing, the erstwhile representative national association of school board officials exacerbated existing internal disputes over … Continue reading “To Encourage the Others”: Making an Example of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) →

Jonny Thakar: Swarthmore College, where I have taught for the last four years, is run pretty democratically as a result of its Quaker heritage, to the point where any erosion of faculty governance is still noticed and lamented even if the most important decisions seem to be out of our hands. Much of the work … Continue reading Reflections On Elite Education: In A Just World, Would The College I Teach At Exist? →

The Economist: Mississippi, often a laggard in social policy, has set an example here. In a state once notorious for its low reading scores, the Mississippi state legislature passed new literacy standards in 2013. Since then Mississippi has seen remarkable gains. Its fourth graders have moved from 49th (out of 50 states) to 29th on … Continue reading American schools teach reading all wrong →

FAIR: In my professional opinion, the school is failing to encourage healthy habits of mind, essential for growth, such as intellectual curiosity, humility, honesty, reason, and the capacity to question ideas and consider multiple perspectives. In our school, the opportunity to hear competing ideas is practically non-existent. How can students, who accept a single ideology … Continue reading Teacher Dana Stangel-Plowe Speaks Out About Dwight-Englewood School →

Alex Nester: School districts in recent months have increased their efforts to weave critical race theory—the idea that America’s political and economic systems are inherently racist—into K-12 curriculum standards. The Education Department’s proposal signals the Biden administration’s support for this trend. The rule would allocate federal funding for education contractors who work to “improve” K-12 … Continue reading Commentary on Federal Taxpayer Funds for “racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically responsive teaching and learning practices” →

Dave Eargle; I use a variation of Conti and Caroland (2011)’s “memorize the first 100 digits of pi” assignment as an in-class learning activity to teach my infosec students how to cheat, as part of teaching threat modeling. This semester at the beginning was all-remote for me, though, so I modified it for the zoom … Continue reading Teaching Students how to Cheat During the Pandemic →

Scott Travis: The Broward School District has scoured Facebook pages of teachers working remotely to catch them partying and traveling despite COVID-19 fears. The Broward School District has scoured Facebook pages of teachers working remotely to catch them partying, traveling and failing to wear masks at a time the educators say COVID-19 makes it too … Continue reading “If individuals on remote assignment can go to a Biden rally or to Animal Kingdom or to a luncheon, they can safely return to in-person teaching” →

Annysa Johnson: The news conference, which also featured Madison Teachers Inc. President Andy Waity, was part of a national day of action by teachers unions across the country, calling for safe working conditions in schools during the pandemic. The renewed push to bar in-person instruction comes as the number of COVID-19 cases has spiked in the … Continue reading Wisconsin’s largest teachers unions again ask state leaders to move all schools to virtual-only instruction →

Robert Woodson, Sr. A middle-school teacher in suburban Virginia confided in a friend about a troubling incident that was causing her nightmares. She had touched a student’s sleeve when telling him to quiet down, and he told her: “Take your F— hands off me, old woman, or I’ll smash your face through a window.” She … Continue reading Analysis: Teaching intolerance in the guise of promoting tolerance →

Scott Girard: A survey from Madison Metropolitan School District administration outlines the potential for more budget cuts coming amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with wage freezes and staff cuts among the options administrators are considering. The two-question survey, sent to staff Friday, states that the district expects an additional $5 million to $9 million budget cut … Continue reading Survey sent to Madison teachers details potential for cuts →

Lindsay Kemeny: There’s a wrong way to teach reading and, unfortunately, it’s also the most popular way.  So, if you’ve ever committed these teaching errors, don’t worry, you’re not alone.  I’ve been there, too.  I was shocked when I realized that many teacher prep courses and even professional development classes are teaching reading methods not … Continue reading The 7 Deadly Errors of Teaching Reading →

Seth Saavedra: On a union blog, MTEA president Amy Mizialko writes that MTEA is using the COVID-19 crisis to “strip back what has been wrongly imposed on our students—relentless standardized testing, scripted curriculum, one-size-fits-all online interventions.” When asked if the “union’s insistence that its members not be required to work during the first three weeks of … Continue reading Milwaukee Teachers’ Union Governance Climate →

Ashley Lamb-Sinclair: It tends to be common knowledge that Albert Einstein was bad at school, but less known is that he was also bad in school. Einstein not only received failing grades—a problem for which he was often summoned to the headmaster’s office—but he also had a bad attitude. He sat in the back of … Continue reading Disruptive students may not be the easiest to have in class, but perhaps defiance should be encouraged. →

Natalie Wexler: In recent months, thanks largely to journalist Emily Hanford, it’s become clear that the prevailing approach to teaching kids how to decipher words isn’t backed by evidence. An abundance of research shows that many children—perhaps most—won’t learn to “decode” written text unless they get systematic instruction in phonics. As Hanford has shown, teachers … Continue reading To ‘Get Reading Right,’ We Need To Talk About What Teachers Actually Do →

Samantha West: “We had all the pieces we needed for success,” said Bruggink, who first came to Oostburg as a student teacher and worked his way up to superintendent. “So was there a way we could harness that, that we could bring all that together?” He turned to his teachers for ideas. Together, and with the assistance of a … Continue reading After unapologetically teaching to the ACT, this tiny Wisconsin district now ranks among the state’s best →

Tang Fanxi: The parent did not achieve her goal, so she used these tactics to threaten the teacher,” Deng told Southern Metropolis Daily. “She (the teacher) has always been fair and dedicated to her job, and we hope she is not treated unfairly.” The school told the newspaper that it is investigating the case but … Continue reading Shenzhen Mom Blackmails Teacher for Accepting Gifts →

Steven Elbow: Some 5,000 educators from the district’s 50 schools gathered at the Alliant Energy Center Monday to start their workweek with the three-hour event, which featured Madison School District officials, a student poet and Bettina Love, a popular speaker on issues of race and education. The event highlighted the importance the district has placed … Continue reading Madison teachers gather at pep rally for racial equity →

Michael Cummins: aybe kids are disrespecting their teachers because adults have taught them to. If, as Muldrow asserted during her campaign, the “theme” in Madison education is “how do we blame black children, how do we hurt black children, how do we get rid of black children, how do we not listen to black children,” … Continue reading Lead by example: If you teach children to disrespect teachers, they will do so →

John Thornhill: We are already in danger of creating “industrial” school systems, the authors note, in which teachers are reduced to near-automatons, implementing a prescriptive model of education and ticking boxes. “Those trained only to reheat pre-cooked hamburgers are unlikely to become master chefs,” in the words of Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s director for education … Continue reading Teachers should enrich life, not worship the machine →

Livia Gershon: Today, many teachers agree that antiracist lessons are an important part of a good education, but most will concede that it can be difficult to craft these lessons well. That was also true during World War II, when American teachers embarked on an ambitious effort to fight racism, as education historian Zoë Burkholder … Continue reading Teaching Race at School →

John Urschel: Growing up, I thought math class was something to be endured, not enjoyed. I disliked memorizing formulas and taking tests, all for the dull goal of getting a good grade. In elementary school, my mind wandered so much during class that I sometimes didn’t respond when I was called on, and I resisted … Continue reading Math Teachers Should Be More Like Football Coaches →

jsonline: The number of people making second career decisions to go into teaching or coming to teaching from unconventional backgrounds has increased, and that is, overall, a good thing. But a lot of teachers are needed now and will be needed in coming years and the mainstream way to get into teaching — go to … Continue reading What’s needed to restock the ranks of talented teachers is more Alyssa Molinskis →

Nick Wilson: I am not interested in politics or controversy, and I derive no pleasure in creating difficulties for the UW out of personal resentment. But whenever family and friends ask me about graduate school, I have to explain that rather than an academic program centered around pedagogy and public policy, STEP is a 12-month … Continue reading What They Don’t Teach You at the University of Washington’s Ed School →

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction “DPI”, lead for many years by new Governor Tony Evers, has waived thousands of elementary reading teacher content knowledge requirements. This, despite our long term, disastrous reading results. Chan Stroman tracks the frequent Foundations of Reading (FoRT) mulligans: Yet the statutory FoRT requirement is now deemed satisfied by “attempts” … Continue reading Mulligans for Wisconsin Elementary Reading Teachers →

Michelle Hackman and Eric Morath: Teachers and other public education employees, such as community-college faculty, school psychologists and janitors, are quitting their jobs at the fastest rate on record, government data shows. A tight labor market with historically low unemployment has encouraged Americans in a variety of occupations to quit their jobs at elevated rates, … Continue reading Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record →

Emily Hanford: Balanced literacy was a way to defuse the wars over reading,” said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of the book “Language at the Speed of Sight.” “It succeeded in keeping the science at bay, and it allowed things to continue as before.” He says the reading wars are over, and science … Continue reading Hard Words: Why aren’t kids being taught to read? “The study found that teacher candidates in Mississippi were getting an average of 20 minutes of instruction in phonics over their entire two-year teacher preparation program” →

Sherrie Campbell: To parent our children to be exceptional, we must allow our children to experience “optimal levels of frustration.” It is our job to love and support them through their struggles, but to refrain from solving their problems for them. We need to equip our children with the insight that their struggles and failures … Continue reading To Raise Exceptional Children, Teach Them These 7 Values →

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email: Thanks to everyone who contacted the legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) with concerns about the new teacher licensing rules drafted by DPI. As you know, PI-34 provides broad exemptions from the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test (FORT) that go way beyond providing flexibility for … Continue reading Requesting action one more time on Wisconsin PI-34 teacher licensing →

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email: Wisconsin Reading Coalition has alerted you over the past 6 months to DPI’s intentions to change PI-34, the administrative rule that governs teacher licensing in Wisconsin. We consider those changes to allow overly-broad exemptions from the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test for new teachers. The revised PI-34 has … Continue reading Wisconsin DPI efforts to weaken the Foundations of Reading Test for elementary teachers →

Wisconsin Reading Coalition: Teachers and more than 180,000 non-proficient, struggling readers* in Wisconsin schools need our support While we appreciate DPI’s concerns with a possible shortage of teacher candidates in some subject and geographical areas, we feel it is important to maintain teacher quality standards while moving to expand pathways to teaching. Statute section 118.19(14) … Continue reading Commentary on Wisconsin DPI efforts to water down already thin elementary teacher content knowledge requirements. →

The Guardian: Andria Zafirakou has been functioning on three hours’ sleep a night for weeks, but looks radiant. “It’s adrenaline, it’s excitement, it’s everything.” Nominated by current and former colleagues for the Varkey Foundation’s annual Global Teacher prize, dubbed the Nobel for teaching, last month Zafirakou learned she had been shortlisted from a field of … Continue reading Best teacher in the world Andria Zafirakou: ‘Build trust with your kids – then everything else can happen’ →

Amber Walker: “Candidates graduating from new (teacher preparation) programs will be able to teach in all of the areas…(Teachers) that weren’t prepared in that manner retain the same ability to teach only in the narrow area, such as biology,” McCarthy said in an email to the Cap Times. “We will continue to support pathways for … Continue reading Commentary on Proposed Changes to Wisconsin Teacher Licensing Requirements →

Emily Langhorne: n November, NPR uncovered a graduation scandal at Ballou High School in Washington, D.C., where half the graduates missed more than 90 days of school. Administrators pressured teachers to pass failing students, including those whom teachers had barely seen. Policy wonks have had a field day with the report, adding graduation scandals to … Continue reading “As a Teacher, I Was Complicit in Grade Inflation. Our Low Expectations Hurt Students We Were Supposed to Help” →

Toni Airaksinen : In a list of six possible consequences of trigger warnings, he argues that they “foster a culture where student fragility is promoted over the development of resilience,” and can “encourage students to avoid intense literary moments that they may perceive as too powerful.” Trigger warnings could also “handicap English teachers by censoring … Continue reading Prof: Trigger warnings ‘serious threats’ to teaching English →

Will Fitzhugh, via a kind email: Albert Shanker was a very good friend to The Concord Review almost from the very beginning in 1987. He wrote a number of letters, to the MacArthur Foundation and others, and he spent two of his New York Times columns on comments about the journal. In addition, at a … Continue reading History Teachers Wanted →

Josh Verges: In an email to the Pioneer Press, York said her goal is to get school management to implement and enforce safety policies “so teachers can teach and kids can learn in a healthy, risk/trauma-free environment.” Last year, York’s testimony helped strengthen a Minnesota law that warns teachers about students with a history of … Continue reading Battered St. Paul teacher meets with Trump officials over school discipline →

Karen Rivedal: “Kids aren’t going to be able to take risks and push themselves academically, without having a trusting support network there,” said Lindsay Maglio, principal of Lindbergh Elementary School, where some teachers improved on traditional get-to-know-you exercises in the first few weeks of school by adding more searching questions, and where all school staff … Continue reading Madison Teacher / Student Relationships and Academic Outcomes? →

Greg Brown: The number of male teachers is in rapid decline and experts warn they will disappear from primary schools unless there is government action to encourage them back into the profession. Research from Macquarie University shows male teachers dropped from 28.5 per cent of primary school teachers in 1977 to just 18 per cent … Continue reading Fears men could disappear from primary teaching →

Diane Ravitch Blog, via a kind reader: “The TEACHERS OUR CHILDREN DESERVE will never enter our schools through the dismantling process of deregulating the profession and intentionally lowering standards. The standards were put in place to guarantee a level of expertise. “In summary, “WE DON”T HAVE AN EMERGENCY THAT REQUIRES DUMBING DOWN THE PROFESSION OF … Continue reading Tim Slekar: Next Step in Wisconsin’s War on Teachers →

Matthew Frankel, via a kind email: A short video that explains New Jersey’s “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher layoff law was released on social media today by Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), the nonprofit supporting six Newark parents and their pro bono legal team in a legal challenge to the constitutionality of this statute. … Continue reading PEJ Releases Video Explaining New Jersey’s Unjust “Last In, First Out” Quality-blind Teacher Layoff Law →

Andie Judson: Most teachers start their day off with attendance, but a local teacher has found his own unique way to connect with students before they enter Room 219. Barry White Junior teaches fifth-grade literacy at Ashley Park PreK-8 School. The Title I school encourages teachers to find creative ways to engage with students. But … Continue reading CMS teacher connects to students with personalized handshakes →

As Stanford University economic researcher Barbara Biasi explains in a new study (which is awaiting peer review), Act 10 created a marketplace for teachers in which public-school districts can compete for better employees. For instance, a district can pay more to recruit and retain “high-value added” teachers—that is, those who most improve student learning. Districts … Continue reading “lead to a small increase in average quality of the teaching workforce in individual-salary districts.” →

The Economist: Design thinking emphasises action over planning and encourages its followers to look at problems through the eyes of the people affected. Around 100,000 Infosys employees have gone through a series of workshops on it. The first such workshop sets the participants a task: for example, to improve the experience of digital photography. That … Continue reading What employers can do to encourage their workers to retrain →

Joseph R. Teller My students can’t write a clear sentence to save their lives, and I’ve had it. In 10 years of teaching writing, I have experimented with different assignments, activities, readings, approaches to commenting on student work — you name it — all to help students write coherent prose that someone would actually want … Continue reading Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong? →

Joseph Asch: A member of the faculty writes in: Faculty hired 5-7 years ago were told explicitly that a couple of peer-reviewed articles and a book contract with a well-respected academic press was sufficient for tenure. I often used the word “humane” to describe the requirements for tenure, in that they rewarded both scholarship of … Continue reading Tenure/Teaching: The Pendulum Swings →

Michael Nunez: How many kilometers are in a mile? If you’re like most Americans, you have no fucking idea. But if you’re one of the millions of Americans playing Pokémon Go, you’re about to find out. For the uninitiated, Pokémon Go is an app that uses your phone’s GPS to detect where you are in … Continue reading Pokémon Go Is Secretly Teaching Americans the Metric System →

Amy Kazmin: Yet in their zeal to build schools, and to encourage attendance with incentives such as free lunches, Indian policy makers have paid scant attention to what is taking place inside the new classrooms. There has been little serious national debate over how to teach fundamental skills effectively to millions of first-generation students. “The … Continue reading While billions are spent on new schools to boost literacy and growth, teaching standards lag behind →

Sarah Brown Weisling: Dear Evan, Lauren, and Zachary, Many (many) years ago, there was this little girl who spent her summer afternoons creating neighborhood schools for all of the children on her block. She mimicked what school looked like to her: rows of desks, questions and answers, praise and encouragement from the teacher, stickers and … Continue reading A Letter To My Children: What It Means to Be a Teacher →

Madison School District (PDF): We know that our vision as a District doesn’t come to life without a thriving workforce. That is why we have worked hard to provide our employees with the resources and support they need to do their best work. To be successful for all students, we must be a District that … Continue reading Madison Schools’ Teacher “Handbook” Process Plan →

National Council on Teacher Quality: Using evidence from more than 500 colleges and universities producing nearly half of the nation’s new teachers annually, this report answers two questions that go to the heart of whether the demands of teacher preparation are well matched to the demands of the classroom: Are teacher candidates graded too easily, … Continue reading Teacher Education: Easy A’s →

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): As previously reported, Governor Walker’s Act 10 requires public sector unions, except police & fire, to participate in an annual recertification election to enable Union members to retain representation by their Union. The election by all MTI-represented District employees will be conducted between … Continue reading Madison Teachers, Inc. Recertification Campaign →

Mia McKenzie: I was born Black in a Black family in a Black neighborhood. My early childhood was an entirely Black experience. Besides what I saw on television and in movies, my whole world was Black people. My family, my friends, my babysitters, my neighbors and my teachers were all Black. From Head Start through … Continue reading The White Teachers I Wish I Never Had →

Elliott Hauser:

Marc Andreesen believes that software is eating the world. It’s a very visceral image, and in one sense it’s absolutely true. Software is spreading into every industry, changing how established players must play and even what the rules of the game are. But while many in Silicon Valley and Educational Technology think that software will “eat” teachers, replacing many of them, at trinket we believe software’s role is to create openness, making teachers better and more connected. Far from there being less teachers in the future, we think openness will enable and encourage more people than ever to teach.
Godawful Teachers?
In the midst of a longer Twitter conversation I was having with him and others (which I will likely blog about separately), Andreesen made an interesting comment:

Erica Philips:

On the witness stand here Tuesday, Beatriz Vergara bit her lip and looked toward her mother and sister in the gallery as Eileen Goldsmith, a lawyer for California’s biggest teachers unions, began cross-examining the 15-year-old.
Ms. Vergara is one of nine student plaintiffs in a lawsuit bearing her name that challenges California’s strong employment protections for teachers. She testified earlier that three of her middle-school instructors had failed to teach or discipline students properly. “I think a teacher’s supposed to motivate you, encourage you, keep you going to school,” the 10th-grader said. “If you have a bad teacher, you’re not going to want to go to school.”
How well certain teachers educated Ms. Vergara and her fellow plaintiffs is at the heart of the closely watched case. Research has pointed to teacher quality as the biggest in-school determinant of student performance, and in recent years many states have moved to simplify dismissal procedures for ineffective teachers and encourage districts to consider teacher performance in layoff decisions rather than conducting reductions in force based only on seniority.

CRichard Rothstein:

In the last week, we’ve paid great attention to Nelson Mandela’s call for forgiveness and reconciliation between South Africa’s former white rulers and its exploited black majority. But we’ve paid less attention to the condition that Mandela insisted must underlie reconciliation–truth. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Mandela established, and that Bishop Desmond Tutu chaired, was designed to contribute to cleansing wounds of the country’s racist history by exposing it to a disinfecting bright light. As for those Afrikaners who committed even the worst acts of violence against blacks, they could be forgiven and move on only if they acknowledged the full details of their crimes.
In the current issue of the School Administrator, I write that we do a much worse job of facing up to our racial history in the United States, leading us to make less progress than necessary in remedying racial inequality. We have many celebrations of the civil rights movement and its heroes, but we do very little to explain to young people why that movement was so necessary. Earlier this week, the New York Times described how the Alabama Historical Association has placed many commemorative markers around Montgomery to commemorate civil rights heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, but declined–because of “the potential for controversy”–to call attention to the city’s slave markets and their role in the spread of slavery before the Civil War. Throughout our nation, this fear of confronting the past makes it more difficult to address and remedy the ongoing existence of urban ghettos, the persistence of the black-white achievement gap, and the continued under-representation of African Americans in higher education and better-paying jobs.
One of the worst examples of our historical blindness is the widespread belief that our continued residential racial segregation, North and South, is “de facto,” not the result of explicit government policy but instead the consequence of private prejudice, economic inequality, and personal choice to self-segregate. But in truth, our major metropolitan areas were segregated by government action. The federal government purposefully placed public housing in high-poverty, racially isolated neighborhoods (pdf) to concentrate the black population, and with explicit racial intent, created a whites-only mortgage guarantee program to shift the white population from urban neighborhoods to exclusively white suburbs (pdf). The Internal Revenue Service granted tax-exemptions for charitable activity to organizations established for the purpose of enforcing neighborhood racial homogeneity. State-licensed realtors in virtually every state, and with the open support of state regulators, supported this federal policy by refusing to permit African Americans to buy or rent homes in predominantly white neighborhoods. Federal and state regulators sanctioned the refusal of the banking, thrift, and insurance industries to make loans to homeowners in other-race communities. Prosecutors and police sanctioned, often encouraged, thousands of acts of violence against African Americans who attempted to move to neighborhoods that had not been designated for their race.

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Teachers in Madison recently received an email inviting them to join AAE, and for a very inexpensive fee. For only $15 per month, they say, one can be eligible to apply for a scholarship, receive a publication, and information on professional development. Plus, they claim none of their income will be spent on political action, and a member receives protection via liability insurance. The facts are, that none of what AAE offers is needed.

• MTI negotiates a Collective Bargaining Agreement, and enforces the Collective Bargaining Agreement via grievance and arbitration.
• MTI represents teachers who are challenged by the District.
• The District is responsible by Statute to provide liability insurance and MTI members receive additional liability coverage provided through membership as a result of MTI’s
  affiliation with WEAC & NEA.
• AAE is anti-union. They even tried to stop the Kenosha
  School Board from ratifying the new recently agreed-upon Contracts.

According to the Massachusetts Teachers Association, “The American Association of Educators, is a group backed by some of the deepest pockets in the anti-public education movement (think Koch brothers). The AAE is partnering with the National Right to Work Committee to encourage educators to give up their (Union) membership and join an organization that has affiliates covering just six states. Right-wing foundations provide nearly all of the money to (operate) the AAE Foundation.”
AAE was able to write to each Madison teacher because they obtained teachers’ email addresses via an open records request from the District.

Eleanor Barkhorn:

About one in five Harvard seniors applies to Teach for America. However, only a “minuscule” percentage of the class actually studies education, according to Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean James Ryan.
What accounts for this difference? Why are so many of America’s brightest students apparently interested in teaching but not availing themselves of the training their school has to offer?
Part of what’s to blame is a long-standing institutional snobbery toward teaching. As Walter Isaacson put it at this year’s Washington Ideas Forum, there’s a perception that “it’s beneath the dignity of an Ivy League school to train teachers.”
Teach for America has helped change that perception. “I think TFA has done a lot in terms of elevating the profession of teaching and elevating the importance of public education and education generally,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in conversation with Isaacson, CEO of The Aspen Institute, and Ryan.
But Harvard and other schools like it haven’t made it a priority to encourage students to pursue teaching–and so students are looking for opportunities elsewhere. As Ryan put it, “There’s a tremendous demand for teacher training–and the main outlet is TFA.”

Kevin Werbach:

I’m participating in the #WWEOpen13 MOOC about open online teaching. For the first unit, we were asked to post our “teaching philosophy.” These kinds of questions typically tie me in knots. They seem inherently circular and unsolvable: to say how I should teach, I need to know what students need to learn, which isn’t something I can just declare. For whatever reason, this time I was able to tap out ten statements. I don’t know that I’d call them a philosophy, but they ring true as commitments I feel comfortable with.
Good teaching is good learning… for both the student and the instructor. Learning means new connections and themes and lessons that weren’t there at the beginning.
I believe in a balance between what the instructor and the students contribute. Teaching shouldn’t be a monologue, but it also shouldn’t be purely a peer conversation: students want the guidance and validation and knowledge that the instructor can orchestrate.
Every student should feel they are part of the experience and encouraged to contribute their unique perspectives. In particular, students should not be unfairly disadvantaged by factors such as gender, race, national origin, language, or disability.

Inge Druckrey:

“A great story beautifully told.”
Ken Carbone, Designer, Chief Creative Director, Carbone Smolan Agency
“This [film] is about patient and dedicated teaching, about learning to look and visualize in order to design, about the importance of drawing. It is one designer’s personal experience of issues that face all designers, expressed with sympathy and encouragement, and illustrated with examples of Inge [Druckrey]’s own work and that of grateful generations of her students. There are simple phrases that give insights into complex matters, for example that letterforms are ‘memories of motion.’ Above all, it is characteristic of Inge that in this examination of basic principles the word “beautiful” is used several times.”
Matthew Carter, type designer, MacArthur Fellow

Annie Murphy Paul:

This is the first hint of how Finland does it: rather than “trying to reverse engineer a high-performance teaching culture through dazzlingly complex performance evaluations and value-added data analysis,” as we do, they ensure high-quality teaching from the beginning, allowing only top students to enroll in teacher-training programs, which are themselves far more demanding than such programs in America. A virtuous cycle is thus initiated: better-prepared, better-trained teachers can be given more autonomy, leading to more satisfied teachers who are also more likely to stay on.
Kim soon notices something else that’s different about her school in Pietarsaari, and one day she works up the courage to ask her classmates about it. “Why do you guys care so much?” Kim inquires of two Finnish girls. “I mean, what makes you work hard in school?” The students look baffled by her question. “It’s school,” one of them says. “How else will I graduate and go to university and get a good job?” It’s the only sensible answer, of course, but its irrefutable logic still eludes many American students, a quarter of whom fail to graduate from high school. Ripley explains why: Historically, Americans “hadn’t needed a very rigorous education, and they hadn’t gotten it. Wealth had made rigor optional.” But now, she points out, “everything had changed. In an automated, global economy, kids needed to be driven; they need to know how to adapt, since they would be doing it all their lives. They needed a culture of rigor.”
Rigor on steroids is what Ripley finds in South Korea, the destination of another of her field agents. Eric, who attended an excellent public school back home in Minnesota, is shocked at first to see his classmates in the South Korean city of Busan dozing through class. Some wear small pillows that slip over their wrists, the better to sleep with their heads on their desks. Only later does he realize why they are so tired — they spend all night studying at hagwons, the cram schools where Korean kids get their real education.
Ripley introduces us to Andrew Kim, “the $4 million teacher,” who makes a fortune as one of South Korea’s most in-demand hagwon instructors, and takes us on a ride-along with Korean authorities as they raid hagwons in Seoul, attempting to enforce a 10 p.m. study curfew. Academic pressure there is out of control, and government officials and school administrators know it — but they are no match for ambitious students and their parents, who understand that passing the country’s stringent graduation exam is the key to a successful, prosperous life.

The Smartest Kids in The World And How They Got That Way By Amanda Ripley

TNTP.org:

Today, as schools across the country wrestle with new approaches to teacher training, evaluation, development and compensation, it is critical to consider and understand the views of teachers themselves. Beyond teachers unions and newer organizations that seek to amplify the opinions of practicing teachers, education leaders and policymakers often turn to scientific polls and surveys such as the MetLife Foundation’s annual Survey of the American Teacher.
In sampling the opinions of all teachers, these surveys provide useful information–some of which we have incorporated into our own research and work–but they also cast a very wide net. While it is important to understand the views of all teachers, we believe the perspectives of our very best teachers are especially important.
Our 2012 study The Irreplaceables showed that improving our nation’s urban schools requires creating policies and working conditions that will attract more outstanding teachers and encourage them to stay in the classroom. We should be building the profession around its finest practitioners. Today, too little is known about the opinions and experiences of top- performing teachers, because researchers rarely focus specifically on them. We launched the Perspectives of Irreplaceable

The dichotomy that is Madison School Board Governance was on display this past week.
1. Board Member TJ Mertz, in light of the District’s plan to continue growing spending and property taxes for current programs, suggests that “fiscal indulgences“:

Tax expenditures are not tax cuts. Tax expenditures are socialism and corporate welfare. Tax expenditures are increases on anyone who does not receive the benefit or can’t hire a lobbyist…to manipulate the code to their favor.

be applied to certain school volunteers.
This proposal represents a continuation of the Districts’ decades long “same service” approach to governance, with declining academic results that spawned the rejected Madison Preparatory IB Charter School.
2. Madison’s new Superintendent, Jennifer Cheatham introduced her “Strategic Framework” at Wednesday’s Downtown Rotary Club meeting.
The Superintendent’s letter (jpg version) (within the “framework” document) to the Madison Community included this statement (word cloud):

Rather than present our educators with an ever-changing array of strategies, we will focus on what we know works and implement these strategies extremely well. While some of the work may seem familiar, having the courage and determination to stay focused on this work and do it well is in itself a revolutionary shift for our district. This is what it takes to narrow and eliminate gaps in student achievement.

The Madison School Board’s letter (jpg version) to the community includes this statement:

Public education is under sustained attack, both in our state and across the nation. Initiatives like voucher expansion are premised on the notion that public schools are not up to the challenge of effectively educating diverse groups of students in urban settings.
We are out to prove that wrong. With Superintendent Cheatham, we agree that here in Madison all the ingredients are in place. Now it is up to us to show that we can serve as a model of a thriving urban school district, one that seeks out strong community partnerships and values genuine collaboration with teachers and staff in service of student success.
Our Strategic Framework lays out a roadmap for our work. While some of the goals will seem familiar, what’s new is a clear and streamlined focus and a tangible and energizing sense of shared commitment to our common goals.
The bedrock of the plan is the recognition that learning takes place in the classroom in the interactions between teachers and students. The efforts of all of us – from school board members to everyone in the organization – should be directed toward enhancing the quality and effectiveness of those interactions.
There is much work ahead of us, and the results we are expecting will not arrive overnight. But with focus, shared effort and tenacity, we can transform each of our schools into thriving schools. As we do so, Madison will be the school district of choice in Dane County.

Madison School Board word cloud:

Related: North Carolina Ends Pay Boosts for Teacher Master’s Degrees; Tenure for elementary and high-school teachers also eliminated

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, signed a budget bill Friday that eliminates teacher tenure and–in a rare move–gets rid of the automatic pay increase teachers receive for earning a master’s degree.
The legislation targets a compensation mechanism that is common in the U.S., where teachers receive automatic pay increases for years of service and advanced degrees. Some research has suggested those advanced degrees don’t lead to improved teaching.
Although a few other states have talked about doing away with the automatic pay increase for advanced degrees, experts say North Carolina is believed to be the first state to do so.
The budget bill–which drew hundreds of teachers to the Capitol in protest earlier this week–also eliminates tenure for elementary and high-school teachers and freezes teacher salaries for the fifth time in six years.
It comes as states and districts across the country are revamping teacher evaluations, salaries and job security, and linking them more closely to student performance. These changes have been propelled, in part, by the Obama administration and GOP governors.

The challenge for Madison is moving away from long time governance structures and practices, including a heavy (157 page pdf & revised summary of changes) teacher union contract. Chris Rickert’s recent column on Madison’s healthcare practices provides a glimpse at the teacher – student expenditure tension as well.
Then Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 Madison Rotary speech offers important background on Madison’s dichotomy:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

“Budget Cuts: We Won’t Be as Bold and Innovative as Oconomowoc, and That’s Okay”.

Inge Druckery:

“This [film] is about patient and dedicated teaching, about learning to look and visualize in order to design, about the importance of drawing. It is one designer’s personal experience of issues that face all designers, expressed with sympathy and encouragement, and illustrated with examples of Inge [Druckrey]’s own work and that of grateful generations of her students. There are simple phrases that give insights into complex matters, for example that letterforms are ‘memories of motion.’ Above all, it is characteristic of Inge that in this examination of basic principles the word ‘beautiful’ is used several times.”
Matthew Carter
Type Designer, 2010 MacArthur Fellow

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Bettner email (PDF):

What’s the first ingredient necessary to address workplace concerns? The opportunity to talk with colleagues to identify areas of common concerns and brainstorm about possible solutions. That’ s the conclusion reached by the clerical and technical employees who attended the March 20 SEE-MTI General Membership meeting. In response, SEE-MTI President Kris Schiltz and MTI staff rep Doug Keillor agreed to schedule monthly membership organizing workshops to provide: 1) an opportunity to get together to talk and 2) to further develop an organizing approach to problem-solving. The first workshop was held on April 24, and the next workshop will be held soon with notice in MTI Solidarity!.
The organizing workshops are structured to provide a brief update on what is happening across the district relative to SEE unit concerns (e.g. surplus declarations, budget proposals, etc.) and then those present breakout (e.g. elementary, middle, high, administration) to discuss their concerns, facilitated by their unit rep. Following the small group discussions the participants reconvene to report on topics of discussion and organizing relative to the identified issues.
While MTI has used similar organizing models on a smaller scale for years, the monthly SEE-MTI member organizing workshops are an attempt to further institutionalize this approach, engaging more Union members in the process and leading to better potential outcomes.
All SEE-MTI members are welcome and encouraged to attend. Join your fellow Union members in working for positive change in the District!

Alan Borsuk:

Think of all the different ways you can say the word interesting. Different inflections carry different messages. Different accents change what letters are sounded or the number of syllables and can hint at your background. Probe the word and it can become really interesting – and educational.
Here’s another thing that’s interesting, educational and, I would add, a special jewel in Milwaukee education: The linguistics class at the Milwaukee School of Languages taught by Suzanne Loosen.
If I had taken this class when I was in high school, I would remember it to this day, 45 years later. Which got me thinking about two questions:
What makes a high school class especially memorable and valuable? What are we doing to encourage, support and respect classes such as this one and teachers such as Loosen?
A few things are special about Loosen’s class:
First, the course itself. Linguistics – “the scientific study of language,” as Loosen teaches her students – is normally a college-level subject. Best as Loosen knows, the course, an elective for 10th through 12th-grade students, is the only high school class in the nation devoted entirely to the subject, although many teachers include linguistics as part of broader courses.
Second, the enterprising aspects of creating the course. There are pluses to the increasingly standardized, regulated and monitored world of education. But there are minuses, like not seeing very often what Loosen offers: the creativity and zest of teaching a beloved subject that is a bit off the conventional path.

Susan Schwartz Wildstrom:

I am moved to respond to Sol Garfunkel’s “Opinion” article.1 I am a long-time high school mathematics teacher in a public school. I started teaching around the time of SMSG and have been in the trenches throughout several of the math wars. I know Dr. Garfunkel’s fine work in creating interesting modeling projects and his outspoken opinion that using technology to solve problems that apply the mathematics we are teaching will better concretize students’ understanding of the underlying mathematics. It sounds like a fine idea, but the reality is often very different.
Our problems in teaching mathematics begin in elementary school. Sadly, many teachers working with our children at the start of their mathematical journeys are not themselves comfortable with the mathematics they are trying to teach. They often only know one way to teach an idea and they may not fully understand how that method works and why it gives the right answers. Such a teacher confronted with an alternate creative method (perhaps suggested by a clever child or a seasoned colleague) may reject the alternative rather than trying to see how and why two methods produce the same result. Beyond stifling the creativity of students and discouraging them from trying to see how the mathematics works, such an approach is not fertile ground for applications and modeling projects in which creative exploration and possibly unorthodox methods are encouraged as a means of truly understanding what is happening. Teachers who lack confidence in their own understanding of the ideas may not want to include these sorts of activities in their classrooms.

Related: Math Forum audio & video.

Roma Downey & Mark Burnett:

Have you ever sensed in your own life that “the handwriting was on the wall”? Or encouraged a loved one to walk “the straight and narrow”?
Have you ever laughed at something that came “out of the mouths of babes”? Or gone “the extra mile” for an opportunity that might vanish “in the twinkling of an eye”?
If you have, then you’ve been thinking of the Bible.
These phrases are just “a drop in the bucket” (another biblical phrase) of the many things we say and do every day that have their origins in the most read, most influential book of all time. The Bible has affected the world for centuries in innumerable ways, including art, literature, philosophy, government, philanthropy, education, social justice and humanitarianism. One would think that a text of such significance would be taught regularly in schools. Not so. That is because of the “stumbling block” (the Bible again) that is posed by the powers that be in America.

David Blaska:

The Madison Machine has put the fix in to elect a school board wholly beholden to the teachers union. No one suffers more than the poorly served minority community in Madison. Its candidates are being undermined for the benefit of the insider power structure that has allowed the minority achievement gap to grow to alarming levels.
Madison School Board member Mary Burke supports my suspicions. She says Madison Teachers Inc. president John Matthews is the brains behind Sarah Manski’s Trojan horse candidacy. Whoever is its author, the gambit succeeded in blocking a freethinking minority candidate, Ananda Mirilli, from surviving the front-end-loaded primary, so precipitously concluded.
For the record, John Matthews responded with a monosyllabic “no” mid-Sunday afternoon to my inquiry: “Is Mary Burke correct? Are you the brains behind the Sarah Manski bait and switch?”
So far, School Board member Marj Passman, the union’s most vociferous defender, and a longtime water carrier for the union, is left holding the bag. Matthew DeFour’s fine reportage in Saturday’s Wisconsin State Journal reports this:
Manski said she didn’t plan to run for School Board, but entered the race because Passman and a few other people [my italics] very strongly encouraged her to run. She declined to say who the other people were.

Pamela Cotant:

Jane Qualle found a nice fit with the CATCH Healthy Habits program when she looked for volunteer opportunities after she retired as a nurse.
CATCH Healthy Habits in Madison pairs adults 50 and older with children at various sites to encourage healthier eating and physical activity. It also is aimed at helping the adults, who can learn alongside the children and receive benefits by volunteering. CATCH stands for Coordinated Approach To Child Health.
After first volunteering at a site farther away from her home, Qualle volunteered at the Mendota Elementary School site, which was about a mile from home.
She usually walks, which allows her to get some exercise and serve as a role model for the children.
“I’m just a believer — the more active you are, the healthier you are,” Qualle said. “It’s an opportunity for kids to actually play rather than sitting in front of the TV or computer.”

Robert McCartney:

For more than a decade, school standardized tests have been the magic keys that were supposed to unlock the door to a promised realm of American students able to read and do sums as well as their counterparts in Asia and Europe.
A generation of U.S. education reformers has assured us that if we would just rely mostly on test scores and other hard data to guide decisions, then all manner of good results would ensue. Foundations gave millions of dollars to encourage it. The Obama administration embraced the cause, lest it stand accused of short-changing kids.
It was always a fairy tale. Tests are necessary, of course, but the mania for them has become self-defeating. They don’t account for the vast differences in children’s social, economic and family backgrounds. Good teachers give up on proven classroom techniques and instead “teach to the test.”
Now, finally, somebody with standing is getting attention for denouncing the madness.
The truth-teller is one of our own from the Washington region, Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua P. Starr. He has only been here for a year and a half, but he arrived with an impressive résumé and is emerging as a credible national voice urging a more reasoned and deliberate path to educational progress.

Tom Consigny

Last week state schools superintendent Tony Evers presented his status of education in Wisconsin report and encouraged residents to show more respect and value for teachers. He missed the point — he should have challenged teachers to cease their whining, their defiant and disorderly assemblies and illegal strikes, which we have endured in recent years.
The teachers and Madison union leader John Matthews should recognize the considerable damage they have done to their reputation and credibility. They have forgotten who continues to provide their generous salaries for a nine-month job.

Douglas Haven, via a kind reader:

The best way to learn is to teach. Now a classroom robot that helps Japanese children learn English has put that old maxim to the test.
Shizuko Matsuzoe and Fumihide Tanaka at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, set up an experiment to find out how different levels of competence in a robot teacher affected children’s success in learning English words for shapes.
They observed how 19 children aged between 4 and 8 interacted with a humanoid Nao robot in a learning game in which each child had to draw the shape that corresponded to an English word such as ‘circle’, ‘square’, ‘crescent’, or ‘heart’.
The researchers operated the robot from a room next to the classroom so that it appeared weak and feeble, and the children were encouraged to take on the role of carers. The robot could then either act as an instructor, drawing the correct shape for the child, or make mistakes and act as if it didn’t know the answer.