Peter Henry's blog
It's Inservice Week.
Posted August 28th, 2007 by Peter HenryThe last Monday in August is generally the day most teachers go back to school. It's the week before school starts and the time when school buildings come to life with teachers and staff returning from summer break.
If you are a new teacher, it's not so much a return as a launch into a great adventure: first teaching job, first building, first principal, first staff, first classroom. That's a lot of firsts, and it can feel awkward, intense, surreal, chaotic, but definitely exciting and memorable.
read more »Turning the Tables on Accountability
Posted August 21st, 2008 by Peter HenryBrilliant strategy on display in this very short editorial by Charlie Kite, who is head spokesman for the Minnesota Schoolboards Association.
Read it for yourself.
But, the main point is this: while business is generous in its criticism of public education, there is precious little that they contribute, in a positive sense, to the improvement of schools.
In fact, when it comes to making schools better in a tangible way, they are the equivalent of Scrooge--before his epiphany.
read more »Teams Improve Learning
Posted July 25th, 2008 by Peter HenryThe new issue of the NEA Higher Education publication, The Advocate, has a very good and comprehensive article about the use of "team-based learning" in collegiate settings. (The online site is here.)
Readers should be aware, I am very big on the importance of what I have always called "cooperative groups", but which, I will now call "team-based learning", for which I offer an apology to the brothers Johnson at the University of Minnesota, who have done so much to foster cooperative learning over the decades.
You know, you take the same basic concepts and dress them up with a new name and, in America, you can really make some things happen!
read more »Teachers Polled Around Testing, NCLB
Posted July 18th, 2008 by Peter HenryNew survey is out from the AFT. They asked "a representative sample" of teachers a series of questions about teaching and current trends in education.
Full results appear in the publication American Educator, Summer 2008, Volume 32, Number 2 or can be accessed here.
No big surprises. The number of teachers who think NCLB has been positive for public education has dropped to 10%. Those who think it has had a negative overall effect now stand at 64%.
Similarly, those who think there is too much testing and too much test prep has jumped to 70%.
read more »What Does Climate Change Have To Do With Teaching?
Posted July 1st, 2008 by Peter HenryMerely everything.
Look, if even half of what Dr. James Hansen says is true about global climate change, we are in the midst of the largest educational challenge of all time.
In fact, even just given the explosion of fossil fuel prices this year, and the way we need to adapt to that, one could argue that we are in for one of the largest reorganizations of human society ever.
I see these two events--peak fossil fuel and global climate change--as meaning that, as educators, we are about to embark on the largest educational project of all time. Why? Because what this is really about is becoming much more informed about all facets of sustainability, from what we eat, to what we do, to where we go and how we get there.
read more »The Three Best Reasons To Go Into Teaching?
Posted June 23rd, 2008 by Peter HenryJune, July and August.
It's an old joke, but actually, one that I believed in when I was deciding to become a teacher. Without those three reasons, I might never have settled into education.
Like a lot of young people, there was a long period of time where I enjoyed being outdoors, carefree and open to whatever might come my way. Aren't these nearly universal attributes of being between 18-30 years of age?
And, in general, summer is one of the great benefits of being a teacher, whether that means travel, performing other work, having time with family, taking opportunities to learn--it's up to the individual.
read more »Can You Hear Us Now?
Posted June 17th, 2008 by Peter HenryIt's been a long time coming...
Teachers have taken hits from all sides, conservatives and progressives, rich and poor, the elite and the ignorant.
Today, we strike back by telling the truth.
read more »To: The Honorable Barack H. Obama
John C. Kluczynski Federal Office Building
230 South Dearborn St.
Suite 3900 (39th floor)
Chicago, Illinois 60604From: The Undersigned
Of all human drives, the need to satisfy curiosity, to learn, to understand, to make sense of experience, appears earliest in life and is more powerful than any other. That the current thrust of public education reform has not moved us significantly closer to meeting that deep human need is now apparent.
Teaching IS Political. Unfortunately.
Posted June 4th, 2008 by Peter HenryThe great Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, once responded to a question about politics by famously not answering and asking if the audience wanted to talk about something worthwhile rather than waste their time.
Not everyone likes politics. Not everyone wants their work, especially if their work is with children, to be caught up in politics or even be seen as having a political dimension.
And, in many ways, I agree with that: the best things in life are not about politics.
That's why I have wanted this open-source website to be mainly about teaching technique, pedagogy and other tangible issues related directly to the practice of teaching.
read more »How to Wrap Up a School Year...
Posted May 27th, 2008 by Peter HenryOne thing we have done at this site, particularly in the New Teacher Collaborative, was to track the ups and downs, ins and outs of a school year -- from the perspective of a teacher.
We arrive now at June: time to wrap things up and get on with summer.
But, before break begins, let's think and talk about ending the year on a positive note.
Endings are very important, and doing them well is not easy or automatic. It takes skill, insight and planning to pull them off successfully--and some luck to avoid the excesses of energy and excitement within students associated with being "done" for the year. (Yes, they will scream and throw paper at the last bell.)
read more »Memorial Day: Honoring Teachers
Posted May 24th, 2008 by Peter HenryThis may not be the most popular entry, but I think these issues worth considering.
This weekend is Memorial Day, a time to honor veterans who have died serving our country. My father is a WW II veteran, as are many friends and relatives, and I do recognize and honor their service, their sacrifice, their heroism. In no way do I diminish them.
But, I also wonder if this holiday's exclusive focus on veterans does not lead to a mind-set that sees fighting war as the highest, most noble contribution one can make to society, the gold standard of patriotism. Because, and please hear me out, I do not agree with that.
read more »