About a week ago I was contacted by someone from the NPR show ‘Tell Me More.’ They wanted to interview me about a blog post I wrote back in October called ‘Why I Did TFA and Why You Shouldn’t‘. Originally it was going to be a debate between either me and Wendy Kopp or me…

I mused recently about how I might encourage new corps members to somehow ‘disrupt’ training this summer if some of the flaws in the model have not been fixed. As I’m going to be pretty busy this summer taking courses toward an administrative degree, I don’t think I’ll have much time to ‘lead’ any sort…

Though TFA reports the recent attrition rate as 92% completing the first year and 91% completing the second, there are some regions that have much higher quit rates than others. In Kansas City, they fired about 200 experienced teachers last year to make room for new TFA recruits.  The superintendent who made this decision, John…

The most bizarre moment, so far, of my foray into the ed reform wars happened yesterday.  A few days ago I wrote  a blog post called ‘The resistance grows exponentially’.  My intent was to introduce a new blog exploring some of the same issues I’ve been working on.  For me this relieved some of the…

In December I wrote a post called Pro vs. Khan which sparked many angry comments.  My intent was to critique the content on the famous Salman Khan Academy site and to demonstrate what I considered to be a more effective and interactive math video. I recently attended the NCTM math teacher’s conference, and I was…

Five weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled ‘Fly My Pretties’ before taking somewhat of a break from blogging.  The point of that post was to recruit more people, particularly TFA alums as they are considered most ‘credible’, to help me present the other side of the story of the corporate reform movement for which…

This week, May 7th to 11th, is Teacher Appreciation Week 2012.  In this current era of teacher bashing, I think all teachers don’t really need anything special — they’d be fine with a five day break. For this post, I’m going to reflect on the teachers in my life that I’ve appreciated.  Some were great…