Donate Now Common Teacher Mistake #7 — Overconfidence. This is one that particularly applies to new TFA teachers. I was a victim of this myself, back in the day, and the fact that it’s still a prominent issue makes me worry that TFA contributes to building that overconfidence. You know the famous Western movie cliche…
read more »Donate Now Published by the same publisher, and just two months after, the TFA ‘Teaching As Leadership’ book, I was curious to see if this book could live up to its hype. I’m only a few pages in, but my first impression is that this is an excellent book. What I like about this book…
read more »Now that I’ve finished the entire book, including all the appendices, I’d like to make some conclusions and final reflections for any new teachers reading the book and especially for new TFA CMs. I think that one of the central themes of the book is that effective teachers know how to be efficient with the…
read more »I’ve just finished chapter 6, the final principle ‘Work Relentlessly.’ While I like most of the content of this chapter, I’ve got a few minor ‘improvements.’ TFA is still in the middle of a slow evolution of its philosophy of teacher training and teacher effectiveness. Sometimes it seems that they’re not quite sure if they…
read more »Just finished chapter 5, ‘Continuously Increase Effectiveness,’ which I liked. It’s a very short 20 page chapter, which is very realistic. All teachers make mistakes. New teachers make a lot of them, but even experienced teachers do. Mistakes come from taking risks, and just like students learn from mistakes, so can teachers. When things don’t…
read more »Chapter 4, ‘Execute Effectively’, is another very good chapter. Here is where readers learn that being an excellent teacher requires a lot of hard detail work. There’s the constant assessing of students during a lesson and then a lot of grading afterwards. I think a CM reading this will finally get a sense of what…
read more »Chapter 3 of Teaching as leadership is, surprisingly, quite good. Reading it made me even more frustrated about what happened in the first two chapters. It seems like chapter 3 is based on a completely different premise than the first two chapters. Chapters one and two seem to say, “Here are some practices we’ve found…
read more »Chapter 2 begins with some first hand accounts by highly effective teachers describing what they do to ‘invest’ their students. Some of the practices of the hero teachers are kind of risky. For example, Kwame Griffith writes on page 54: I build strong relationships with my students, and they called my home nightly to talk…
read more »Is this ‘investment’ safe? One thing I want to make clear is that my goal here is not simply to ‘tear apart’ this book, magnifying small errors and ignoring any of its merit. I know this book is going to influence the decisions of many new teachers, so I’m actually on the lookout for good…
read more »The very first principle described in ‘Teaching As Leadership’ is ‘Set Big Goals.’ All effective teachers do this, they say, which I agree with. Implied is the converse that everyone who sets big goals will be an effective teacher or that many teachers who were not effective would have been more effective had they set…
read more »Why the new TFA book could widen the achievement gap. I was excited to get my hands on the new TFA book ‘Teaching as leadership.’ For the past 19 years, I’ve been involved with TFA on many levels as a CM in 1991-1993, then eventually as an institute staff member in 1996. I’ve been a…
read more »My new book has been released. I’m excited to announce that ‘Beyond Survival — How To Thrive In Middle and High School For Beginning And Improving Teachers’ has finally arrived. Some of my blog entries on this site actually served as rough drafts for this publication. I’m very excited about this since this book collects…
read more »High Expectations? Not so fast. I think one of the most dangerously misinterpreted pieces of advice given to new teachers is “You must have high expectations.” The idea is that students will rise to whatever your expectations are, no matter how high they are. This sentiment is promoted by movies like ‘Stand And Deliver’ and…
read more »Why managment ‘systems’ don’t work in middle or high school. By management ‘system,’ I mean some kind of incremental consequence ladder that you keep track of on a chart or with a clothespin that you, or the students, move to keep track of where each student is. When you were in middle or high school,…
read more »Forced ‘investment’ is counterproductive. For the past (almost 20) years, I’ve observed the changes in the TFA teacher training philosophy. When I started in 1991, they were all about ‘portfolios,’ which were popular in the early 90s, but you don’t hear a lot about them anymore since they were not very practical. After my 4th…
read more »From 1995 to 2003, I presented a workshop at the TFA institutes about classroom management and the realities of the first year of teaching. The ideas were considered useful enough to be published as a book in 1999 (It’s called ‘Reluctant Disciplinarian’). That book was adopted by the New York City Teaching Fellows as required…
read more »Why two years? A lot has changed about TFA since it began in 1990. Of all the changes, the biggest one is TFA’s ‘mission.’ The original mission was not “One day all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” Instead there was a much more modest mission to fill…
read more »Does TFA value teachers? I know it’s a strange question. Of course they must. That’s why the program is called TEACH for America. But I’ve noticed some things throughout the years that make me wonder. I’m one of those TFA teachers who taught beyond the two years (I taught for 4 in Houston. Then I…
read more »Common teacher mistake #6 — Telling a misbehaving student that you are calling home. Calling parents is a great thing to do. Even for students whose parents don’t have a lot of control them, a parent call is still pretty annoying. In the beginning of the year, once I identify some distruptive students, I am…
read more »Is it better to succed at trying to be good or fail at trying to be great? This is a fundamental question that’s at the heart at my differences with TFA with regard to the training of the CMs. Looking over the curriculum and talking with CMs, I realize that TFA is holding up models…
read more »Common teacher mistake #5 — Making the first test too difficult. It’s important that all your students succeed on the first formal assessment. Even if you’ve conducted enough ‘informal’ assessments that they’ve convinced you that they’ve learned, the students need to convince themselves that they’ve learned, and for them that means success on a test.…
read more »Some signs of improvement. There were a lot of good comments on my last post. I’m all for ‘open exchange’ even if people don’t agree with me. I’m hearing a lot of people say that TFA is receptive to constructive criticism. If that’s the case, it’s a new thing which I’m glad about. My comments…
read more »The secret TFA ‘quit rate’ revealed. Let me first say that, despite my recent ‘suggestions’ for TFA, I think that it is a good organization. I criticize it the way a patriot of the U.S. might when it feels we’re going in a non-productive direction. They do a great job with recruitment and I think…
read more »Common teacher mistake #4: Too much enthusiasm on the first day. My first year, I was wrongly under the impression that my task on the first day was to ‘wow’ my class and get their attention. As good as this sounds at first, it’s the absolute wrong thing to do and here’s why: When you…
read more »Common teacher mistake #3. Overusing cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is a great tool when used properly and when used in moderation. Unfortunately some schools have ‘bought in’ to this method so much that teachers are actually mandated to seat their students in groups at all times. As a teacher, I’d like to be trusted to…
read more »By a somewhat frustrated 1991 alum
Teach For Us thanks our national sponsor for its generous support
test