The changing role of the teacher

What good reading! At The Blog of Proximal Development, an Unending Conversation unfolds. How much richer will a youngsters' education be in Konrad Glogowski's classroom. How much time do most classroom teachers take to reflect upon and change their practice? Just think how youngsters react when "My students write to construct knowledge. I refuse to correct attempts to construct understanding and improve cognitive development." No judgment, no red marks, just scaffolding to construct meaning. Pretty powerful--

How successful can an education law be that makes teachers the enemy?

Wow! What a question and what an answer! I thank Chris Lehman for pointing the way to this column. Unfortunately I hadn't read Michael Winerip until this, the last of his columns.

His writing brings to mind that of Kozol in his Shame of the Nation. He has spent lots of time in classrooms with teachers and students. And he suggests that with reauthorization of NCLB, there be provisions to mandate small class size. In addition,

We need a No Family Left Behind Law. This would measure economic growth of families and punish politicians in charge of states with poor economic growth for minority families.

And finally a new slogan from William Butler Yeats: "“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

What do you think of that?!