In October, we lost one week of instructional time to administer district benchmarks, ostensibly to get a snapshot of progress made towards this year’s STAAR. Because so many students failed their STAAR tests last year, we(1) lost this week of instructional time due to students retaking exams, in some cases all 5 from last year.…

I just about hit the roof when this scene came up in Lincoln.  This is a great scene for history and Geometry classes. My warm-up question for this clip: what geometric axiom is Lincoln describing?

So, I’m in an unusual position as a TFA teacher: this is my third year of teaching(1) but my second year as a corps member.  This means I’m still getting classroom support which I would recommend really for all teachers for the first few years anyway. In San Antonio, Teach for America’s support model has…

In no particular order other than when I remembered them: 1. “Competency-Based Education in Iowa, Down the Pike it Comes” by Shawn Cornally at ThinkThankThunk.  Lest you believe that education reform means endless standardized testing to determine teacher pay, here’s an actual idea for education reform that is mind-blowing.  I read this in the morning…

I’ve been following the Supreme Court case of Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas with a lot of interest the past month.  The case involves a now-22-year-old now-Louisiana State University alum named Abigail Fisher who charges the University of Texas at Austin of denying her admission based on her racial background as a white applicant.…

Dearest Texas high school teachers, I just had the chance to go with a couple of collegaues and 16 students to the UIL Student Activities Conference at UT-Austin.  It was incredibly rad(1) and we all learned a lot about the different academic and speech events. This year as academic coordinator, I finally have coaches for…

I was making copies a couple of weeks ago and one of the social studies teachers asked me: “So how does it feel to be teaching this year?” I thought this was an odd question. “Uh, same as the last two years I’ve been teaching, I guess,” I replied. “I just mean that now you…

Before my summer is officially over tomorrow morning for my campus retreat, I’d like to join the fray and respond to some posts and comments in the TFU airspace. The topic is, broadly, how to best achieve reform. A couple of TFU bloggers have gone to the mat for consensus-building.  To borrow a turn of…

I wanted to write about TFA orientation while it is still fresh in my mind. I think it’s important to air our grievances as a matter of conscience.  Many if not most of TFA’s corps members can be described as politically progressive(1).  I think a great deal of the disillusionment that many corps members feel…

“Everyone here is so young and dynamic!” This was something I overheard at Institute last year, and it was definitely a declaration of pleasant surprise.  For each corps which is predominantly early 20-somethings, you go through most of your schooling in environments run by…old people.  Not old people, but people indeterminately older than you.  Then…