Welcome

Welcome to my blog! This is a place where I voice my opinions about education, teaching, and the future of our public schools. I will also share things that I have learned about teaching over the years.

I am writing this blog as a professional teacher rather than as a political commentator, and my own political views will be kept out of things as much as possible. I would like to see a revolution among teachers, but I am not talking about a politics. Instead, I am talking about pedagogy. I would like to see more teachers taking a critical look at the foundational assumptions upon which most of our traditional teaching practices are built. While some of our age-old ways of teaching are based upon solid evidence of success, there are far too many common teaching practices which fly in the face of psychological research.

Many of the things I will be talking about are not my own ideas, nor are they particularly new in the world of education. Much of what I have been implementing in my own classes over the last three years comes from the work of Dr. Robert Marzano. For some time now, Marzano has tried to sift through the enormous volume of published research in education in order to present teachers with the strategies that have been proven the most effective. Reading his book The Art and Science of Teaching was the start of my own teaching revolution after ten years of doing things the old-fashioned way. I am not a paid spokesperson for Robert Marzano, but I think he is one of the most important voices in education reform around.

My ultimate goal is to get teachers to talk about pedagogy in a critical, professional manner. In the end, even if teachers disagree, such dialogue is a necessary part of establishing a strong professional community.