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"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

Hey! where have you been? I hope u are not late upon reading this? I have waited patiently for one whole day without news of you; please send a reply as soon, I have been counting the time and that's what it must be. But a second day--I can see no reason for it, unless my servants have grown lazy or been captured by the enemy, nevertheless this script was no snail mail it was rather posted on my wall especially for you, I dare not put the blame on you, my beautiful angel: I am too confident of your affection--which is certainly due to me, for my love was never greater, nor my desire more urgent; that is why I repeat this refrain in all my letters...

Once upon a time Mathematics was easy to teach. A typical lesson would begin with a direction towards a particular page of the text book and would conclude with the ceremonial marking of the answers. This process was repeated over and over, year after year and in the end students would be able to repeat the required method with a satisfactory degree of accuracy.

We need to store knowledge in our outboard brains - not only in databases, intranets and on the Internet, but also in the experience and insights of our co-workers, colleagues and people networks. Knowing who to ask when confronting a challenge is absolutely vital in our interconnected world.

"Internet safety" is mostly about behavior in the blended world where kids live on and offline. How they treat themselves and others has a big impact on whether their experiences will be good or bad.  And it's true for adults as well. While there are unique aspects to protecting yourself online, many of the major online risk factors -- especially for children -- have their offline equivalents.

Rather than taking the time to get it right, we're using an outdated view of what kids need at school - dividing all the knowledge up into separate academic subjects and disciplines and then overloading those with content