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Teachers in Kenya are demanding that the government increase spending on education The Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) has given the government 2 weeks to enter talks on overdue allowances to cover housing, commuting and health as well as extra allowances for teachers working in the most difficult areas. These were all promised at the end of a dispute in 1997. They are also demanding increases for heads. senior teachers and special needs teachers and the employment of early years teachers. The union says that if Kenya is to have good guality education for all, the government needs to invest $4.78 billion.

Teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico mounted a peaceful demonstration against the president's visit to the town Police fired tear gas and the military live rounds at protesters from section 22 of the teachers' union SNTE - CNTE who were protesting against the visit of Felipe Calderon. Police  also  attacked the teachers' union building and deployed snipers on rooves. Up to 20 teachers have been injured.

Teachers lead Democracy Struggle in Swaziland

Teachers in the Fukishama region of Japan have joined other trade unionists in protests against the continuing nuclear emergency The teachers who are members of the Fukushima Prefecture Teachers Union are fighting to hold the government and the power company TEPCO responsible and accountable for the nuclear disaster in Japan which is cantaminating food, causing thousands of workers to lose their jobs and their livelihoods and not least means that many thousands of children are attending schools with radiation levels much higher than the previously accepted safety standards.

Scores of professors and researchers from 16 universities throughout the Chicago metropolitan area have signed an open letter to the city's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, and Chicago school officials warning against implementing a teacher evaluation system that is based on standardized test scores. This is the latest protest against "value-added" teacher evaluation models that purport to measure how much "value" a teacher adds to a student's academic progress by using a complicated formula involving a standardized test score. Researchers have repeatedly warned against using these methods, but school reformers have been doing it in state after state anyway.

It is evident that the sources of these problems must be sought in earlier grades, and even in the experiences of Ugandan pre-schoolers. Compare them with what I describe at http://replacingtextbooks.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/higher-mathematics-for-children/ for children in the US. There are excellent materials on fractions online. See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Open_Education_Resources for links to some sites that have as many as 100,000 e-learning resources available. Even if students do not have computers, teachers who can access these lessons can adapt them for the classroom or for individual practice, and share them with teachers who do not have Web access. On the issue of fractions, see also http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Tutorials/Fractions for an approach that requires no computers, but will be enhanced with software activities fairly soon. If your students have trouble with these exercises, and you can tell us why, we will work with you and them to develop materials that meet their needs. You will also have to tell us if there are circular Ugandan foods that we can use in lessons for children who are not familiar with European/American cakes, pies, and pizza. ^_^ When you have a 4.1% success rate on a particular topic, and thus a 95.9% failure rate, it cannot be said that individual teachers have failed to recognize individual difficulties. This is evidence that the entire curriculum is misdesigned. I assume that this is some part of the holdover colonial education system from before independence, designed originally for European children, with no relation to the prior experi

Teachers in Mexico City are asking teaching unions from around the world to sign a letter supporting their right to elect their own leaders Section IX of the Mexican teachers' union SNTE is calling on the government to allow them to exercise their right to elect their own leaders, now that the courts have ruled that the executive committee appointed by Esther Gordillo (who appointed herself President for life) is unlawful.

Teacher Leader Model Standards

Research that helps us pinpoint the causes of burnout gives us guidance for how to avoid and combat it. In his landmark book, Beyond Burnout (Routledge), Cary Cherniss used intensive case study research to identify factors most likely to lead to teacher burnout:

School districts across the US are creating new teacher evaluation systems that are supposed to better identify ineffective teaching and, in some cases, tie a teacher's rating to student performance. My quarrel is not with the evaluation systems themselves however. My quarrel is with how they are being implemented. Here are three of the most common mistakes I've seen:

Primary Teachers in Pakistan threaten Suicide over unpaid Salaries

Teachers unions have joined calls for mass protests in Algeria on February 12th to demand regime change