Teaching English in Central California

The title is a little misleading, because it is not necessarily "brief." However, it offers a history of teaching English. In case anyone needed more of a historical background of how teaching English was developed. The article explains how the trend shifted from the teacher as an omniscient know-it-all, to a classroom focused on the students.

Video booktalks: a "movie" trailer, for books! Includes lexile level, genre, and suggested reading level for each book.

Crisis in American Education? This writer doesn't think so.

This is a very long collection of articles about tenure in California, and how difficult it is to fire a tenured teacher, even in the face of misconduct.

I have not fully explored this but it seems to be an online magazine devoted to using Tech in classrooms. It some sort of Magazine. Some really good articles in each issue.

A look at just how costly it is to remove a tenured teacher.

Bilingual Education proves successful for some schools

Teach rhetoric and banish the classics from HS English classes? What do you think?

This is the Expository Reading and Writing Course that many of us are adopting. It actually doesn't have to be an either/or. Yes there is less literature and more expository writing; however, most of us also incorporate some literature. I teach Things Fall Apart in a Socratic Seminar format, Macbeth in a more traditional format, and some poetry. The modules from the Expository Reading and Writing Binder are open-ended and need some updating, but they give students an excellent variety of college-like readings and writing instruction. Students learn to critically read passages and interpret their own thinking in writing. The writing instruction is key and not as well defined as the reading instruction in the modules. Teachers need to creatively design the lessons to prepare students to write argument with ease.

What are national standards

This articles examines the need for Creative teaching as opposed to Scripted teaching. The article argues that the learning generated from creative teaching is harder to quantify on standardized testing where as the lower order skills taught through scripted lessons are easier to measure.

Alan Greenblatt explains how teacher tenure has changed in different states and whether or not teachers still need protection.

Marc Bernstein opposes teacher tenure and describes how the quality and effectiveness of educators is how administrators should determine its staff.

This article is a little older but I felt the experience was important. Dirk Koorstra explains his experience as an educator and how teacher tenure has protected him in difficult processes.

This article follows the experiences of a first year teacher in a school that utilizes scripted curriculum

This article is more positive about value added measures of teacher performance than many other sources I've seen.

The article looks at the "local" ways that Rhee makes a difference, and the way that she may be too harsh.

Websites useful to educators.