Minnesota Teacher of the Year

In early October, the Pearson Foundation brought all the 2008 National State Teachers of the Year to New York City to make two-minute videos titled “Why We Teach”. Each Teacher of the Year created a short speech and brought some photos to a Manhattan studio. We spent an afternoon making our videos with the [...]

The quality of a school system directly impacts home values and overall community quality, and after-school programs are one of the many reasons. Every year I see the difference that sports, music, and arts programs can make in kids. Occasionally I hear opponents of the upcoming school referendums in Minnesota say that we don’t need [...]

In education, we take pride in good answers. But in order to get good answers, you’ve got to have good questions. Bad questions can cause all sorts of problems. Take, for example, the education question in the final debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. In case you missed it, here is the lead-in: [...]

I understand that the financial crisis stands in the forefront of voters’ minds, but seriously, couldn’t education at least have made an appearance in the latest CNN Election Issue Tracker? Is it really buried in the 2% of the “Other” category? And education loses to illegal immigration? Sigh.
I’d be interested in seeing a poll that [...]

I wanted to extend a special note of thanks to our local ING Investments office. A few weeks ago they sent me an email telling me that I had been selected to be the recipient of their school supplies drive for this year. It turns out that every year their office collects random supplies from [...]

No matter how many years I teach, I always wake up well before I need to during the first week back to school. Last night I set my alarm for 6:00A.M., but this morning I snapped wide awake at four in the morning, ready to go. I sat there for an hour trying to fall [...]

A few weeks ago I stumbled onto this video:

The piece speaks for itself, but it has to be one of the more uplifting things I’ve seen in a long time. It’s hard to look at the clip and not feel that somehow, some way, we’ll eventually get things right. I also think there are a [...]