Comments on: I Am A Teacher

By: Be The Change | Avenue4Learning

Be The Change | Avenue4Learning — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 04:09:17 +0000

[...] be honest, I’ve written so much in the last few months about what I’ve heard from the media, Oprah, our President and his [...]

By: Best Advertising For Schools? | Connected Principals

Best Advertising For Schools? | Connected Principals — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:47:05 +0000

[...] though? Coincidentally, on the same day I read Sinek’s post, Michelle Baldwin also wrote an excellent post about how we need to advertise the great things that are happening in our schools. She does not [...]

By: You Should Read… (July 21, 2010) | The Principal of Change

You Should Read… (July 21, 2010) | The Principal of Change — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:45:32 +0000

[...] I Am A Teacher | Avenue4Learning – Michelle Baldwin’s blog is becoming one of my favourites to read as she is passionate in her writing and has some amazing ideas. This is a definite blog you should add to your reader and Michelle is a great conversationalist in her comment section. If you ever have a question or comment on one of her posts, she always comes back with something insightful that will really make you think and learn along with her. Here are some highlights from this post by a very passionate educator: [...]

By: Michelle Baldwin

Michelle Baldwin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:52:22 +0000

@Jason I can’t wait to see your blog. We DO need to be our own advocates, but more importantly, our students’ advocates! Keep me posted!

By: Michelle Baldwin

Michelle Baldwin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:51:08 +0000

@Mark I’m so glad to hear findingDulcinea will be promoting student work! That’s a great opportunity for kids!

There are some school districts that I know do not allow student work to be posted anywhere outside school-owned servers or unless the district has a contract with those sites. How would you propose to counter those restrictions? I’d be interested to hear those ideas.

By: Michelle Baldwin

Michelle Baldwin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:49:19 +0000

@Bonita in my state, we can’t have unions… we have Associations. Basically, we can’t strike. I wonder how much of the problem is unions protecting bad teachers or how much of it is the simple fact of documenting bad teaching. Sometimes, building administrators are too busy to effectively evaluate their teachers??
There are a lot of good evaluation systems out there that put ineffective teachers on assistance programs to improve. If they don’t, they are removed… maybe teacher evaluation AND union practices could use a little reinventing.

Great thoughts!

By: Michelle Baldwin

Michelle Baldwin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:41:53 +0000

@Krista that is definitely my least favorite phrase (Those who can’t…), followed immediately by “The three greatest things about teaching are June, July, and August.” I think when we treat teachers as people who don’t really want to be there and who perform the lowest level skill possible… wow. When did perception of teachers become so bad? Glad we have people like you who understand how important we all are in children’s lives!

By: Michelle Baldwin

Michelle Baldwin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:39:40 +0000

@mrshoneysett you touched on something I neglected to mention in the blog post, and that’s the public perception of the purpose of education. We ARE still mired in industrial age practices… one of the things I hope to do in bringing positive news to our community would also be to help people understand that we can’t keep doing what we’ve done for the last 50, 60, etc. years! Great point!

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:30:33 +0000

Michelle,

I think your blog post plus the previous three comments hit the proverbial nail on the head: in order to change the perception of teachers, teaching, and education we have to educate the public about what we really do. We have to advocate for ourselves. As teaching professionals we need to take responsibility for promoting the positive not just amongst our peers, but to the public.

I love your action plan. I think those are things we all can do to help promote the positive. I too have been confounded at the ignorance of the public as to what actually goes on in public schools and the issues that go along with educating the future. The best defense against ignorance is education.

I am planning to start a blog myself as part of a public education outreach. I will not only highlight positive things going on in my classroom, but also try to bring to light great things that are going on in other classrooms in order to dis-spell the myth that public education has remained stagnant (things are changing!) and to bring to light some of the struggles we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

It’s time to take the good things we know are happening in education to the streets!

Good luck in the new school year.

Jason Larson

By: | The Principal of Change

| The Principal of Change — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 09:41:22 +0000