Joel Klein wrote an essay in the Atlantic about the reasons for the current problems in the primary educational system.
posted by reenum on Jun 15, 2011 - 79 comments

Louis Menand of the New Yorker looks at the competing theories of education: that it is to create more well-rounded individuals vs. teaching someone what they need to know to get a job.
posted by reenum on Jun 13, 2011 - 68 comments

In the wake of ever deeper budget cuts, public schools have begun charging students for basics, such as registering for honors or elective classes.
posted by reenum on May 26, 2011 - 100 comments

Want to fire a teacher in the LA Unified School District? Be prepared to spend several years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Jul 15, 2010 - 139 comments

Dan Meyer is a high school math teacher with a clever idea: make math about the real world. On his blog, he writes about classroom management, the real skills of teaching, labels, information design, and assessment.
posted by l33tpolicywonk on May 14, 2010 - 30 comments

Raffaella Traniello (Vimeo profile) is an educator and multimedia enthusiast who describes herself as "Animation lover. Linux user. Hungry for clever beauty." She's also committed to bringing free/open source software to the classroom. Her efforts are remarkable in that she achieves pleasant results with community-developed software and involves school children in the production process. Since many users of Linux video editing software -- especially the Cinelerra software package -- are quickly turned off by its opaque interface, Raffaella has also created Cinelerra for Grandma, in which she covers everything from the basics to more difficult subjects like animation.
posted by circular on Mar 10, 2010 - 26 comments

As part of his Masters project at Ohio University, Francis Gardler created a series of ten video clips about photographer and teacher Dave LaBelle. In clip 5, Dave talks about the empathy and compassion needed to photograph other human beings. The title of the first clip: “Connecting The Eye With The Heart” sums up the series perfectly. [via] [more inside]
posted by netbros on Feb 7, 2010 - 2 comments

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - an overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, and literature. It is designed to prepare K-12 teachers to approach this sensitive topic. The content is presented from three perspectives: Timeline, People, and The Arts. Produced by the University of South Florida.
posted by netbros on Aug 29, 2007 - 7 comments

Love on Campus: Why We Should Encourage an Eroticism (of the Mind) Between Professor and Student. Yale English professor William Deresiewicz argues that the newly-emerged stereotype of professors as "pompous, lecherous, alcoholic failures" is in the main due to our culture's fear of and inability to understand the true intimacy between professor and student: that of the mind. Cf. controversial Hindu teacher-student relationships, the same in Christianity, or merely observe Oscar Wilde: "I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself."
posted by shivohum on Jul 13, 2007 - 50 comments

Teacher gone wild. Again. While not as crazy as this, (discussed here previously) Mrs. Miller definitely needs some therapy. Perhaps these 4th graders should have had camera phones like these kids... Though at least the U.S. isn't as tolerant of teachers behavior as Moroccans. Frankly my dear, they don't give a damn!
posted by Debaser626 on Apr 12, 2005 - 50 comments

What's wrong with this teacher's comments? A Pasadena HS teacher circulated a letter with his complaint that African American students at the school are the reason for bad behavior and low test scores. He's now suspended...rightly? More inside...hoping to keep this civil, too...(thanks to Jim Romenesko)
posted by serafinapekkala on Oct 23, 2002 - 67 comments

Damon Knight, teacher [1922-2002]. You made us all write to the very best we could and then you made us try for better. Damon, thank you, and we'll do our best to pass it on.
posted by realjanetkagan on Apr 17, 2002 - 11 comments