On June 1st I was hired to a new job at a bilingual French/English private school as a third grade teacher.  Although I was happy at the charter school where I was working and proud of the work that I did this past school year, the fact that I was only a long term sub…

I finished up my role as a collaboration teacher at my school today, and gave my final Japanese and French lessons to two different classes.  As a final presentation to the students, I showed them some of the calligraphy that I made while I was studying it in Japan.  I have a few works I…

There has been a lot of debate for the past several years over whether or not to use “value added” data as a metric for evaluating teachers.  Washington D.C. is already making 50% of a teacher’s evaluation dependent on their value added rating.  I thought I’d weigh in on the debate, as I happen to…

I freely admit that I don’t understand how to run a multi billion dollar software company.  I’m still intrigued, therefore, that Bill Gates continues to believe that he is qualified to make education policy. In today’s New York Times, Sara Mosle discusses a plan from Gates, along with Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan, that would…

During my interview for Teach for America in the spring of 2007, the interviewer asked me to explain what I felt was the cause of the achievement gap.  I replied that I thought schools serving primarily low income and minority students were educating children who faced severe challenges in their lives due to poverty, and…

My early days in Japan with the JET Program were full of cultural misunderstandings.  I brought with me a lot of assumptions about how schools should work and how students should learn that simply did not mesh with the Japanese teachers’ views.  I had to unlearn a lot of things and be willing to understand…

Teachers, like any other profession, should be evaluated and held accountable for their job performance.  I don’t honestly know anyone who doesn’t believe this.  If you listen to many of the ed reformers though, you’d think otherwise.  I found this rather bizarre tweet from a StudentsFirst blogger in my Twitter feed today, retweeted by StudentsFirst…

This month I’ve gotten the rare chance to spend Sunday evenings without planning or preparation.  After finishing my second long term substituting assignment at my school in March, I become a collaboration teacher and day to day sub wherever I’m needed.  On collaboration days (Tuesday and Thursday) I teach World Languages and Culture to students…

It’s been an interesting week in education news.  Michelle Rhee is taking heat for her failure to acknowledge a memo regarding cheating in her district, and Ben Chavis’s American Indian Public Charter School had its charter revoked by the Oakland Unified School District because of Chavis’s money embezzlement.  It comes to my mind that so…

Teach for America is coming to my hometown.  Starting in the 2013-2014 school year, they will be bringing in a small group of about 30 corps members to test the waters and see if they can develop a good working presence in San Diego.  I was initially wary when I learned the news. San Diego…

The 2012-2013 school year has been a blur; with only forty days left, it still feels like I’ve barely gotten into it.  I’ve spent the entire year in a substitute role at my charter school, and I’m eager- or maybe desperate- to find a job as a full time teacher, hopefully at the same school. …

Most new teachers, at some point in their training, get a chance to watch skilled teachers teach.  Although providing few opportunities during institute itself, TFA does mandate that its inductees log a certain number of hours of classroom observation.  Once I switched from TFA to a traditional credentialing program, observing the master teacher prior to…

In August of last year I returned to California from Japan after completing two years on the JET Program.  The transition was anything but easy.  First, I returned to the same moribund economy that had caused me to take my job in Japan in the first place.  As September approached and I had already sent…

Teach for America loves to sugarcoat the first year.  Rather than a realistic portrayal of the challenges that face new corps members, TFA has consistently opted for positive propaganda over reality.  Since reading the blog posts of new corps members entering the corps this year, it has become clear to me that this hasn’t yet…

Five years ago was the beginning of my strange teaching career that started at the Los Angeles TFA institute and has brought me here to Kobe, Japan.  In that time I’ve read dozens and dozens of books about teaching.  Since starting this blog though, I developed a keen interest in revisiting one of the first…

I’ve been teaching English in Japan for the past two years.  My time here is ending soon, and I’m hoping to make my return to teaching in the US in the fall.  I have a team teaching role in Japan, so I’m looking forward to having my own classroom.  There are a lot of surface…

During my year teaching with TFA, I taught my group of about twenty-five students for the entire day.  I taught them every subject. For the duration of their fifth grade year, my ability to teach those subjects determined how well my students would learn them.  If I was an incompetent teacher, my incompetence would affect…

After leaving TFA at the end of the 2007-2008 school year, I chose to remain hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District and become a substitute teacher.  Although I had failed to make significant gains with my students as a corps member, I resolved that as a substitute I could at least perform the…

My TFA censorship drama ended yesterday.  The administrator of the facebook page who had censored my posts and banned me from the page, expressed to me in an email that he had gone against his own values and felt very guilty for having done so.   He told me that my voice was welcome and necessary…

On my list of books that have defined the way I think about education, Diane Ravitch’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” is high up.  She effectively eviscerates No Child Left Behind and the movement to base teacher evaluations and compensation on student test scores.  It was therefore no small joy…

I received an email this morning from the TFA recruiting director at my alma mater.  He wanted alums to like the university’s TFA page on Facebook and give advice to new corps members about to start institute.  I was excited to give any advice to help new corps members avoid the disasters of my first…

Institute is beginning soon for 2012 corps members, and I want to wish all new CMs good luck. I’d like to offer some quick thoughts on how TFA can improve its institutes, and brief suggestions on where corps members can turn if they don’t feel like they are getting what they need out of the…

In 2007, I began teaching elementary school in Los Angeles, in what I expected to be the beginning of a long career.  I had always intended to go far beyond the two year commitment, and joined TFA primarily to be a part of the community, or the “movement” as it’s often called.  I never expected…