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August 27, 2015 | Sign up to receive The Teachers Edition.
In This Issue
 Teachers Break Into Song
Teachers at ED are giving the green light to this awesome video of the teachers and staff in the West Des Moines (IA) Community School District who parody the lyrics of the song "One More Day" from Les Miserables at their welcome back assembly. They've prepared the classrooms, run out of planning time, joined their PLCs, and they have one more day until a new beginning. Don't miss watching them sing -- "there’s a new world to be taught; there’s a new world for the teaching. Do you hear the school bells ring?”
Teacher Leadership
 Teachers describe what it takes to be leaders in the classroom and why leadership matters.
Leaders by Design
Can-do teachers in this video from a four day National Network of State Teachers of the Year conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, explain why being a leader in the classroom is so important. The teacher voice matters, they say, because it's the voice of education; a way to become better at what we do; and how to get the right knowledge to our students. Today the teacher voice is in pockets, but tomorrow teachers want it to be everywhere--so the greatness of one classroom is part of the whole system.
 By Teachers, For Teachers: The Maine Arts Leadership Initiative
Teachers from the Maine Arts Leadership Initiative (MALI) who attended the July Teach to Lead Summit in Washington, DC recently brought together a group of teacher leaders in their state to share their workshop and logic model plans.
Teacher leader Kate Smith, who
attended the Teach to Lead Summit with the Maine team, wrote the
following:
"Imagine,
for a moment, a rock skipping across a pond and the impact it makes. That is
the image that came to mind as the Maine Arts Leadership Initiative met
yesterday for our annual 'Critical Friends Day.' The impact of our
professional development at the DC Teach to Lead Summit continues to influence
and shape our planning and execution of top-notch opportunities to give wings
to our emerging and veteran teacher leaders."
Learn more in a blog by MALI teacher leader Argy Nestor.
All Windows and No Walls in Southern Tioga, Pa.
The Southern Tioga School District of Pennsylvania, in partnership with BLaST IU 17, recently held a leadership lab to further develop a teacher leadership idea from the Boston Teach to Lead Summit.
The teacher leadership team sought to garner local support for their initiative "to support teacher leadership without teachers leaving the classroom, while causing changes in school culture in that teachers have a role in transforming teaching and learning."
The teacher leadership initiative is called, "Creating a Culture of All Windows, No Walls." Learn more (Williamsport, Pa. Sun-Gazette)
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School Leadership
In the EdWeek article "Organizations in Which Teachers Can Do their Best Work (Part II)," Marc Tucker argues that the most important job of a principal is to create a professional culture.
Here's an excerpt:
The key is to create for our teachers an environment—the school—that is a true professional workplace. By professional workplace, I mean the sort of work environment that accomplished engineers, accountants, architects, medical doctors and attorneys work in. This is critical for two reasons. First, because, to get the job done, we need to attract to teaching more of the high school graduates who would otherwise have been able to pursue high-status professional careers. Second, and more important, when professional workplaces are organized well, the people in them not only do their best work, but they work hard—all the time—to improve their skills and knowledge so they can get ever better at their work.
The Teaching Profession
Fewer Teachers Are Leaving the Profession
New teachers are far less likely to leave the profession than previously thought, according to new federal data. Ten percent of teachers who began their careers in 2007-2008 left teaching after their first year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But attrition then leveled off, and five years into their careers, 83 percent were still teaching (Brown, Washington Post).
This is good news for the profession and leads to the conclusion that earlier information was either based on estimates or that attrition rates have fallen, which may be due to better teaching conditions.
Other conclusions from the report:
- New teachers who are assigned mentors are more likely to continue teaching than those who are not assigned mentors. In 2008-2009, 92 percent of those who had first-year mentors were still teaching, compared to 84 percent of those without mentors. By 2011-12, 86 percent of those who had first-year mentors were teaching, compared to 71 percent who did not have mentors.
- Teachers with higher starting salaries — above $40,000 — were more likely to continue teaching than those with lower salaries.
(With Tongue in Cheek) Celebrities Acknowledge Teaching is Sexy
Hey, Teacher
The teachers at ED love these great
images of celebrities complimenting teachers for their acumen in the classroom.
Educators can check out our current favorite meme and find even more by searching "Hey, Girl
Teacher.”
Education Visionary
Kaisha M. Baker
Editor's note: The following is part of a series reporting on excellent African American educators. Educators were selected by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.
 Kaisha M. Baker is a reading
teacher at Patrick Henry Middle School in Houston,
Texas.
Why and how did you decide
upon a career in education?
I decided on a career in education because I wanted to stop African
American males from being a product of the education
to prison pipeline.
What is the one thing you
most celebrate about your students?
I am extremely proud of my scholars’ ability to articulate why both
education and character are vital to their success. As a result, my scholars
are now invested in both their academic and personal
growth.
In what ways do you
encourage parents, family members, and other caring adults to support the
learning and development of African American students?
I worked with a colleague to create a program on my campus called The Boys Collaborative to provide positive support
and/or reinforcement for students who have traditionally struggled with
behavior. Most of the boys in my program are African American because they need
support to reaffirm positive mindsets towards their
education and behavior. I encourage parents, family members, and other caring
adults to support the learning development of the boys in the collaborative by
soliciting volunteers to assist with the focus of The Boys Collaborative: character education, community service, leadership, and mentorship.
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 • Kareen Borders (2012 Regional Fellow and 2011 Classroom Fellow) met with policymakers and participated on a three-person
panel and facilitated a STEM round-table discussion about recommendations for STEM teacher
leadership as part of ED’s STEM Policy Advisory Convening to address STEM initiatives and solicit recommendations.
• 11 Lessons from Year 11. Geneviève DeBose (2011 Washington Fellow) wrote this reflective blog about what she learned by returning to the classroom after a 3-year hiatus in the policy world. DeBose is currently teaching middle school English language arts in the Bronx, N.Y. and serving as a commissioner on the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future. Her insights are memorable and inspiring.
• Patrick Kelly (2015 Classroom Fellow) penned this impressive blog about the importance of high school students taking on rigorous coursework. His blog coincides with news that ED has awarded $28.4 million in federal grants to help students access AP classes.
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Standards Vary Widely
Fourteen-year North Carolina teacher Karen von Klahr offers insights into an emerging strategy designed to help new teachers learn their craft: multi-leader classrooms (MLCs). In Cabarrus County, North Carolina, von Klahr shares a classroom with a colleague who is new to the profession, Emily Angles, who watches her teach and gains insights that Angles uses in the next class that she teaches. The article, published on Real Clear Education, includes an embedded video of the two teachers discussing how MLCs work.
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"We find evidence of systematic biases in teachers’ expectations for the educational attainment of black students. Specifically, non-black teachers have significantly lower educational expectations for black students than black teachers do when evaluating the same students. "
From "The alarming effect of racial mismatch on teacher expectations" (Gershenson, Brookings). The article goes on to clarify: "We cannot determine whether the black teachers are too optimistic, the non-black teachers are too pessimistic, or some combination of the two. This is nonetheless concerning, as teachers’ expectations likely shape student outcomes and systematic biases in teachers’ expectations for student success might contribute to persistent socio-demographic gaps in educational achievement and attainment."
Read the study published by researchers at Johns Hopkins and American universities (Gershenson, Holt and Papageorge).
Education Policy
Change and Challenge for Students with Disabilities. The Department recently published final regulations that require all states to cease using modified academic achievement standards and aligned alternate assessments after the 2015-16 school year. Instead, states must administer their general assessments aligned to college- and career-ready standards to the vast majority of students with disabilities. Research has shown that struggling students with disabilities make academic progress when provided with challenging instruction and appropriate supports.
We the People. September 17 is Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.
Educational institutions and grantees of the Department of Education are
required, by law, to acknowledge this date, which is also intended to “recognize all
who, by coming of age or by naturalization, have become citizens."
Making Meaning from the Latest Testing Polls. In a new PDK/Gallup poll, Americans say there is more to success than student test scores, but they are split on whether or not students should be allowed to opt out. Meanwhile, NPR reported this week on what they see as disparate results coming from the PDK/Gallup poll and one conducted by Education Next. According to NPR, the EdNext poll indicates two thirds of respondents support “annual federal
testing,” while the second shows that a similar ratio “thinks there is too much
testing in schools.” The piece notes that standardized testing makes up a major
tentpole of federal education policy, but have been controversial.
Resources for Educators
English Learners
Below are some helpful resources for teaching English language acquisition.
Directing
Middle School ELs. In this lesson, students will read an
excerpt from the novel Travels With
Charley by John Steinbeck about
a man who takes a road trip with his dog.
The featured activity is focused on the second paragraph of
the excerpt and illustrates strategies for
answering guiding questions with middle school English language learners.
Ongoing
Assessments. In this video, third grade teacher Samantha Kirch (Claremont Immersion School, Arlington, Va.) demonstrates
the ways she uses informal assessment to gauge student understanding, as well
as the kinds of support
offered to ELs who need some extra practice with the concept of drawing
conclusions.
Early Childhood
Storytellers Foretell Reading Success. There is a connection between African American
preschoolers’ storytelling abilities and the development of their early reading
skills, according to a study from the Frank
Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). Nicole Gardner-Neblett, FPG
researcher, and Iheoma Iruka, director of research and evaluation at the
Buffett Early Childhood Institute, looked at unsolved early developmental
questions by focusing on preschoolers’ skills with oral narratives and on the
same children’s emergent literacy at kindergarten. The study did not find a
link between oral narrative skills and emergent literacy for the overall
sample. However, when they broke down the findings demographically, they “found
that preschool oral narrative skills were a significant predictor of emergent
literacy for poor and non-poor African American kindergartners. But only for the African
American children.” Gardner-Neblett said.
 Earn While You Learn. In Eight Things to Know About Federal Work Study, students can learn more about ways to earn money to pay for college through part-time on (and
sometimes off) campus jobs. Work-study gives students an opportunity to gain valuable
work experience while pursuing a college degree.
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Back to School Resources
Freebies to Build Better Lessons
While there are a number of sources for free lessons that teachers can use in their own classrooms, the teachers at ED have found these to be particularly far reaching and effective.
 EngageNY curates a number of Common Core lesson plans for pre-K through 12th grade that can be searched by grade, subject and keywords. There are also curriculum maps and a rich video library.
BetterLesson houses 16,000+ Common Core, Next Gen science, and blended learning lessons created from Master Teacher projects. There are additional lessons created by the BetterLesson community, and there's a page with "new and popular" lessons of the week. It's easy to search the site. When we searched "ELA thesis statements," we found 15 lessons from Master Teachers and almost 97,000 from the community.
Grab and Go Mini-tasks for teachers to use with students immediately in the classroom are on the Literacy Design Collaborative website. These resources for back to school help teachers create literacy-rich assignments and courses across content areas.
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Ramping Up Reading. Mobilizing Volunteer
Tutors to Improve Student Literacy: Implementation, Impacts, and Costs of the
Reading Partners Program examined whether
participation in Reading Partners, a program that provides eligible elementary
school students with tutoring from volunteers, had an impact on reading achievement. The authors (R.T. Jacob, C. Armstrong, and J.A. Willard) reported that
the Reading Partners program led to improvements in reading fluency, reading
comprehension, and sight word efficiency.
 Wisdom from educators heard by ED
5. Reflecting on the importance school played in his future: "I grew up in a tough neighborhood. Education was life or death for me.'” (Teacher, Oakland, Calif.)
4. "Teaching is not altogether complex, but it is very hard." (Teacher, Boston, Mass.)
3. "If technology is your solution and you don’t know your
problem, you have a problem." (Principal, California)
2. "We only matter when we Serve. So Serve
well and matter the most." (Principal, Philadelphia, Pa.)
1. "When our fire marshal suggested that we get rid of our wooden bookcases in favor of metal ones, we wanted to ask, 'You do know the books are made of paper, right?'" (Teacher, Texas)
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