What Teachers Are Talking About This Week
November 3, 2016 | Sign up to receive The Teachers Edition.
 Teacher’s Giant Gourd Wins Big Prize
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How
Principal Pipelines Work
Wallace
Foundation's Principal Pipeline Initiative reported that after four years, six urban school districts have
made significant progress in building pipelines to develop effective school
principals. Their new study, Building
a Stronger Principalship: The Principal Pipeline Initiative in Action, noted
direct benefits to novice school principals by raising the quality of their
training, hiring, evaluations, mentoring and other support during their crucial
first years on the job. Wallace also released its own Perspective entitled
"Building
Principal Pipelines: A Job That Urban Districts Can Do," which
includes considerations for both districts and states interested in building
pipelines.
 Ambassador Fellows
Program Expands to Counselors, Leaders in Schools
The next round of School Ambassador Fellows applications, starting
with the 2017-18 cohort of Fellows, will broaden to include other school
personnel that work with
students and other educators. Secretary King announced last week that the School Ambassador Fellowship will continue to target
teachers and principals, but will also be open to school counselors, assistant
principals, and others in the school setting. Fellows have informed wide-ranging policies and have been
instrumental in expanding conversations in the field that inform the guidance
the Department issues, as well impact ED’s outreach, tools, and products.
Including other school personnel will bring important perspectives to
discussions of federal policy and programs. ED
plans to open the application process for next year later this month.
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New York City
teacher Vivett Dukes speaks her
truth in this blog post about the importance of the voices of
teachers of color, and the pushback they experience when
sharing their reality. She says, “Teachers of color are ‘great’ — as long as we are not too
‘political.’” Dukes commits to continuing the conversation in order to better
serve all students (Dukes, New York School Talk).
 This year’s election season has many teachers scratching
their heads over how best to help students sort through the endless news,
fact-checkers, and other sources of information. One
teacher-librarian in New Hampshire
has the answer: “Teaching our students to research well is the most critical
skill we can help nurture in order to move the national dialogue to one that is
civil and based on reality,” says Angie
Miller. In fact, she says, doing so is our civic duty as teachers (Miller, The Contrarian Librarian).
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What happens if a principal decides students should be the agents of their own learning, and the schedule must shift accordingly? Principal Jerry Smith (Luella High School, Atlanta, Ga.) can tell you: it’s a new kind of education. But first, the master schedule had to change to include rotations and constant formative assessment. “‘The rotational model is meant to give kids some choice and to let them be in different settings, because we all know we perform differently in different settings,’” said Smith. Innovative approaches like this are important models for schools looking to serve students in new ways (Schwartz, KQED).
 5. “My joy in teaching is student growth and ownership of learning.” Teacher, Arizona
4. “My joy in being a principal is having a direct influence
over the vision and direction of a school and then seeing that vision become
reality.” Principal, Delaware
3. “I enjoy
helping my kids develop their own perspective about complex ideas and
problems.” Teacher, Texas
2. “My joy in teaching is connections between me and the kids and between them and art and
life and art and, and, and…” Teacher, Montana
1. “My joy in teaching is the moment in the year when you realize that you love your students
more than you do yourself, and your mutual respect and vulnerability makes you
a family.” Teacher, Washington, D.C.
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