Money Can't Buy Me Love
A recent consulting contract took me to Lake George, New York, to lead a group of educators in refining a graduate course on teachers as leaders. I've been wading around in teacher leadership -a concept that means decidedly different things to different people--for a couple of decades now, reviewing the literature, poking at theoretical models and trying to figure out how seminal ideas shape the field.
I have a large collection of favorite resources on teacher leadership--books, websites, articles, cartoons, blogs, even an iTunes playlist. This summer, I had to add a new artifact to view: the StudentsFirst.org website. An example of what hundreds of millions will buy you in media presence and influence, a place where compelling messages about teaching and learning go to be politically compromised, twisted to a kind of educationalNewspeak.
The veteran teacher leaders who visited the website were shocked. "Saving good teachers" has a whole different