By Teachers, for Teachers
This post was written by Randi Weingarten and Louise Rogers
Teaching is an extraordinarily complex and challenging enterprise, made even more so by new academic standards to help students develop 21st-century skills and by years of harsh budget cuts. It can be reassuring for teachers to know that, for virtually every educational challenge they encounter, a fellow teacher somewhere undoubtedly has solved it. But it also can be frustrating: Who has come up with a solution, what is it and where can it be found?
There is an illogical contradiction to being a teacher in the United States. Teaching, in this country, is a knowledge profession largely without organized systems for teachers to share knowledge, challenges, ideas and support.
That's not the case in most countries with high-performing education systems, such as Finland and Singapore, which recognize the value in teachers learning from and helping each other. Some