How to Survive Education Reform Without Losing Your Job, Your Ideals, or Your Mind
About a year and a half ago, The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) contacted me to ask if I’d write something for the new teacher edition of the magazine Educational Leadership. So I wrote something called ‘The Don’ts And Don’ts Of Teaching’
about the sorts of mistakes that new teachers are prone to, and this piece seemed to be appreciated by a lot of people.
about the sorts of mistakes that new teachers are prone to, and this piece seemed to be appreciated by a lot of people.Then, about six months ago they asked if I’d write something for the back to school issue for this year. I thought about it and then wrote this piece about ‘How To Survive Ed Reform.’ At first I was reluctant to submit it to them since I was worried it might seem contrary to my ‘the sky is falling’ posts about the dangerous side effects of the corporate reform movement. But I submitted it anyway because I had come up with one of the greatest last sentences of anything I’ve ever written.
Well, of course they wanted to change my very lengthy title ‘How to Survive Education Reform Without Losing Your Job, Your Ideals, or Your Mind’ and my awesome last line. I was able to convince them to restore the title, but not the last line.
So here I’ll publish the original unedited essay, though you can see the edited one on their site. I hope this isn’t too rosy of a picture. They wanted something to lift the spirits of the troops a little, and I hope this accomplishes this without undermining any of the work I did over the years in exposing all the negative consequences of ed reform dictated by people who don’t understand education. I do think that corporate reform is very dangerous, but I also have always maintained that it is temporary.
. I hope this isn’t too rosy of a picture. They wanted something to lift the spirits of the troops a little, and I hope this accomplishes this without undermining any of the work I did over the years in exposing all the negative consequences of ed reform dictated by people who don’t understand education. I do think that corporate reform is very dangerous, but I also have always maintained that it is temporary.How to survive ed reform without losing your job, your ideals, or your mind
A modern day Paul Revere could ride through the halls of your school calling “The common core is coming, the common core is coming” causing the collective adrenaline of all teachers, but particularly veterans, to spike. Though we have all lived through various waves of ‘reform,’ we’ve shaken them all off, possibly saving a useful morsel of this one or a bite of that one but, in