THE QUALITIES OF GOOD SCHOOLS ARE NO SECRET.
We know what they are. So do your children. So do your children’s teachers.
The highly touted Finns do as well, after all, they developed their high quality system in the early 1990s’ taking the best of what we introduced in the US in the 60’s and 70’s:
We know it takes a dedicated community, involved parents, and quality teaching staff and programs that foster student engagement and involvement in learning.
We all have had teachers who have changed our lives for the better; who have inspired, who have challenged, mentored and in some saved our lives.
Miss Stafford was my 2nd grade teacher in 1956-7. When she passed away in 2009, a third of my second-grade class was at her memorial service.
Little did we know as seven-year-olds entering her class in the Bronx, that we were to become the happy guinea pigs for a life dedicated to helping children with all kinds of ‘personalities,’ as we called it then.
People marvel at what Rita did for us. They marvel at our reunions every Christmas time for ten years, and at our last reunion, forty-four years after our second-grade class.
They marvel about how we learned about civil rights by writing letters to president Eisenhower offering him suggestions about what to do about integrating the Little Rock, Arkansas schools. (We even received a reply and were quoted in the New York Times.)
A professor at St. John’s university for nearly forty years, she had become a world renown professor and authority on learning styles, a prolific author, and the recipient of thirty-one professional research awards.
She is but one of millions.
Taylor Mali is also a teacher. He wrote this famous poem now ripped off by a ubiquitous ad for teach.org (an organization like TFA selling a shortcut to teaching.
What teachers make
(abridged)
You want to know what i make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.
I make kids wonder.
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, THE QUALITIES OF GOOD SCHOOLS ARE NO SECRET. | DCGEducator: Doing The Right Thing: