On Ron Thorpe and The Bridge Between Teaching and Leading
A few years ago, John Holland and I started this blog called The Future of Teaching [now defunct], dedicated to the themes of the book Teaching2030: What We Must Do … When we first started in 2009, we wanted a clearer vision for what teacher leadership looks like in our local and national context, not ruffling feathers (!) per se, but tackling the more complex subjects from the book.
Something changed around 2011.
I’m not sure whether it was because we gained notoriety with people we considered frenemies, or because we called out a whole host of organizations for not seeing teachers in the future of education, but we noticed how people responded to our candid calls for bridging the gap between those who teach and those who lead. So when John Holland posted this, I was like “Oh I see you.” The frustration with the National Board of Professional Learning Standards (NBPTS) was palpable with all of my National Board friends. We needed the best and brightest teachers at the forefront of discussing education reform, and many felt like NBPTS as an organization was working counter to that goal.
Still, how do you call out a man who had two hugely successful teaching conferences in New York City (WNET’s Celebration of Teaching and Learning) and hadn’t even started his first official day as president of the NBPTS? But it wasn’t just a regular guy. It was Ron Thorpe (full comment in the link):
“Since you have sent your thoughts in an open letter to me, I hope you don’t mind if I respond similarly. First of all, THANK YOU for writing what you did. The mere fact that you value such communication and took the time to fashion such a thoughtful set of observations is exactly what I’m hoping to find many times over — maybe 91,000 times over! — among National Board Certified Teachers. […]Let me end with what I think is your most compelling observation: the need for the National Board to fully exercise its commitment to that third goal of advancing ‘other education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in American schools.’ That is the area that mostOn Ron Thorpe and The Bridge Between Teaching and Leading | The Jose Vilson:
