Gayla's Model Classroom

We're hosting a model classroom constructed by Gayla Peek.  She'll be using materials from CTP to show off the possibilities for teachers, offices and waiting rooms!  We'll be posting all the pictures on Pinterest, so check it out there!

Better Schools, Better Teachers?

Bill Ayers takes on the common wisdom that the problem with schools is the teachers:

Back to School: An Interview With Bill Ayers
Friday 01 October 2010
by: Maya Schenwar, Executive Director, t r u t h o u t | Interview

You Get What You Pay For!

The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: July 27, 2010
A new study found students with better teachers learned more in kindergarten — and earned more as young adults.

The Sound of Gears, Shifting

I've been pretty quiet for the last 3 weeks - a combination of too much going on and nothing happening at all! The new year starts, and suddenly my mailbox is bursting with catalogs and new product sheets from my educational publishers. (There are lots of toy catalogs too, but I get to ignore them until February) For classroom teachers, there are new patterns, new cute designs and resources you never even knew you needed! Watch for them to arrive soon. Shifting from a December of toys to a January of education is always exciting... and exhausting.

How Do We Fix Our Schools?

"To fix our schools, we need teaching programs that are as rich in resources, interesting, high-reaching, and thoughtful as the young people we want to attract to the profession. Show me a school where teachers are smart, well-educated, skilled, and happy to be there, and I'll show you a group of children who are getting a good education."
-- Susan Engel, senior lecturer in psychology and director of the teaching program at Williams College, in an op-ed in The New York Times, November 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02engel.html?scp=2&sq=Susan%20Engel&st=cse

Top-Notch Teachers Found to Affect Peers

From Education Week:

Teachers raise their games when the quality of their colleagues improves, according to a new studyoffering some of the first evidence to document a “spillover effect” in teaching.

Authors C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann based their findings on an analysis of 11 years of data on North Carolina schoolchildren. The study is due to be published in October in American Economics Journal: Applied Economics, a peer-reviewed journal.

The authors and some independent experts said the study results are important, because they carry implications for school staffing practices and debates going on now at the national level over how to structure merit-pay plans for teachers.

Rep Day is Wednesday!

It's our biggest event of the year, and we start planning for it one year in advance! So what is it exactly? Rep Day is August 5th this year. It's an opportunity for teachers to interact with the publishers who produce classroom resources. These publishers (most if not all founded by teachers) work very hard to match their products to classroom teacher needs. They are not encumbered by the rules for Textbook publishers - they watch for trends and try to have materials that match the trends as soon as possible. Many times, they are so out in front of classroom trends that teachers don't even know resources exist. That's why the reps come out, to show the teachers what the latest resources look like.

And then there are the free bags! All year, boxes of products arrive specifically for our Rep Day bags. Last week we spent the good part of a day stuffing bags and getting them ready. The first 200 teachers to arrive get a bag. Many teachers take their bags back to school and hold a big swap with other teachers, so everyone ends up with items appropriate to their grade level.

On top of that, every company represented at Rep Day is on sale for the whole day. This year, because it is our 30th year, 30% off. That's a big deal.

Finally, we try to make it fun. Prizes, games, silliness. Let's face it, so many teachers in a small space is going to be crazy. We go with the crazy. Come on out and have a good time, get there early and enjoy yourself. It's only once a year!

Bulletin Boards for Teachers

We held our Back to School Bulletin Board workshop on Thursday. Gayla created an amazing bee themed display. We will have the complete workshop video available on the website soon. Here's a quick view:

Rep Day Movie!

A short clip of our big teacher event... it was fun!