If the greatest joy that comes from retirement is that I no longer have to attend faculty meetings, the second greatest joy is that I no longer have to grade student papers. I know, I know: commenting on student writing is a key component of being a good teacher, and there's a real satisfaction that … Continue reading Robin Lee Mozer — I Would Rather Do Anything Else than Grade Your Final Papers
This post is a reflection on one particular component of the practice of teaching — the need for each teacher to construct an authentic and effective teacher persona. In the first part of the post, I draw on a section from chapter five of my book, Someone Has to Fail. In the second part, I explore the … Continue reading Teacher Persona
This is an essay that is published in my recent book, Being a Scholar: Reflections on Doctoral Study, Scholarly Writing, and Academic Life. For years, I'd been thinking about writing a piece about college teaching and I finally put it down on paper a couple years ago. Everyone complains about the quality of college teaching, … Continue reading College Teaching Is Better than You’d Expect
This post is a classic essay by David Cohen. The version I'm reproducing here comes from a conference paper he prepared for the Benton Center at University of Chicago. Here's a link to the original. An earlier and shorter version was published as a chapter in 1988 in a book edited by Philip Jackson, Contributing … Continue reading David Cohen — Teaching Practice: Plus Ca Change
This post is a piece I wrote for the 1989 book, American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work, edited by Don Warren. Here's a link to a PDF of the original. A slightly different version appeared as a chapter in my 1997 book, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning. I agreed to … Continue reading Career Ladders and the Early School Teacher: A Study on Inequality and Opportunity
This is a piece I wrote as the foreword to a book by J. M. Beach — Can We Measure What Matters Most? Why Educational Accountability Metrics Lower Student Learning and Demoralize Teachers — published in 2021 by Rowman and Littlefield. For me, this was a chance to provide a brief summary of my thoughts about … Continue reading The Problems that Accountability Metrics Pose for Schooling
In this piece, I explore a major problem I have with recent educational policy discourse — the way we have turned teachers from the heroes of the public school story to its villains. If students are failing, we now hear, it is the fault of teachers. This targeting of teachers employs a new form of … Continue reading Targeting Teachers
[This essay is now a chapter in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling.] Professionals, by definition, are more skilled than amateurs in any given field, but they both experience failure. And to an average observer, they appear to fail in similar ways. The practitioner is moving along nicely in carrying out his or her … Continue reading Failing Like a Professional: Professionals Choke, Amateurs Panic
This post is a piece I published in 2021 in Kappan. Here’s a link to the original. It is now a chapter in my new book, The Ironies of Schooling. In this essay, I explore an issue about the “grammar of schooling” that bothered me over the years as I was teaching about this subject. … Continue reading The Dynamic Tension at the Core of the Grammar of Schooling
This post is an essay about academic writing by Steven Mintz, which was originally published in Inside Higher Ed. Here's a link to the original. It speaks for itself. January 23, 2024 Writing With Style, Force, Flair and Impact How to get your students to love language and take pleasure in writing. By Steven Mintz Hamlet … Continue reading Steven Mintz — Getting Students to Write with Style, Flair, Force, and Impact
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 