Whenever possible I have tried to include the home pages, social media or Twitter accounts of educators if they existed.  Here is my list in no particular order. Enjoy and don’t forget to comment!

Alfie Kohn

One of the leading progressive voices on education, Alfie Kohn is a prolific writer and speaker who challenges much of the prevailing American thought and policy on education and parenting. He rejects the culture of test-driven accountability and the inflexible emphasis on classroom discipline, especially in poor urban schools.

He frequently criticizes the use of behaviorism as the dominant approach used for motivating children, teachers and workers in general. More controversially he has written against homework and even grades.

Interestingly, Kohn and another educator on this list, John Taylor Gatto, had a minor war of words over their educational philosophies.  I cannot find Gatto’s original accusations but if anyone else can find it, please send me a link.

Alfie Kohn on the web:

You can visit Alfie Kohn’s website for more information about him and to check out some of his articles. Kohn is also a prolific speaker so you can catch several of his talks on YouTube. Fortunately, you can also follow Kohn on Twitter where he updates regularly.

Sir Ken Robinson

If one is even remotely interested in education it is difficult not to have heard of the charismatic Ken Robinson, especially after his immensely popular Ted video Why Schools Kill Creativity.

Robison, whose background is in drama education, principally tackles the themes of creativity and innovation, lamenting the marginalization of the arts in schools. His report for a UK commission on education titled, All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (PDF) was extremely well received.  Robinson’s popularity keeps him in high demand as a speaker and advisor to both business and government.

Sir Ken Robinson on the web:

You can visit Ken Robinson’s website which is updated regularly and web 2.0 savvy.  You can also see videos of Robinson on Youtube as well as follow him on Twitter.

Jonathan Kozol

Jonathan Kozol is not only an educator but a tireless activist and prolific writer.  He began his involvement in the civil rights movement after being fired for teaching a Langston Hughes poem.

Common themes he deals with in his books and activism are the economic inequalities and de facto segregation that exist in public schools. He also criticizes the patronizing and rigid approach towards teaching inner city students when compared to students in privileged communities. He stresses the importance of empathetic, student-centered environments dedicated to encouraging self- expression and discovery.

In reaction to the testing-based No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) he founded the Education Action! group.

Jonathan Kozol on the web:

Unfortunately Kozol does not have a strong web presence but you can find several talks by him on YouTube. There are also many articles by him scattered on the internet.  Two highlights are a piece he did on Salon titled Teachers be Subversive and one on the Huffington post titled Why I am Fasting.  Also you can see the video of a talk on his latest book Letters to a Young Teacher.

John Taylor Gatto

A 30 year veteran of the New York City public schools, John Taylor Gatto is an outspoken critic of American education. While many may dismiss his indictment of public schooling as extreme, his list of accomplishments is hard to ignore. Winner of the New York City and New York State teacher of the year awards, he used the occasions to give speeches railing against the state of education to standing ovations.

Though he strongly advocates homeschooling, there is still much that a conventional teacher can take away from his approach. Gatto’s teaching method is a combination of strong libertarian philosophy and what educational professionals would call constructivism and situated cognition. His techniques for motivating students include engaging them deeply with the world outside the classroom as well as encouraging and supporting student initiatives. In dealing with intransigent school bureaucracy he suggests an approach he calls, “guerilla teaching.”

John Taylor Gatto on the web:

Gatto’s website doesn’t look like it’s been updated in a while but it still has some goodies like the full text from his book The Underground History of American Education.

If you want to see Gatto in action he is also a prolific speaker and there are plenty of videos of him on YouTube.

Deborah Meier

A progressive teacher in the tradition of John Dewey, Deborah Meier, is the founder of the small schools movement.  Based in New York City, she personally founded several small public schools to improve inner-city education on the principles of providing choice and, most importantly, the democratic goal of self-governance.  Based on this approach, teachers, parents and students would meet and make important decisions regarding the school.

Her successes have inspired two documentary films about her schools. She also remains a prolific writer and commentator on national education which she follows closely.  Her latest article is “When is Achievement Really Achievement” where she provocatively says, “only secretly rebellious teachers who have ever done right by our least advantaged kids.”

Deborah Meier on the web:

Though the website looks is outdated, Meier’s main site seems to be updated regularly. You can also visit her blog and check out some of her talks on YouTube. You can also follow Meier on Twitter where she frequently updates her status.

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger

Lave and Wenger formulated two important and closely related theories on education: situated cognition and communities of practice. Situated cognition, simply put, is that people learn best while doing. Their test case for this was an interesting experiment demonstrating that house wives capable of doing comparative math for price shopping were unable to do the same math as successfully in classrooms.

Their second theory, communities of practice, describes the learning dynamic present in groups with similar educational or professional interests and how it is successful in promoting the learning and professional development of members.

Both these theories make a strong case for the expanded use of internships in education.

Lave and Wenger on the web:

Unfortunately, neither Jean Lave nor Etienne Wenger have a strong presence on the web.  Wenger occasionally contributes to the Digital Habitats blog.  You can also find Wenger on Twitter though he doesn’t seem to update often.

James P. Comer

Comer, a medical doctor by training, sensitive to the alienation and despair of impoverished communities, turned to the study of child psychiatry and public health with a mind to find a solution to some of the poor social conditions in schools.

In the early 70’s Comer developed a series of strategies to reverse underdevelopment in two of the worst performing elementary schools in New Haven, CT. The programs’ goals included developing relationships between teachers and students as well as increasing trust and collaboration with educators and parents thus closing the gap between school and home. An elected governance team was established, led by the principal, that included teachers, parents and a mental health worker to make important decisions.

Furthermore, several diverse extra-curricular activities were organized to foster cooperation and trust between teachers, students and parents that gradually created positive relationships and better social adjustment.

This became know as the Comer Method and 10 years later fourth grade students were performing at or above grade with exemplary attendance rates and a drastic decrease of behavioral problems. Since then the Comer Method has been adopted by the entire New Haven Public Schools and several other districts around the country.

Comer’s greatest legacy is demonstrating that discussions on improving education must be broader than a myopic focus on academics and include strategies focusing on psychological and socio-economic realities of students.

James P. Comer on the web:

Unfortunately James Comer does not much of a strong web presence at all. The homepage for the Comer School Development Program can be found on a Yale school of Medicine website.  On the website is a link to their never-updated Facebook page and a YouTube channel with all of six uploaded videos.

Ira Shor, Peter McLaren and Henry Giroux

Ira Shor, Peter McLaren and Henry Giroux are the most prolific exponents and contributors to Paulo Friere’s critical pedagogy. Though undoubtedly highly political and radical, critical pedagogy emphasizes student empowerment, a critical approach to authority and encourages consciously connecting the reality of education with student life and the wider society. While controversial, elements of this approach can be used practically to engage students with their own educational environment and give it more legitimacy.

Ira Shor lives critical pedagogy in his classroom by requiring students to participate in generating the curriculum, establishing classroom rules and determining the means of assessment. McLaren and Giroux are prolific writers who have won many awards for their work.  These three continue to represent and expand upon the revolutionary work of Friere.

Shor, McLaren and Giroux on the web:

You can find contact information for Shor and McLaren on their university hosted home pages. Giroux has a personal website where you can check out a list of his online articles.

Pat Farenga

Pat Farenga is the heir of homeschooling (or “unschooling”) evangelist John Holt. He is currently the publisher of the influential homeschooling magazine Growing Without Schooling and president of the parent company, Holt Associates.  Despite his emphasis on homeschooling, many practices that he advocates can easily be transferred to a classroom.  For example, asking children real questions instead of quizzing them.

Pat Farenga on the web:

You can visit Pat Farenga’s website which is also home to his blog as well as follow him on Twitter.

Will Richardson

A former teacher who was recognized as a “trendsetter” in education for integrating blogs in his classroom, Richardson now works towards educational reform that more effectively implements technology in the classroom .

Will Richardson on the web:

Richardson is a prolific and influential blogger. You can check out his site at weblogg-ed.com. He also updates regularly on twitter.

Again, if I missed anyone let me know via the comments or my twitter account and I’ll be sure to take a look and consider adding them to the list.

Give Them Control

I don’t like dealing with constant mundane requests like students asking to go to the bathroom.  They disrupt my teaching and it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Instead, dedicate a certain portion of the day for instruction and the rest as unstructured time.  During that time give students various responsibilities that need to be fulfilled within that time.  Allocate rations for limited resources like the computer and other workstations.

Otherwise, allow students to have some leisure time and go to the bathroom with a limit on the number outside of the classroom at one time.  Most of the time young students want to go to the bathroom to steal a moment of free time anyway.  Instead of forcing them into that kind of desperate situation we should allow them the ability

The more control you give to a student, the more empowered they will be.  Rather than directing every minute of their lives as teachers we should accustom them to managing themselves.  No doubt power can be abused

Allow Them to Negotiate

If a true education is designed to make students independent then they should be trained to think about what they want to learn and how they want to learn it all on their own.  If an assignment doesn’t jive with them they should be allowed to propose their own.

Negotiate with them until their proposal satisfies both you and the students.  Many students may have difficulty with this so in order to make the transition easier present several varying alternatives to your lessons and allow them to choose one.  This gives them an idea of what’s possible.  Part of motivation is being interested in what you are doing, so if students are participating in self-directed learning then chances are greater they will be more absorbed by their work.

Put Their Feet to the Fire

Give students the freedom to choose what they want to study and how they want to do it.  But when they do, hold their feet to the fire and don’t let them give up until they have given it their all.

Also give them real responsibilities, deadlines and critical tasks. Let them feel the stress of having to perform important tasks that others are depending on.  Appoint or have them elected by other students to leadership positions.  If they are successful then reward them, if not, strip them of their titles.  It might be painful to watch but no pain, no gain.

Please share other techniques that help make students more independent in the comments.

In order to really make history relevant you have to demonstrate to students how it can benefit them almost immediately.  This is really tricky and takes a lot of creativity but it’s not impossible.  Here a couple of examples.

I was teaching about the gladiators of ancient Rome to 5th graders when we began discussing the colosseum.  Eventually we got into the common “bread and circuses” analysis until I got an idea.

I asked the students if they knew anyone who really annoyed them.  All their hands shot up.  So I told them that the best way to get them off your back is to distract them.  We then brainstormed some strategies for creating entertaining distractions for a nemesis.  When we returned to the “bread and circuses” discussion our little tangent driven home the point in a more personal way.  Also, the students really enjoyed plotting against their personal banes.

With a highschool or even college class advanced techniques would be in order.  Research projects can be assigned that require students to distill themes like qualities of leadership, habits of success or tactics of negotiation and diplomacy from biographies of important persons.

The same can be done on successful organizations like revolutionary movements, armies or corporations by researching organizational strategies, propaganda (think public relations) and management.

These can then be made relevant by applying them in personal action plans for self-improvement or a class project that involves some sort of activism or group/team work.

Combining raw knowledge with a focused analysis geared to producing a viable short-term action plan is the educational ideal and virtually guarantees success.

Combine this with permitting students to negotiate their subjects and you can look forward to a motivated class as well.

What are some innovative ideas for making history relevant to your students?  Share in the comments.

Though unconventional, there was a method to my madness. First, I wanted to know if it was possible to teach such a word to first graders. Though, I was confident I could, I was surprised I did it in only five minutes.

Second, and most importantly, I was trying to drive home a point to these young readers. I smiled mischievously when they said it was “impossible” because I would soon prove them all wrong and strike my educational coup de grace: I told them that this was the hardest word in the English language and if they could read this, they could read anything.

My little experiment was really an exercise in using difficulty to, paradoxically, boost student confidence.  Self esteem is a critical determining factor for educational success. Often the most logical course of action is to begin with simple lessons and work gradually towards more difficult ones.

A more interesting approach is to begin with something difficult, or better yet, the most difficult thing you can throw at your students and attack it in such a way as to demonstrate that though it’s the most difficult thing they will study in your course it’s really not that difficult at all.

After tackling something like that a student can confidently approach any other work, book or assignment knowing that the worst is behind him.  Not only that but the methodology for attacking a difficult problem whether math or reading or anything else is applicable to easier problems.  Consider it like pulling duct tape off of skin.  You can do it slowly but that’s long and painfully.  Better to grit your teeth and just rip it off as fast as you can.

When teaching antidisestablishmentarianism, I went through a whole gamut of word attack strategies.  All of them applicable to problematic smaller words.  It was all very efficient.  But woe to the teacher who underestimates her students and plans such a  lesson for a whole class period!

Build a Powerful Network

A teacher with 10 years of experience could have had contact with anywhere between 250 to 2000 students.  If you include parents that number gets even bigger.  Keeping in touch with as many of them as you can through social media can help you build a powerful network that can be exploited to benefit your classes.

Many of your students will go on to do interesting things or be involved in interesting professions.  That can be a valuable resource for arranging guest speakers, mentorships, internships and field trips.

Not only that but you can benefit from their own networks.  If the six degrees of separation rule is valid and you play your cards right, then you can potentially contact anyone on earth for the benefit of your class.  Let that sink in for a moment: anyone!

Share Your Experiences

As an added incentive to having an interesting class, publicly sharing your classes accomplishments and experiences is great for building a following and expanding your influence and possibilities even more.  Just make sure you are running an interesting class.

Social media tools like facebook, youtube, myspace, twitter and flickr can help you better connect with parents, the local community, potential volunteers and supporters.  Telling people about how amazing your accomplishments are is not as good as showing them.

Be interesting and show it off.

Fundraising

Very little in life is free.  Amazing, awesome and interesting is going to need a budget and if your school won’t pony up the cash then your class needs to make things happen for itself.  Setup a class website or blog, make a video and link to your social media networks.  If you are compelling enough, you will attract an audience that will probably want to see how far the awesome goes enough to contribute.  With things like the embeddable chipin widget or even a simple paypal account collecting money on the web is easy.  Just be sure to be as transparent as possible when money is involved.

Don’t underestimate the power and reach of the internet.  You are only limited by your imagination.

Connect with Other Classes

Thanks to tubes of the internet, you can follow and collaborate with other classes anywhere in the world! Are you studying China?  Well connect with a class of Chinese students, I am sure they would be as interested in you as you are in them.  You can even talk to them face to face via an inexpensive webcam and a skype account. Why do you need a textbook when you have millions of Chinese on the internet a few keystrokes away?

Why look at a pictures in a book of how Chinese live when you can get students to share pictures of their own homes and stories of how they live?  And the best part is, they also get to practice their English.  Since they are learning it anyway, not even language is a barrier!

Get Free Expert Consulting

If you need help setting up a particularly interesting but delicate project then network with experts on social media networks to give your class free advice.

Have a puppy dog face contest in your class and then ask the winner to contact some experts.  They may be able to say no to you but not some student with a good puppy dog face.

The best part is, with your network, the consultant gets some good publicity and your class gets quality advice.  It’s another win-win!

World Wide Class Projects

The web is world wide so take advantage of it.

You can conduct some big projects using the internet.  You can have your students split into groups and do some activist work, have a competition to see who can raise the most money for a cause.  Students can campaign for politicians they like or depending on your class, they can run for office themselves.  (Inspiration: check out this 18 year old on the board of education and this fellow who raised nearly $110,000 from 5700 online donors to campaign for a seat in congress.)

If you are feeling really brave you can raise awareness about an issue your school is struggling with, like outdated textbooks, crumbling facilities or the like and put heavy pressure on local politicians to take immediate action.

Other Benefits

Students use social media no matter what kind of filters or blocks there are.  In many of the schools I have worked at, especially high schools, most students access their myspace accounts using proxies anyway.  You can’t really stop them.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

If you direct students to use their social media accounts for the greater good, they are going to have to purge them of some inappropriate and unprofessional material.  Instead of distractions, their accounts will become important resources they use to represent themselves to important people for important things.

Basically instead of forbidding their social media outlets, you can hijack them for the greater good.

Do you have any ideas on how to use social media for education?  Share in the comments.

This is his account from his autobiography which, bizarrely enough, is on the ALA’s most banned book list for “social reasons.”

About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try’d to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.

Interestingly enough, this technique is called double translation and is a classical method for teaching a second language, traditionally Latin or Greek in medieval Europe.  His application of this method for improving his English and the fact that he stumbled  upon it, presumably without any prior training is noteworthy.  He continues:

But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.

This is yet another classical method of language learning yet more advanced.  The versification of prose and vice versa has been part of the medieval trivium for literally hundreds of years.  Without much formal schooling it’s curious how he was able to discover and implement these techniques independently.

Benjamin Franklin then adds some thoughts about how he learned to take accurate notes:

I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.

This embraces failure, essentially a process of trial and error, as the model for teaching language, rather than the prevailing teacher centered formal essay writing and reading comprehension tests.

This combines the use of modeling high-quality writing, rigorous analysis and intensive writing.

My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, . . .

source: EarlyAmerica.com

Do you know any good stories of how famous writers got to be so good at their craft?  Share in the comments.

How many pages does the paper have to be?  How many sources do I have to have?  What subject should I write the paper about?  Should I use footnotes or endnotes?

Enough already!  This is the education field for God’s sake, why aren’t we using our brains?  Here’s the solution:

In your first year of teaching write down every question that you get and try and anticipate others.   Then write up a detailed FAQ and staple it to syllabus.  I prefer you invest in setting up a website and putting the FAQ up online.  If anyone ever asks you a question again refer them to the FAQ first and if they don’t find their answer ask them to email you.  Then you can batch all the answers to those questions a few minutes a week and add the new answers to the FAQ.

Some students won’t read the FAQ no matter what so put up another line of defense by registering a new email address for students to send you their questions.  Set up  your “vacation responder” to automatically reply to all emails with the entire FAQ  mentioning it’s also online.  You can provide your main email address at the end of the email for any questions not answered in the FAQ.  But if you do get a question on that  email address that was answered in the FAQ refer them right back to it.  Don’t reward lazy students.

For younger students you can write up a basic FAQ and staple it to the back of their notebooks for quick reference.

Remember, no matter who you are writing the FAQ for don’t overestimate them.  Write it in language a second grader can understand.

Do you have any interesting ways of dealing with frequently asked questions?  Share them in the comments.

In light of the above quoted Parkinson’s law it seems that it may be a worthwhile to rethink the amount of time we as teachers give students to complete assignments.After a quick lesson or two on how to prioritize tasks and eliminate unnecessary ones you can assign a project and give it a ridiculously short deadline.  This will probably irk quote a few students and parents but the lesson is an invaluable one I think.

Prioritizing and meeting tight deadlines is a valuable skill and one that your students would be best served being taught.

On the other hand there is the ubiquitous phenomenon of procrastination.  Since many students wait until the last minute to do their projects anyway, what better way to deal with them than to shrink their deadlines so all they have is that last minute.

Like I said, all this will be irksome, however, you would be doing your students a disservice if you didn’t spring this on them at least once.

What a teacher says on the first day of class sets the tone for the rest of the year.  It should be an opportunity for the teacher to give a quick rundown of her educational philosophy, class rules and general expectations.

Here are my suggestions for what a teacher should say on the first day of class:

I Want You to Fail

“All my successes have been built on my failures.” -Benjamin Disraeli

Failure, rather than being stigmatized, should be recognized as an important part of learning.  Often lessons learned through failure are better and longer lasting than those learned from success.  This is true in business, politics and especially true in education.

Unfortunately, in today’s test driven education we misinform students about the reality of failure.  They should embrace it as their most important learning tool.  As teachers we need to reinforce this.  If a student fails at an important project and they can explain in detail what they did wrong and how that can be avoided they should still be given a good grade.

You Don’t Have to Do What I Tell You

“Let us never negotiate out of fear.  But let us never fear to negotiate.” -John F. Kennedy

There is no way that any one of my assignments will appeal to every single student.  I like to create a proactive student culture.  If some of my students are not interested in the assignment or feel it is not challenging enough then I encourage them to negotiate one with me on another assignment that will satisfy both our requirements.  This may be a little new for many students so I like to begin with offering several different possible assignments they can choose from.  Things are more interesting this way for both teacher and student.  Watch as the creative juices start to flow.

Don’t Work Hard

“Do no confuse motion and progress.  A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.” -Alfred A. Montapert

Hard work is overrated.  We should be teaching our students to work smart.  After all that’s what they are in school for in the first place, to exercise their minds.  Don’t give your students busy work.  Give them problems to solve that are best solved using their minds and being resourceful rather than doing grunt “busy work.”

Is there something really great that you tell your students on the first day of school?  Share in the comments.