Strategies, tips, and insights from education’s leading experts

 
http://www.solution-tree.com/
March 2015
The Network Connecting educators with solutions
 
 
Featured Blogs

Modern Learning Spaces AREN’T Defined by Gadgets
By William M. Ferriter

In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Susan Pinker—author of The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter—essentially eviscerates the notion that adding more technology to our classrooms will change teaching and learning for the better. Read more
 
 
Snow Sharks
By Cassandra Erkens

Recently, while working at an event with a team, my colleague Tim Brown showed hundreds of educators a cartoon in which a little boy had created a snowman and surrounded it with snow sharks. Tim asked the audience to consider the snow sharks we’ve built in education—those times, processes, and places in which our own handiwork attacks or places barriers before our primary goals. I walked away considering the snow sharks we’ve created specifically in our assessment systems. Read more

What’s the Difference?
By Tom Hierck

What’s the difference between a high school (grades 9–12) of 3,000 students in northern California and a secondary school (grades 7–12) of 250 students in northern Alberta? I’m not looking for simple math calculations (“2,750 students”) or some analysis of American versus Canadian education. In fact, the response I’m looking for is “not much.” Read more

 
 
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National Priorities

The USA is the greatest country in the world, and in his upcoming book, Rick DuFour will show why we are in the midst of the greatest generation of educators in American history. However, at the PLC summit this past March, I listened to keynotes that shocked me with hard cold facts.

Our educational system is always being compared to Finland’s, so how about these stats:

  • US teachers earn 68% of the annual salary of college graduates.
  • Finland teachers earn 109%.
  • Finland teachers pay 4% of their college education costs.
  • US teachers pay 65% and graduate with an average debt of nearly $30,000.

Our most valuable resource is our children, and their greatest advantage is their education. Today, our educators are teaching the students for the 2020+ job market, when 65% of all jobs in the economy will require a postsecondary education. Maybe it’s time we clarify what we want to be as a culture, and then prioritize how we are going to get there.

—Read more on Jeff’s blog at whywedoit.net

 

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