Journalism is what I’ve done for a living most of my working life.
This page includes a selection of the “Insight” columns I wrote for The New York Teacher between 2000 and 2016. (Click on their titles.)
NY Teacher is the newspaper of the city’s teacher union, the United Federation of Teachers. Unlike many union papers, mine gave me the freedom to choose my topics and what I said about them.
I am forever indebted to the many city teachers and labor leaders who gave their time and insight to teach me about education and organizing.
Good teaching is an art. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for it, despite the dogged efforts of cranky legislators and policymakers. But there are guideposts, data and wisdom that can shine a light on good practices. Harvard researcher Ronald Ferguson studied teachers for years. This column, “Inside the Mystery of Good Teaching,” explores his lessons. It was reprinted in several other publications
Education research is often too dry, too late and too general for K-12 teachers. They need to know what works best for their particular students, in their schools, that week. “Action research,” pioneered by Frances Rust and other educators, showed them a systematic way to ask questions, gather evidence and draw conclusions that worked for them and their students.
When Mayor Bill deBlasio’s instituted his signature “Pre-K for All” initiative, there was a rush to train up early-ed teachers in the city. At the same time there was a push to evaluate teachers using the clumsy metric of student test scores. This column was a plea to let those early education teachers do what they did best, which was to help children learn through play and exploration, not test prep and drill.
School integration is perhaps the most flammable issue in K-12 education, and New York City schools remain among the most segregated in the nation. Research on the education benefits of integration is hard to find but it’s out there. This column demonstrated that it is a win-win for students, whatever their parents may fear.