Blogs on Education Trends

Have you ever wanted to see what really goes on in classrooms of the world's number one educational system? Well, here's your free virtual plane ticket to Helsinki, Finland.

Doctoral learners from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education will spend a "week in the schools" -- the schools of Helsinki, that is -- looking at a variety of research areas through the lenses of students, teachers, parents and leaders. These lead learners will use that week to reflect upon where the United States and Finland agree and disagree on core beliefs surrounding teaching, learning and leadership.

"The inspiration behind the residency model is that teacher candidates learn on the job, similar to the way a master artisan would have learned her craft." -- Dr. Annamarie Francois, Director, UCLA Center X Teacher Education Program

Although House of Cards on Netflix, the fictional Elmer Gantry and the preposterous Watergate cover-up all provide ammunition to those who view rhetoric pejoratively, rhetoric should be studied as a powerful tool for good. Winston Churchill composing speeches from bed comes to mind, as does the Gettysburg Address, a marvel of brevity more poignant than Winter Aconite, a speech that redefined the Civil War as a national fight for equality. The Gettysburg Address, composed by that hipster Abraham Lincoln, has never been more relevant, especially to the framers of the Common Core Curriculum Standards who appropriated Lincoln's address because of its literary rhetorical characteristics.

We hear so many negative things about public education in America -- most notably, that our schools are failing. And the reasons often cited involve educator shortcomings, for example, that colleges of education are doing a terrible job of preparing new teachers, or that the students in those colleges are not the high quality individuals we want teaching our children. We also hear that teachers unions care only about adult interests and that as a general rule the professional development teachers receive is a waste of resources.