Blogs on Professional Learning Network (PLN)

The least productive current narrative about public education goes something like this. Our schools, especially high schools, are failing. There is a predominance of ineffective teachers. Short of closing bad schools, firing bad teachers and sending kids to charter schools, there is little we can do to change this. Most good teachers, buried alive in the testing mania, are impotent to deal with the system. For the general public this narrative, partially reinforced by films like Waiting for Superman, provides a misguided message of total failure. For teachers struggling in underfunded schools, it encourages anger and self-pity rather than productive action.

Recently, I have had students discover my @TheNerdyTeacher Twitter account and follow me. It usually only lasts a few days before they unfollow me -- a few days of my flooding their feed with blog posts, education news and Edutopia articles. The big question I get from kids is, "Why don't you follow me back?"

The ability to think critically is one skill separating innovators from followers. Critical thinking reduces the power of advertisers, the unscrupulous and the pretentious, and can neutralize the sway of an unsupported argument. This is a skill most students enjoy learning because they see immediately that it gives them more control.

One of the first and most important rules of behavior management is that when you take something away, you need to give something back. It's not good enough to say, "Don't" without saying, "Do this instead." Alternatives must be provided for change to occur. In my last post (Why Giving Bonus Money to Better Teachers Is Wrong), I strongly rejected the use of rewards, incentives, bribes and other harmful gimmicks. Now it is my responsibility to offer viable alternatives so that educators have the ability to change. These alternatives are plentiful. I'm going to concentrate on the three most important and easiest to implement.