Article

Erin Jones, CSTP board member and Director of Equity and Achievement for the Federal Way School District, was recently recognized as a "Champion of Change" for her efforts in local innovatio  Read more »

"Mrs. G. I need your help NOW. I tried the science lesson and the kids just destroyed it!"

Without the quality teachers we hire and train, we wouldn't be seeing the improvement in student achievement scores we've had since 1994.  Doesn't everyone on the committee - everybody in the distri  Read more »

The three other classsrooms are just fine. Why is Sarah's classroom management not improving?

The school year moves along, you think you have a handle on the next math lesson, but the behavior of your students is exhausting. You wonder if you will make it as a teacher after this year.  Sometimes you wonder about tomorrow!  Why is it that other classes seem to know how to behave and your class management feels like a disaster?   Read more »

 Read more »

They arrived much as they have for any other ProCert meeting.  Someone plops down an opened box of Oreos, others make last minute cell-phone calls. They sign in with signatures that reflect the joys or frustrations of their teaching day. A new mom rushes out to pump for breast-milk one more time before the session begins just as the volleyball coach rushes in from practice. Two single teachers flirt a bit as others use sub-sandwich bags and water bottles to define personal space in the room. Candidates quickly organize the assignments they had intended to organize yesterday and set their piles of evidence and notebook materials under chairs. Everything seems familiar and routine.  Read more »

As other college students learned to play racket ball or joined a sorority, I was driven by a need to leave campus and get into the city, that city being Philadelphia.  Part of the pull to the people was probably a longing to make up for lost time, a longing to understand who America was, to know the people I had been so loosely connected to living as an ex-patriot in Europe for most of my childhood.  And so I made daily treks my junior and senior years of college from my nice little women's college in Bryn Mawr to the University of Pennsylvania located in the heart of downtown Philadelphia.  From there, I often continued on to a church in the heart of one of the worst ghettoes in North Philadelphia or one of several schools.  Read more »

I didn't appreciate all the things my parents had imparted to me until I began to have my own children.  Suddenly it was important to think about what I wanted them to know and be able to do.  There were other things I wanted them to avoid like the plague.  With my first son, we were careful to talk to him in the womb and read to him regularly, everything from children's books to passages from the Bible.  Growing up, language acquisition was a critical skill.  My parents read to us as small children.  They read for hours to themselves and encouraged us to do the same.  To be honest, as one son became a toddler and the other was born, I could think of no skill greater than that of communication in both the written and spoken word.   Read more »