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“Race to the Top”

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This: And what conditions create people who act like this? These videos punctuated early conversations I had with teachers and leaders relevant to Race to the Top.They prompted the articulation of some important beliefs: RTTT will be translated differently inside of every system it lives in. We believe that all teachers have a vision of the difference they want to make and distinct expertise that must be mined in service to kids. We can choose…

Pythagoras suggested that the beginning is the half of everything. Anyone who has been facilitating ELA work around the Common Core Learning Standards this fall knows this, because David Coleman makes reference to it  here as he focuses on powerful ways to begin the act of reading. Pythagoras was clearly on to something, and I can’t help but think that the way we begin the work of Race to the Top will be worth half…

It depends on your perspective, I guess. We can treat Race to the Top as a mandate. We can make it our holy grail. We can bend dramatically under the weight of an agenda we don’t understand and break ourselves and the vision that we had of the teacher we would be–of the difference we would make—against this invisible wall. We can qualify the steps we take in pursuit of this vision with hot-headed criticisms…

“Some of my former students came back to see me this year,” she said. “They graduated a couple of years ago. When they were here, they really struggled, but they wanted to do well, and they listened to me when I told them I could help them. I helped them read. I helped them write. I gave them strategies that got them through the tests. When they complained, I promised it would be worth it.…