In this piece, Tales from the Classroom team member Dr. Tim Price examines how metaphors of war and factories have shaped and continue to shape our schools...and not for the good. The Power of Metaphors A few years back, I was approached by one of our high school’s international students, a sophomore from China who had come to our school to graduate, to get into a good American college, and to do his parents proud. He came to see me after one of our English classes, during a unit on Hamlet if I remember correctly, and humbly asked me, “Dr. Price, I need your help. Will you please teach me how to do metaphor?” He went on explaining to me that, “I can do math and science better than anyone he

This post is the first of many invited blog posts from educators in the field. Steven Singer is a National Board Certified Teacher, public education advocate, and widely-read blogger (gadflyonthewallblog) who teaches 8th grade Language Arts in Western Pennsylvania. His forthcoming book The Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform hits the shelves on November 28. You wouldn’t travel a long distance in your car without strapping on a seatbelt. So why do you think teachers should spend 30 plus years in the classroom without seniority? Everywhere you look, billionaires are paying millionaires in government to pass laws to cut taxes, slash funding and find cheap

Who Reads School Report Cards? While writing my latest blog post this morning, I had the good fortune of receiving an email with a link to a story from The Columbus Business Journal on school rankings in Central Ohio based off of the latest school district report cards from my good friend who owns his own corporate recruiting and financial advising business. He asked me what I thought and at that moment, this post was born. Before writing, like any good researcher, I did some digging into some of my own files on the topic and on a few websites. First, I looked at bizjournals.com to see if other cities besides Columbus posted stories on school report cards (The Business Journals are localized

Understanding Fear and Its Impact on Us Following Freud’s lead in 1926, psychoanalysts have spent much of their time trying to get to the root of our most basic fears. The tradition of psychoanalysis essentially tries to get at the unconscious root of our behaviors, and that by making those unconscious motivations conscious, we can gain insight on who we are and why we do what we do. For Freud, much of this centers around our fears as motivators, and how they can drive how we behave. The darkest of these fears, according to Freud, are our fear of death and our fear of total annihilation. Certainly, we fear death, but that fear can be very much understood, and even managed, given the simple i

This is the fourth and final article in a four-part series that has explored what standardized tests reveal about students, teachers, and schools. These articles provide an insider’s view (from a teacher and researcher) about what is really going on with standardized tests and what they really reveal. What Has Testing Done to the Principal’s Job? Standardized testing and school accountability have drastically changed the role of the school principal. There are many roles that principals and vice-principals are asked to fulfill – educator, boss, community liaison, school culture creator, therapist, and so many more. As a veteran educator, I will tell you that these folks have one of the harde