One of my followers on Twitter is NEA Today. I wanted to follow an organization that has roots in education, and that could provide not only useful tips for my content areas, but also professional growth. In one of the tweets, NEA Today posted a great article about how to create a safer environment in a middle school classroom. This particular article gives a classroom teacher (and administration) strategies on how to reduce, ease, and solve issues that are prevalent in middle schools. Please read more at http://www.nea.org/tools/maintaining-a-safe-environment.html.
Another site that I am following is USA Today. With USA Today, I am able to stay abreast of the latest news daily, while still finding news related to education. The one article that struck me as being important was, the correlation between high stakes testing and teacher evaluation. Within this article it points out how teachers may understand what to teach, and what is important to teach, but simply do not because it is not going to be tested. Teachers are afraid to teach because, in many states their jobs are tied to state assessments. Read more at http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/story/2012-03-21/testing-isnt-teaching-Welner/53694246/1.
The second site that I am following is Alexandra from class. Alexandra tweeted a wonderful technology site that assists teachers in using technology effectively within the classroom. This site is great because, it allows you to view how the program works before you use it. Learn more at http://www.edvation.com/techsteps-home/techsteps-k-8/.
Testing is not teaching. I can't agree more. I grew up in an education system that was pretty much test-based. Not good experience.
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