Larry Ferlazzo is the Internet Impresario of Education Resources.

His eponymous Websites of the Day is very possibly the most extensive single-site resource for K12 educators anywhere in cyberspace. Certainly it will be soon, because he adds an awesome amount of content every day. Remarkably, he’s still a conscientious, full-time classroom teacher. And no spring chicken!

Larry was a community organizer in the labor movement for nearly 20 years before becoming a public school teacher in middle life. The understandings he gained in that work come through in his curation and in his writing about education, including books on student motivation and parent/community engagement. I got to know Larry when he joined the Teacher Leaders Network (where I recruited writers) and immediately began to pen the first of many thoughtful essays for the TLN feature at Education Week Teacher. Larry has since become a featured blogger at EWT, where his Classroom Q&A weekly posts model the potential of blogs to become places for substantive conversation about practice and policy.

Larry’s resource-oriented website is truly vast, with more than 900 “Best of…” articles (regularly updated) among the many thousands he’s posted. He added Twitter to his toolkit a couple of years ago, and Ferlazzo fans are now able to sign up as followers and dip into his daily flow anytime we want. It’s always refreshing. I asked Larry about his blogs, his books, and his teaching life.

UPDATE: Larry’s latest book Self-Driven Learning is reviewed here at MiddleWeb.

1. Tell us about your main web presence – Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day. When and how did it get started and how has it morphed since you launched it back in 2006? Your scope has really grown over the years. Do you still consider it primarily a site about teaching English Language Learners?

I began my Websites Of The Day blog about five-and-a-half years ago as a way to compile resources to use in the ESL classes I was teaching at our high school. I figured that if my students and I were finding them helpful, then perhaps others would, too. The Web, with its interactivity and ability to provide audio and visual support to text, is an invaluable asset to second language learners.

Though a major focus of the site continues to be providing resources for English Language Learner teachers and students, I have definitely expanded its scope over the years to support me in the multiple subjects I teach. In any given year I can be teaching any grade level of English including newcomers and mainstream students, along with every type of Social Studies course and an International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge class. I also use the blog to catalog useful research in teaching and learning that I believe can help me in my own practice. Though its scope has expanded, I still only write about topics that are useful to my students, my colleagues at our school, and to me.

I also write about what I do in my own classroom, and what works and what doesn’t go so well. I try to write about my students often, and share with them what I write. They feel justifiably proud that what they do in our classroom can help students and teachers elsewhere.

And yes, I also use the blog as a “soapbox” for my views on educational policy issues. You can take a person out of the community organizing field (I was one for 19 years before I became a teacher), but you can’t take the community organizer out of the person! Offering my strong views (though I also like to think they can be nuanced) are part of my contribution towards making social change.

2. What useful kinds of information will educators in grades 4-8 find at Websites of the Day?

I think there is little that middle grades educators wouldn’t find useful. And I say that from some experience, since I was a middle school teacher for a year prior to coming to Burbank High School eight years ago.

I have over 900 categorized “The Best…” lists that are constantly revised and updated, in just about any subject imaginable. I like to think my standards are pretty high for what I include in those lists, whether they are about educational research, Social Studies, holidays, or Web 2.0 tools. And speaking of tech tools, even though those lists are very extensive on my site, they are not exhaustive. If I can’t figure out how to use some web tool within one minute, and if I don’t think I can teach my students how to use it within one minute, I won’t include it in my lists. There are plenty of other good and more “geeky” (I’m using that term in an endearing way) blogs out there that cover more complicated teaching/learning tools.

3. What’s the best way to navigate the site? How can folks keep up with new content without being overwhelming by your broad interests? If you had to list your 5 favorite categories of content, what would they be?

I’d say the best place to start would be to go to my “The Best of…” page where they will find my Best-Of lists categorized by subject. But even those categories can be daunting. So I generally tell people to browse through them, then hit “Control-F” on their keyboard and use it to search for keywords. [Editor's note: that's Command-F for us Mac folks.]

I’d also think that people might find it useful to review the 80 or so articles I’ve written for other publications, which can be found at the “Articles I Have Written” page. Links to both these pages, and to others, can be found in the sidebar of my blog.

In addition, I think teachers might also find it useful to look at our class blogs for different subjects, and links to them can also be found on my main blog’s sidebar. For example, I have blogs for Theory of Knowledge; ESL; Ninth-Grade English; and United States History.

Also on my sidebar: Readers will see the covers of each of my books. If they click on them, they’ll find lots of free materials and excerpts from each one, including reproducibles.

Finally, teachers and students might find the website I’ve created for my students useful.

4. What do you think explains your drive to teach full-time, maintain what must be close to the world’s largest ed resource site, write a book or more a year, maintain an interactive blog at Education Week, and publish regular articles in places like Educational Leadership, the New York Times and the Washington Post? Did we leave anything out?

A healthy ego, a supportive family, a great school, and the opportunity to meet and learn from people like yourself give me pretty good reasons to do what I do. I also think that one of the things I got from my late father was the importance of leaving the world a better place than it was when you came into it, and I’m sure that’s a part of it, too. Plus, I get a lot of energy from playing basketball :)

5. Tell us about your ventures beyond the website — what kinds of useful information will educators find at your Classroom Q&A blog? And what about your next book… or two?!

I have a lot of fun with my Ed Week Teacher Classroom Q & A blog. It’s like a Dear Abby for educators — without the melodrama! Teachers submit questions, or I come up with ones I’m wondering about, and I ask people I know and respect to contribute their responses in addition to inviting readers to contribute their own. I’ve learned a lot from some great educators who have contributed, along with many authors who have also agreed to help — Dan Pink, Dan Ariely, Jonah Lehrer, just to name a few.

Parent engagement is also a particular interest of mine, and I maintain a separate blog for that topic. You’ll notice I said “engagement” and not “involvement.” Visit my blog and you’ll learn more about why.

I’m on the State of California’s Educator Excellence Task Force, and we’re working hard to develop recommendations on how teachers should be prepared, supported and evaluated in our state. I also have a new book coming out this summer from Jossey-Bass, The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide that I’ve co-authored with my friend and colleague Katie Hull Sypnieski. My full-time job this summer is finishing a sequel to my 2011 book for Eye On Education, which was titled Helping Students Motivate Themselves.

Thanks, Larry. We’re amazed you find the time for pick-up basketball but we’re pretty sure we’ll be able to read a book by you on that topic sometime in the not-too-distant future.

2nd photo: Steve Hargadon

As regular readers of middle grades teacher Bill Ferriter’s much admired blog The Tempered Radical, we’ve been following the adventures of his #SUGARKILLS Gang — a group of sixth grade science students who got passionately interested in the way sugary foods impact the American diet and psyche.

Through their use of a dedicated blog and the Twitter hashtag #sugarkills, the students have been pushing out information about the often shocking amounts of sugar found in a variety of popular food items. To further the cause of “real-world learning,” we asked Mr. Ferriter if we could interview the gang. Here’s what we found out.

1. What’s the story behind your #sugarkills project? Why do you think it is important?

About 4 months ago, our entire class was studying the New York City soda ban. We saw more and more statistics on how soda had a TON of sugar. A couple of weeks later, our science teacher, Mr. Ferriter, came up with the brilliant idea to share with people the amount of sugar in all kinds of foods.

That’s how #sugarkills was born.

The Twix Bar was our first registered sugar offender. We gathered some volunteers to write about more foods, and they really had fun! Before you knew it, we were throwing posts up every day. By late January, we had 4 subscribers and at least 50 people a day who were learning from our sugar findings!

That led to more volunteers, more posts, more comments, and more subscribers.  Now we want to keep the snowball rolling. We want to make a difference. We want to keep on caring.

2. Tell our readers about the research you’ve done – how did you do it?  What did you find out?

Most of our research comes from other students simply coming up to our classroom to work during their lunch period, with the packaging of whatever food they ate recently.

If we don’t have the packaging with us, we go online to the food’s brand’s website for nutrition facts. We then do a little more research on what we are interested in, and another fun food post is made. Also, the recent tweets and comments at our blog give us ideas of what to write about next.

Most of the foods that we write about are commonly eaten foods (Girl Scout cookies), surprisingly high-sugar foods (lite syrup), and just plain ridiculous foods  (26-pound gummy pythons).

What we found during our research is scary. It is almost impossible to NOT go over the recommended daily maximum sugar intake (which is fancy talk for the amount of added sugar you can eat per day - 24 grams) in a single MEAL, let alone three.

We hope our website can help raise awareness about how much sugar is actually in foods.

3. Who is your primary audience?

Our blog can be helpful for the general public, but it is aimed more toward teens and tweens like us.

We wanted this group of people to get the most out of it because if you have bad eating habits at a younger age, chances are that your eating habits won’t get any better as an adult. That is, of course, unless the problem is fixed before it starts.

Adding to that, since we are teens and tweens too, we feel concerned for our peers. It is easy to relate with and understand one another. This is helpful in writing an effective post.

Because our target audience is mostly people our age, we make a special effort to keep the posts short and humorous. After all, a normal kid our age wouldn’t want to read a giant, boring article on every harm of sugar.

We also try to keep it simple with big graphics and a #something at the end of every post. These are interesting, fun, and don’t take a long time to read.

In a lot of ways, we are writing #sugarkills for ourselves!

We learn about the dangers of sugar every time we put up a post, and it’s fun just to have an easy writing and graphic project to work on for a couple of days. Then, when your piece gets put on the blog, it feels good to know you are helping other people in the world.

4. What have your results been? What kind of feedback are you getting?

The most important thing we’ve done so far is informing teens and tweens about the amount of sugar in the foods that they are commonly eating.

Right now, we get anywhere from 50 to 100 pageviews a day, and we have 13 subscribers. We really like knowing that so many people are being affected. This is important because teens and tweens can be informed about controlling how much sugar they eat. That way, kids won’t be obese or overweight when they’re older.

The main type of social media we are using to get our ideas out is Twitter. Every time a new post goes up, we tweet about it on Mr. Ferriter’s account. We think this is important because Mr. Ferriter has many followers. Most of these followers are teachers, and they might share our posts with their students, which is good because children are the audience that we aim for. Hopefully, our post will be re-tweeted, and more people can learn about the sugar in their foods.

Our results have been encouraging to our group. Last month, we had 1,584 page views. We also have 13 subscriptions and a total of 2,490 page views.   People are even leaving requests for certain foods!  These we try to fulfill as soon as possible.

At first, not many people were in our #sugarkills group here at school.  As we went on and showed how easy it was to contribute, more people joined and more posts started to go up on the blog.  We think the blog is growing — and that it will continue to grow for a while.

5. What are you the proudest of? What are your goals for the future?

Our goal for starting #sugarkills was simply to inform people about the sugar in the foods they commonly eat and to help people make better choices. That has been a success from the beginning, and we’re proud of that.

But what makes us even more proud is that we have helped people all around the world with their sugar intake.

A couple weeks ago, Mrs. Swanson left us a comment about how her dad has diabetes and our blog is really helping him. It makes us feel great to know that we’ve made a difference in someone’s life. What if Mrs. Swanson’s father made the decision to say “no” to one candy bar, because of us? Then he would keep making healthier choices, and that could eventually save his life! We would have made a huge difference.

We’ve also discovered that other teachers are actually sharing our work with their students, which makes us feel like we really matter to other people.  How many 12 year old students can say that they are changing people’s lives around the world?  The fact that we can is amazing!  We’re definitely most proud of that.

Going forward as a blog, we hope that we will be able not only to inform people about the sugars in their foods but to give them better options; what’s the good of saying that something is terrible without giving an alternative?

For example, we want to have more low sugar foods on our blog and more comparison posts, where we compare two foods and tell readers about the better option. We like these posts because they help people to realize the amount of sugar in their foods and drinks and give them better options all at one time.

6. What do you think you are learning from this project? Is this a good way to spend time in school?

We’re learning to be aware of the things that we put in our body.  Our body is a machine that we have to fill with the right fuel.

We’re also learning that kids can be teachers too.  For example, a few weeks ago, Mr. Baldasaro mentioned his dream ice cream cone and asked us to figure out how much sugar he was consuming.

Our #sugarkills team drilled it out and told Mr. Baldasaro about his dream cone. Then we gave him a healthier option. It felt great to be able to actually teach an adult instead of adults teaching us, which is usually what happens.

Finally, we are learning that 12-year olds can help people all around the world be more careful with the things that they put in their body. We just like the feeling of being able to be as powerful and influential as adults.  It feels amazing to be able to educate people on the dangers of sugar.

In our opinion, this is a great way to spend time in school!

The #Sugarkills Gang operates out of Wake County, North Carolina. Soft drink cup art by Jonathan S. This interview was group edited at Google Docs by gang members. You can read Bill Ferriter’s account of our interview process at his blog.

Classroom teacher Bill Ferriter won’t need much introduction if you’re a middle grades educator with some geeky, edtech edges. His blog The Tempered Radical, which lives on the Teacher Leaders Network website, is widely followed by such folks. But if you visit the blog, you’ll find that Bill is no “The Webtools Rule!” kind of guy. He’s all about application and engaged learning. In addition to his digitally savvy Teaching the iGeneration, he’s the author of several books on professional learning communities and school-level leadership in the post-industrial age.

Bill is also an outspoken critic of misguided education policy, a frequent topic at the Radical. A former North Carolina regional teacher of the year, Bill has been a columnist for ASCD’s Educational Leadership magazine and for the National Staff Development Council (now Learning Forward), which selected his co-authored Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: The First Year as its 2010 Book of the Year.

I got to know Bill well in the early days of the Teacher Leaders Network, where he was an important and insightful voice during TLN’s evolution into a national leadership community. I was co-author on his first nationally published article back in 2004. Earlier this summer, we had a chance to catch up — predictably in a virtual way. As always, what he had to say was refreshingly frank.

1. When I first met you, back in 2003, you were a mild-mannered middle school teacher in Cary, NC. Now you’re the published author of four books, an internationally known Radical blogger, a speaker and workshop leader on PLC and digital integration topics… and still a sixth grade teacher. What’s up with all that?

I think there are two answers to your question, John. The glass half-full response is that I’m completely jazzed to have the opportunities that I do to shape thinking around our profession. With the help of folks like MiddleWeb and The Center for Teaching Quality — two organizations that have worked systematically to tap into the wisdom and knowledge of practicing classroom teachers — I’ve seen my thinking amplified again and again over the years.

That’s cool, isn’t it?

I’m FINALLY able to make a meaningful difference on the teaching profession — which has been a goal of mine for long, long time. Digital spaces for publishing — paired with a bunch of champions who have encouraged me to start sharing what I know in those spaces — have given me a voice that I never knew I had. That’s a lesson that EVERY teacher needs to learn. We CAN be powerful change agents as long as we’re willing to use new opportunities to elbow our way into the important conversations happening online.

We CAN be powerful change agents if we are willing to elbow our way into the important conversations happening online.

The glass half-empty response is the important rest of the story, though. I spend hours and hours and hours hunched over a computer every week — away from my wife AND my 2 year old daughter — churning out content for my blog, churning out content for my next book, and churning out content for my next professional development date simply because I can’t afford to pay my bills on the salary that I make as a full-time classroom teacher.

I have 19 years of experience. I have a Master’s degree AND National Board Certification — which carries a 12% salary supplement here in North Carolina — and I still struggle to provide the basics for my family. The tradeoff: I HAVE to churn out engaging content. I HAVE to find people who are willing to hire me for professional development. I HAVE to find another book to write or another presentation to give — even if that means working 30+ part time hours every week and breaking my daughter’s heart because I can’t ever play dress-up or go to the park with her.

That’s wrong, John. No wonder we can’t keep accomplished teachers in the classroom.

2. We love to read The Tempered Radical, a blog you manage like a maestro. What are three of your favorite posts ever, and why?

Talk about a tough question. Writing is such a deeply personal act of reflection for me that all of my blog posts have changed who I am as a thinker and as a classroom teacher in some way. Here’s three, though, that still resonate with me:

The Monster You’ve Created
Testing is ruining our schools. Plain and simple. It’s stripping the joy out of teaching AND learning. It’s forcing educators to walk a moral tightrope, wrestling with doing what we know is right for our students and what we know will drive numbers on end-of-grade exams. The pressure and tension between those two competing positions can be crushing to teachers who care. This post shows just how intense that pressure can be.

Lathered Brilliance, Superman Underoos and Social Media Spaces
Nothing has changed the way I teach more over the past few years than having the opportunity to network with other teachers in social media spaces. My digital peers are constantly pushing me to reconsider what good instruction looks like, and that’s cool. Just as important, nothing has changed the way I learn more than having the opportunity to network with other teachers in social media spaces. This post — which starts in the shower one morning before heading off to school — is a tangible example of how social media spaces can make learners more efficient. That’s a lesson that everyone — teachers AND students AND administrators — need to learn.

This One’s for You, Dad
Probably my biggest fan over the past several years has been my Dad. Even as he fought his way through chemo treatments for lung cancer, he read everything I wrote. When I lost him this spring, it was hard to imagine a world where he wouldn’t be watching and thinking along with me, so I wrote this post as a tribute to him. The real magic, though, happened in the days and weeks that followed: dozens of digital friends — readers of my blog and members of my Twitter network — stopped by to let me know that they were thinking about me. That’s another important lesson for teacher bloggers to learn: Our digital homes and spaces are living, breathing communities filled with people who care about us. How cool is that?

Our digital homes and spaces are living, breathing communities filled with people who care about us. How cool is that?

3. One of the strands in the Radical that caught our eye was a digital scuffle between you and a group of librarians. You pushed them and they pushed back pretty hard. What’s your beef with librarians all about – and how would you respond to The Daring Librarian, who argues in this MiddleWeb interview that the best defense for librarians interested in protecting their position is to “be Damn good at their jobs”?

My beef with librarians has always been a simple one: FAR too many librarians believe that they are the ONLY people in a building who know anything about media literacy and teaching kids how to read with wise eyes and enthusiasm. It tends to come across in comments like this one that a librarian left on my blog a few years back:

How are kids to learn to read for the love of reading if they have no library, no library books, and no library media specialist to guide them through the world of literature? Schools are not considering their best resources – the teacher librarian – in helping teachers switch kids onto reading.

Do you see how hard those kinds of comments can be to swallow for people like me? I’ve spent the better part of my 19-year career as a language arts teacher. Not only do I think I do a pretty good job turning kids on to reading, I’m the one who is held accountable for that work in a way that media specialists can’t possibly understand because they aren’t working in tested positions. No one asks about what the media specialists did and/or didn’t do when reading scores go down. That blame — whether it’s fair or not — rests squarely on the shoulders of classroom teachers.

No one asks about what the media specialists did or didn’t do when reading scores go down.

So if the conversation about librarians is centered around who the REAL media expert is — a thread advanced by many library advocates whenever their positions are in jeopardy because of budget cuts — I think media specialists are starting an argument that they just can’t win. Not only are the kinds of specialized skills that librarians once possessed becoming less valuable as information is more readily available to both teachers and students, the “us-versus-them-ness” of the attitudes that I see expressed as librarians fight for their positions is a real turn-off to classroom teachers. And we are the folks who SHOULD be allies and advocates for media specialists.

My response to Gwyneth is as simple as my beef with her peers: Please encourage librarians to recognize that being “damn good at your jobs” HAS to include recognizing that classroom teachers play a pretty important role in introducing kids to reading, too. Advocate for your work. Stand up for your position. Defend the contributions that you make to schools. But do it in a way that acknowledges that teachers are your peers in the process if you want me to stand next to you in the fight to protect the future of libraries in our schools.

4. Lots of teachers we know have it in the back of their minds (and sometimes closer to the front) to write a book. You’ve done it, several times, with a full time teaching load, a new baby, a busy blog — the works. How does that happen? Give us the Top Five Things Busy Teachers Need to Know about Writing a Book.

1) Know that publishers WANT your work. One of the first barriers that teachers who want to be authors need to hurdle is recognizing that publishers REALLY DO want to hear what full-time classroom teachers have to say. We’ve been inadvertently taught over the course of our careers to believe that books are written by experts, not teachers. The fact of the matter is that most publishers understand that classroom teachers ARE the experts. If you’re willing to put the time into writing a book — especially a book that shares practical teaching strategies — publishers will line up to see what you have to offer.

2) Start blogging NOW. When people look at my work, they often ask, “How do you find the time to blog AND write books?” What they don’t realize is that much of the content that ends up in my book STARTED as a post on my blog. In fact, if you read through the Ed Tech and PLC posts on my blog, you’d probably get a really good sense for what you’d see in any of my books. Granted, the work in my books is far more organized and polished than the work on my blog, but there are clear parallels between the two spaces.

For teachers interested in being authors, there’s an important lesson to learn: A blog can give you chances to polish your ideas and get feedback on the kind of content that resonates with an audience.

For teachers interested in being authors, that’s an important lesson to learn: A blog can give you chances to polish your ideas. Just as importantly, you can get feedback on the kind of content that resonates with an audience. When a post takes off for me, I know that it’s probably worth incorporating into the work that I do beyond my blog. Finally, bloggers build their own audiences — which can help to convince a publisher to give you a book contract. When a publisher sees that I have 3,000 followers on my blog and another 7,000 followers in Twitter, they know that I’m doing something right.

3) Don’t expect to get rich quick. The not so sexy side of educational publishing is that a book isn’t going to make you all that much money by itself. After grinding hard to write four books in three years, I probably pull in $8,000 per year in royalties off of book sales — and because sales of individual titles tail off after 3 or 4 years, I’m constantly working on the next book. That means you have to want to write for the sake of writing — you have to see writing as a way to reflect and to improve your own practice — instead of seeing writing as a ticket to financial security.

4). Stick to strategies, not stories. Most teachers that I know who are interested in writing a book want to tell a story of some kind. Maybe it’s the story of how they were drawn to teaching to begin with or the story of helping students to overcome incredible challenges. Maybe it’s the story of how their school is changing lives and communities. And while those kinds of stories are beautiful and energizing to read, they’re also a dime a dozen. More importantly, those stories don’t make up the kind of books that teachers — who are your most important market — are likely to buy. Instead, they want books centered around teaching/learning strategies. Sharing the ins-and-outs of what works with kids is WAY more important than waxing poetic about our profession. If you use some pertinent story-telling to illustrate your strategies, great.

5) Set aside time to write EVERY WEEK. Sometimes teachers who are interested in being authors forget that writing — like golf or cooking or reading or running or parenting — is a skill that improves with practice. That means if you want to write — and more importantly, you want to write efficiently and effectively — you’ve got to do it often. Every Tuesday night, every Friday night, and every Sunday morning, I spend time behind the keyboard writing. I might be posting on my own blog. I might be crafting a draft of a chapter for a book. I might be putting together an article for a magazine or adding comments on the blogs of other educators that I follow — but I’m writing. A lot. That investment of energy matters if you want to craft products that other people want to read.

There’s no way that I’d recommend teaching as a profession anymore — and that breaks my heart.

Bill Ferriter at EduCon, 2011 (photo by Kevin Jarrett)

5. You’ve been known to blog about the decline and fall of the teaching profession. Would you really not recommend teaching to young folks entering college – or university grads looking for something meaningful to do with their lives as they drift through their 20s and 30s?

I think twice before recommending teaching as a profession — and that breaks my heart. I love what I do. I love the connections that I’ve made with kids over the years and knowing that I’ve been important in their lives really DOES matter.

But I’m convinced that #edpolicy makers — the people who govern our work — aren’t interested in creating the kinds of conditions that teachers and students need in order to be successful. They don’t care about what really works in schools. They care about getting reelected — and as a result, they are hell-bent to implement policies that ring true to voters but that have little real chance of changing the work of teachers and schools for the better.

Take merit pay, for example. There’s not a SINGLE bit of proven research that pay for performance works in knowledge-driven professions like education. What’s more, dozens and dozens of pay-for-performance plans have failed in education over the past decade and more. Businesses, economists, and nations with highly rated educational systems are all walking away from pay for performance as a strategy for positive change.

And yet educational policymakers — including the Secretary of Education — introduce or tout new merit pay plans every single year.

At the very least, that’s failed policy. At the worst, it’s complete stupidity. But it’s the reality for classroom teachers today and it’s likely to be the reality for classroom teachers tomorrow. Wrestling with the consequences of bad policies is the part of the job that leaves me the most exhausted — and it’s the reason that most teachers beginning careers in this era never make it beyond 5 years in the classroom.

Wrestling with the consequences of bad policies is the part of the job that leaves me the most exhausted.

Does this make any sense?

Basically what I’m saying is that working with kids is nothing short of a remarkable opportunity. It is who I am. It’s what I believe in. I know that it matters more than anything else that I do in my life. But working in today’s public schools can be nothing short of a nightmare because under-informed policymakers continue to make choices that serve their best interests but not the best interests of students or teachers. That’s the way I see it. It’s a sad, sad state of affairs.

Thanks, Bill, for taking the time to share the advice and the honest opinion. We’ll continue to follow your thinking on these and other topics at your always provocative blog The Tempered Radical. 

The number of English language learners in U.S. schools is projected to grow as much as 25 percent by 2025 and many teachers already find themselves challenged to help students whose first language is not English be successful. They are an important audience for The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide, a new book from Jossey-Bass that promises “Ready-to-Use Strategies, Tools, and Activities for Teaching English Language Learners of All Levels.”

Back in the summer, we interviewed Survival Guide co-author Larry Ferlazzo about some other topics. So this time we’ve asked his fellow author (and teaching colleague) Katie Hull Sypnieski to answer five questions about their new book.

Katie has taught English Language Learners across the grades for the past 15 years and currently teaches English at Luther Burbank High in Sacramento CA. She’s also a teaching consultant with the Area 3 Writing Project at UC Davis and a lead trainer for the WRITE Institute.

1. Thanks, Katie, for taking some time at the start of the school year to answer our questions. The title of your book might suggest that it’s aimed at “specialist teachers” who work exclusively with ESL/ELL students. Is that the case?

While this book is a great resource for teachers working exclusively with ELLs, it is also a valuable tool for mainstream teachers. Both Larry and I teach mainstream English courses as well as ESL, and we use the strategies presented in this book with all our students. There are separate chapters on how mainstream teachers can more effectively teach ELLs in their math, English, science and social studies classes. And, as we’ve found ourselves, many of the teaching techniques for ELL’s can be effective with all students.

2. Can you tell us something about ELL student trends around the nation?

It’s hard to find a school or district in this country that doesn’t have an English Learner population, and in states like California, Texas, Florida, and New York it is sometimes hard to find a classroom without any English Language Learners. In fact, the US Department of Education estimates that approximately 4.5 million English Learners are enrolled in public schools across the country, roughly 10% of all students enrolled in K-12 schools in the United States. The number of English Learners has increased by over 50% in the last decade, with some states, like South Carolina and Indiana, experiencing extremely rapid growth of English Learner populations (400-800% increases). The ELL population continues to grow with some demographers predicting that in 20 years or less the ratio of ELL students to English-Only students could be one in four.

3. A new school year is beginning, and we think about new teachers and teachers who may have English language learners in their classrooms for the first time. Your book is a “survival guide.” What are the basic do’s and don’ts of working with these students?

Do model for students what they are expected to do or produce, and don’t just tell students what to do and expect them to do it.

Do speak clearly and slowly and provide students with enough time to formulate their responses in speaking or writing, and don’t speak too fast or repeat something back to students word for word in a louder voice!

Do use visuals, sketches, gestures, intonation, and other nonverbal cues to make both language and content more accessible to students, and don’t stand in front of the class and lecture, or rely on a textbook as your only “visual aid.”

Do give verbal and written instructions — this practice can help all learners, especially ELLs, and don’t act surprised if students are lost when you haven’t clearly written and explained step-by-step directions.

Do regularly check that students are understanding the lesson by having all students respond with “thumbs up or down” or writing their responses on a sticky note or individual whiteboard, and don’t simply ask, “Are there any questions?”

Do encourage students to continue building their literacy skills in their first language (L1) as research shows learning to read in their L1 promotes reading achievement in L2 as “transfer” occurs. And don’t “ban” students from using their native language in the classroom.

4. Are there special considerations for teaching English language learners in the middle grades (4-8)?

It is important for teachers, including those who teach specific content courses, to remember that a lack of proficiency in English does not mean that a student’s intelligence is any less. These students bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the classroom. When teachers allow students to draw on this knowledge and to make connections to new learning, then more language development occurs.

For example, beginning-level students may not be able to express their ideas in writing, but they can be asked to draw pictures to communicate their thinking. It is also important for teachers to keep this in mind when assessing ELLs and to always assess knowledge and language separately. For example, asking beginning-level students to demonstrate their knowledge of a plant’s life cycle by writing an essay is more a test of their English skills than their actual content knowledge.

5. What about ELL beyond the E/LA classroom? What do teachers without a primary responsibility for literacy instruction need to know? And how does the Common Core figure in?

The Common Core State Standards make it very clear that literacy instruction be a “shared responsibility within the school.” Effective teaching of ELLs in core subjects like math, science, and social studies involves teaching students content and the academic language and literacy strategies needed to access that content.

Larry Ferlazzo

Larry and I believe the Common Core can have a positive impact on ELL students if teachers in all content areas are working together to build students’ literacy skills. Of course, an area which greatly impacts ELLs is how they will be assessed. We hope that the next generation of standardized tests will respect language acquisition research and that they will be more connected to performance-based assessment, will offer translations in multiple languages, and will adhere to the concept of “universal design” by simplifying language demands that aren’t relevant to content being measured.

You can learn more about The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide at Larry Ferlazzo’s website page, which includes links to a lengthy list of excerpts available around the Web. There you can also read the 3-part archive of a live Twitter chat about the book and ESL/ELL education. Watch for a review of the book here at MiddleWeb soon.

I’ve known Cossondra George since the early days of MiddleWeb’s online community, where she was a regular and wise voice. For several years in the 2000s I was privileged to be her editor on a series of articles she wrote for Ed Week Teacher.

Cossondra has a knack for giving good teaching advice, as you can easily learn by googling her name. (The unusual spelling is a web-searcher’s delight.) And unlike the mythological Cassandra, her accurate predictions of things to come (in the new teacher’s classroom) have been embraced by many. Her insights can be found in high-readership articles like Taming the Dragon of Classroom Chaos, After the Honeymoon, Teaching Students How to Learn, and most recently Ending the Year on a High Note. Her teaching blog, Middle School Day by Day, from a Teacher’s Point of View (where you can read her current, sad posts on the dissolution of her middle school) was recognized with a 2011 Fascination Award.

Cossondra has spent her 18-year teaching career in the small town of Newberry, Michigan, where — as she tells us in this recent interview — she’s worn quite a few hats, from middle & high school special educator to content specialist, teaching her favorite subject — mathematics.

1. You’ve written several popular articles about classroom organization, behavior management strategies and your techniques for establishing student routines. Novice teachers are eager to read them, we know. We’d like to focus some questions around your advice. But first, tell us about your teaching career.

I currently teach middle and high school special ed. When I finished my bachelor’s degree in elementary education, with emphasis in math and social studies, I wanted to get my endorsement in learning disabilities. So rather than seek a full-time teaching position, I continued to work towards my masters in special education while I subbed.

Once I received my masters degree, I took a position as a middle school special ed teacher at Newberry Middle School in Newberry, Michigan. After several years as an inclusion special ed teacher, I was asked to teach 8^th grade history. While I was teaching history, I searched online for resources to help me engage students. I discovered MiddleWeb. (This was more than a decade ago!) After my one year of 8^th grade history, I was moved to 7^th grade where I mostly taught math, but some years I also taught social studies and technology classes.

Two years ago, another special ed position opened up and I took it. Now, some of my day is spent in inclusion classes (in both the middle and high school) and some in my own MS resource classroom.

As you can see, after nearly 20 years in public education, I’ve had lots of experience in the upper middle grades, in a variety of teaching roles.

2. In general, what would you say is your philosophy of teaching and learning? Talk about the fundamentals. What understandings about young people and adult-student relationships have shaped your teaching practice?

The most important thing I’ve learned about teaching is this: Building relationships with your students is the key to engaging them in the content. Until you can connect with them on some personal level, whether it is talking about football, hunting, pets, or some television show, students rarely will engage with you meaningfully about content. Once they feel a connection with you, that’s when learning starts. They trust you, they want to please you, are willing to struggle along on the journey beside you.

Teaching kids that learning goes hand in hand with struggling and failing can lead to a wonderful experience for both your students and yourself. Being honest about your own shortcomings, allowing students to see you learn and grow — learning to laugh with them at your own mistakes — will go a long way towards building trust.

3. Thinking about the first 4-6 weeks of school, what key steps do you take to establish a positive learning environment where students are respectful and eager to learn? What are the elements that must be in place, in and out of the classroom, for this to work for all students?

I’m not big on classroom rules. I think middle grades students know what is expected RULE-wise, and I enforce the basics: self-respect, respect for others and for property. Where I am really “strict” is on procedures – how we do things, when we do things, and where things belong. As our classroom procedures begin to become second nature to my students, the positive learning environment emerges.

Cossondra’s students – 2005 service-learning project

I build a structured routine of how I envision our classroom looking and functioning, and I model that over and over, helping students create their own method for fitting into the picture. I explain to them why I want things the way I want them and help them see how working together can create a more comfortable place for all of us to be.

One of the most important things a teacher can do is to meet and greet students at the door every day, every hour, by name. Smile, say “hello,” “good morning,” “Hey, I like your shoes (haircut, t-shirt),” “Don’t forget your book and a pencil…”. Anything to happily greet them as they walk in the door. I even post pictures of students from the local newspaper, along with comics, sports news, and other interesting information on the door so they want to stop, look, read and chat about what’s new.

Relationships, relationships, relationships. It really is all about relationships.

4. One of your most popular online articles is one for Education Week titled Taming the Dragon of Classroom Chaos. You admit in that article that you’re not naturally “neat.” Give us the essential strategies you use to create an “organized” classroom.

A place for everything – a place to turn in work, a place for supplies, a teacher-only space, a place for today’s handouts, a place for attendance, a place for EVERYTHING. Otherwise, I would never ever know where anything is. Learn what your weakness is, and create a location to solve that problem. Create a routine for you and your students that leads to learning.

My best organizer is the bell-ringer assignment students find on the board when they walk in. It gets the kids engaged right away, and gives me three precious minutes to take attendance and deal with all the little nit-picky stuff that has to be taken care of some days. It takes time to create meaningful math starters or social studies questions that tie yesterday’s lesson to what we’ll do today, but the bell-ringer can provide valuable instruction as well as organizational support.

I’ve also learned to let go of things that don’t matter in favor of things that matter more. At one time, I took over writing the quote of the day on this blackboard in the hallway. It was fun but took time I discovered I needed for other things. Now I write on it once a week or whenever I get around to it. No one seems to care that there is not a fresh quote every day. Let go of things that don’t matter so much in favor of things that do.

As far as classroom organization, that will look different for everyone depending on your room, what you teach, and your style of teaching. But the basics include things like supply locations, where it is easy for students to grab their own notebook, paper, markers, etc. Organize so that it is easy for you to scan at the end of the hour to make sure things are taken care of. That kind of organizing keep me sane!

It can be little things like turning our supply cubbies on tables away from students so they don’t get filled with trash. Big things like investing in different colored Expo markers for different classes or topics so my boards are not just a huge conglomeration of stuff with no rhyme or reason. Passes hanging by the door for bathroom or hall travel so I don’t have to write on one every time a student leaves the room. Seating charts – made by me or by students, but a place for every student and that student in their place – takes care of attendance quickly, lets subs know who, what, when and where, and also helps solve the mystery of whose book, or hat or sweater has been left behind.

At the end of the Dragon article you mentioned, I wrote:

Amid the chaos that is my classroom, a sharp observer will see these little islands of organization, floating in the clutter and disarray. My students and I spend our time together engaged in learning, and for the most part, things run smoothly.

Most of the ideas in that article aren’t original with me. But I’ve certainly put them to the test! As I said there, anyone who suffers like I do from chronic disorganization can make good use of them.

5. Finally, how is teaching different today than when your began your career? And how does that change the teaching job — or does it? When you began, you no doubt weighed the positives and negatives of a teaching career and the positives won out. Do you think that would be true if you were starting out today? If not, what needs to change?

Much has changed since I began teaching. Technology has taken over every aspect of our lives, and school is no exception. Some of those changes are welcome. We have the ability to access unlimited information quickly. We have the ability to communicate with people around the globe in real time. Those new capacities make learning exciting and meaningful in ways never before possible.

On the other hand, technology often becomes a distraction for students who are not mature enough to filter out the digital buzz and focus on their learning. They think they can multi-task, texting and chatting, and still learn. For some students, this is true. Unfortunately, it’s not true for all. Many students become so bogged down in the social aspects of technology, education suddenly takes a back seat.

Teachers are being held more and more accountable for student learning and achievement. In theory, this is a great idea. I think all teachers should be held to high expectations and kept on track, and should assume responsibility for the success of students in their classrooms. But students are not widgets, and many outside factors influence learning.

We are not all-powerful, able to transmit knowledge and understanding into the brains of our students by touching a button or uttering a magic word. When students are disengaged, we can try all the tools at our disposal, spend sleepless nights coming up with new strategies and ideas, try everything and then some, and still be unsuccessful.

All students are not created equal and to expect them to all arrive at the same destination on the same time schedule is unreasonable. To hold teachers solely accountable for the outcome of that journey is also unreasonable. There has to be a middle ground of spreading the accountability to include other people who make decisions that affect learning — from students themselves, to parents, to school leaders and board members, to politicians, and to the larger community.

Teaching is a wonderful, challenging and sometimes frustrating profession. We need good teachers who will stand up for kids. If that’s you, then chances are the positives will outweigh the negatives.

Would I become a teacher again, given the circumstances in public schools today? Probably. I love my job most of the time. The kids are great. I love the light bulbs that come on in their heads, the positive bubblings they emit, and the feeling that sometimes, I actually do make a difference in their lives.

On the other hand, I would strongly caution anyone considering teaching as a career choice to make sure you are up for the long haul. The pay is marginal. The perks that attracted career teachers in the past — good health insurance, retirement benefits and job security — are no longer guaranteed. If you truly aren’t willing to work 60 hours a week, if you aren’t willing to fight with parents, administrators and politicians for what you believe is right for your students, then consider a different career option.

Teaching is a wonderful, challenging and sometimes frustrating profession. We need good teachers who will stand up for kids. If that’s you, then chances are the positives will outweigh the negatives.

Thanks so much, Cossondra. We’ll watch for future advice and good luck in your next decade of teaching!

Lani Ritter Hall is a leading expert in the relatively young field of professional coaching within virtual education spaces and communities. After a 35-year teaching career, including National Board Certification in 2003, Lani retired from her Ohio school system and joined Powerful Learning Practice LLC, where she serves as Director of Connected Coaching and community leader for PLP’s Connected Learner Experience, a year-long program for teachers learning to integrate technology and social media into their professional practice.

Lani has taught in the middle grades in urban, suburban, and independent schools in the U.S and Canada, and she began collaborating with teachers online in the late 1980’s, when she also found ways to connect her students to distant classrooms. She is the co-author, with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, of the recent book The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age (Solution Tree, 2011), and she blogs at Possibilities Abound.

Lani also teaches a popular online course on becoming a Connected Coach. The next class begins in early January 2013. Learn more at the PLP website.

For our “5Q Interview,” Lani talked with Kansas middle school teacher Marsha Ratzel, also a Connected Coach, who wrote about her own shift to connected professional learning in a June 2012 article for MiddleWeb.

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Marsha Ratzel: You’re a 35-year veteran teacher, NBCT, online coach and now author. Did you imagine yourself co-writing such a powerhouse book like The Connected Educator? How did this happen?

Lani Ritter Hall: Imagine? Never! Where and how did it begin? A series of serendipitous connections with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach led to our sincere friendship, continued collaboration and always—learning. And then ultimately The Connected Educator.

My journey is a story filled with masterful educators. It’s a story that dramatically illustrates the potential of deep online connections and their capacity to transform lives. And it’s story of some telling; you can learn about the beginnings here.

Sheryl and I had been collaborating for some time when one day, during a Skype conversation, she suggested that we share what we had learned about online communities of practice in the form of a book. I thought she was kidding at first. She wasn’t; she was serious. The very thought of it scared me to death; 65,000 words is a lot of words. Yet there was no way that I could pass up an extraordinary opportunity to learn more, stretch, and grow.

Following Sheryl’s unbounded enthusiasm, I jumped in too but likely not in the way you might imagine. I live in Northeast Ohio and Sheryl in coastal Virginia. So two connected learner leaders, separated geographically by more than 500 miles, availed themselves of technology to collaborate, share insights, and gen­erate ideas. Our use of Skype led to words flowing on Google Docs as each chapter of our book emerged and evolved. The priceless comment feature let us unpack and repack and finally brought us to publication. In the true spirit of connected learning, neither the book nor its ideas touched paper until Solution Tree’s presses began to run.

Marsha: You used the term “connected learner leaders.” Can you talk a bit how “connectedness” has changed learning and leading for you?

Lani: The potential of “connected learning” first hit me in the face in the late 1980s, when I and my students participated in collaborative projects with other classes from Germany, Lithuania, Canada, Australia and Britain via email.

Student writing dramatically improved as did their general interest in learning. One student who had failed English repeatedly remarked when we finished: “This project gave juice to my writing.” My students began to develop a global awareness; they were dumbfounded to learn that in Lithuania, a messy home was considered the sign of a dysfunctional family. When they read accounts of winter from Australian students, in the months when we were approaching summer  in America — and when those accounts arrived from an Australian classroom in the middle of our night — they began to realize how vast and complex the Earth really is.

Fast forward to my own professional connected learning: it’s commonplace for me to collaborate with people who live in my tomorrow! I’ve Skyped at 7 p.m. my local time while John in Australia was drinking his morning orange juice. I’ve risen at 2 a.m. to attend a webinar with an Australian team of educators as their coach. With time and distance blurred, I’ve commiserated with colleagues in the far southwest about the constraints imposed by high-stakes testing and brainstormed strategies to work around, in, and outside the system.

At every time of day and night, I’ve participated in online sessions with experts, authors, and teachers as we sought to understand more fully how to influ­ence the educational policies that affect our children’s futures. In online communities, I’ve developed significant collegial relationships that I cherish. The opportunities to engage in difficult discussions around practice have kept me from sleep. Through networks on Twitter and in blogs, I’ve explored resources (ones I likely would never have discovered on my own) that have profoundly affected my beliefs about teach­ing and learning.

My journey into connected learning has been compelling, sometimes daunting, often exhilarating, yet always fueled by passion. And it’s my firm belief that the diverse group of educators with whom I’ve connected has stretched my thinking and enabled me to move outside of my comfort zone to consider new ideas and remix them to improve my practice.

I’ve embraced the exponential potential that connectedness has to transform learning. I’ve learned far more in my time as a connected learner than in the many years before.

That extends to connected leading too. In the Connected Coaching eCourse I facilitate and in the communities I lead, I’ve connected with accomplished educators from China, Denmark, Norway, and many parts of Canada, Australia, Central America and the United States—all from my home. In Blackboard Collaborate we share virtual drinks– and engage in deep discussions around learning, coaching and transforming education given the affordances of technology. I ask questions, I share my thoughts through audio, images, text and video as we find our way. Adopting perhaps a different perspective on leadership, I see myself there as a co-learner, a curator, a network administrator.

Marsha: Tell me more about Connected Coaching— how do Connected Coaches differ from the school- or system-based coaches that often enter classrooms?

Lani: For Connected Coaches, gone is the need to travel to meetings; gone is the need to obtain building permits; gone is the need for boxes filled with folders of activities, binders filled with observations, plans and reflections. Coaching relationships are no longer nurtured and developed exclusively with people in proximate geographical spaces, or only through face to face interactions.

In Connected Coaching, we use the tools of virtual connection: video, Skype conversations, shared images, collaborative Google Docs, threaded discussions, voices in Voicethread, AudioBoo, and Vocaroo. Connected coaches meet from home, in PJs with a favorite beverage of choice, using Google+ or Blackboard Collaborate. They have opportunities to engage others 24/7, live or asynchronously, irrespective of time or place.

Connected Coaches need a well developed online voice/personality, and the ability to move beyond text to communicate in online spaces. The affordances of technology necessitate new mindsets, new skill sets, and new dispositions for those who coach other practitioners in connected spaces.

We see Connected Coaches as “social artists” who help people think deeply about learning that takes place in shared online spaces. They assist educators in becoming more self-directed, in realizing previously unrecognized potential in themselves to effect systemic change in education.

Coaches as social artists– immersed in collaboration in online spaces– epitomize a coaching approach that is an art, a wayfinding, not prescriptive and surely not from a deficit perspective.

Connected Coaches engage in wayfinding, an architectural term appropriate to the learning that occurs in connected spaces. Pathmarkers guide us in our role as coaches. These markers light the way as coaches facilitate the journey of others toward a more accomplished reflective practice. This journey is as much self-directed as it is collaborative. The objective: to create momentum for purposeful inquiry around a shared goal of self and school improvement.

Connected Coaches are skilled at inquiry, asking good questions. Unlike coaches in other models, Connected Coaches share less information and opinion. Often their efforts focus on helping teams and individuals recognize and appreciate diversity found in connected spaces. As well, they concentrate on the development of relationships that leverage an environment for positive growth and self-directedness. Through this appreciative inquiry/strength-based approach, Connected Coaches understand that as they help members realize their own potential over time, innovation follows.

Marsha: What in the coaching model engenders the types of trust relationships that grow during your course?

Lani: One of the most critical elements of the Connected Coaching model is trust building –growing and nurturing relationships. In face to face spaces, coaches and those they coach often share coffee; they chat about where they’ve taught and lived; they share recent photos from their cell phones of activities and family. From these initial interactions, trust begins to develop. Conversations turn to stories around experiences in the classroom. And only then can the real work of the coach begin. It’s no different in online spaces, especially for coaching from an appreciative inquiry perspective.

Building trust online becomes very intentional—creating opportunities for social interactions is purposeful and ongoing. And it is from these that coaches develop meaningful relationships with those they coach.

I’ve designed the Connected Coaching eCourse to model an appreciative inquiry journey similar to the one coaches take with their teams. Very purposefully, I include trustbuilding activities throughout the course, especially at the beginning. We share images that represent how we are feeling; we create 6-word stories around a set of given images; we share passions (other than teaching); we use audio files to share stories.

At the beginning of each webinar, we participate in brief activities that offer opportunities for each one to share a little about themselves in fun ways. We create a collaborative presentation together. Throughout the course, we engage in appreciative language, we recognize and celebrate each other’s strengths. We’ve (all of us) been amazed and totally delighted at the depth of the relationships developed in such a short time—relationships that continue long after our formal time together in the course ends.

Marsha: You mentioned self-directed and self-directedness? In what ways has that been important in your learning? Is that a key characteristic of connected learners?

Lani: Long before DIY (Do It Yourself) became a household acronym, I was a DIY learner. I was self-directed. I didn’t know it then. I just knew I wanted to learn; with every new interest, I sought out my own opportunities for that learning to happen. In high school, years ago at the height of the Cold War, I decided I wanted to learn Russian. It wasn’t offered in my school, so I signed up for adult education in night school—not for a credit, but because of my interest.

When I began teaching, years of top-down “in-service” days seemed to focus only on procedures, new policies and dealing with stress.

With the belief that my students deserved better, I initiated my own self-directed DIY professional development that was focused primarily on teaching strategies. My tunnel focus during those years was teaching and learning. Only later, following significant reflection, did I attribute the enormous effect of my learning on my classroom practice to DIY — to me as a self directed learner.

With a growing interest in facilitating online learning, I stumbled upon an online course entitled MOOM (Moving out of the Middle) hosted by the Concord Consortium. I then embarked upon an incredibly frightening and exhilarating journey into inquiry learning. That learning experience had a profound impact on me and my practice and intensified my quest as a DIY learner. I was hungry for learning, yearned for opportunities to stretch and grow on topics for which I had a passion.

My successful pursuit of National Board Certification followed. In portfolio entry 4 of the National Board certification process, an entire section was devoted to the “teacher as learner.” The evidence gathered for that entry and the accompanying analysis had to make a clear case that my personal learning had directly affected my classroom instruction and students’ learning. The NBPTS candidacy process challenged me as a learner in many ways I previously could not have imagined. I learned so much more about how I learn. And even at that point in 2003, I didn’t know I was self-directed or that I was a DIYer— I only knew that the more I learned the more I wanted to learn.

DIY learners use technology to become connected to resources, including people, as we search for answers. Now that I’ve been deep into connected learning, my strong sense is that self-directedness and connectedness go hand in hand. Why? Because “connected learners take responsibility for their own professional development. They figure out what they need to learn and then collaborate with others to con­struct the knowledge they need. Instead of waiting for professional learning to be organized and delivered to them, connected learners contribute, interact, share ideas, and reflect.” (The Connected Educator, Nussbaum-Beach & Ritter Hall, 2011, p. 51)

The possibilities for self-directed learning in a connected world are astronomic. And the very best parts, other than the learning, are the relationships we develop with smart, passionate people the world over who join us in DIY learning.

Sarah Henchey is a National Board Certified 6th grade language arts teacher in Orange County, N.C. A seven-year veteran, she’s been a team leader, literacy interventionist and new-teacher mentor. A member of the Teacher Leaders Network, Sarah will serve in 2012-13 as a teacher in residence at the Center for Teaching Quality, where her duties will include work as a virtual community organizer for CTQ’s Implementing Common Core Standards project.

The term teacherpreneur has been championed by CTQ as a term representative of cutting-edge teacher leadership in the “new millennium.” The rationale for the term is discussed at length in the 2011 book Teaching 2030, co-authored by 12 teacher leaders and CTQ founder Barnett Berry. We asked Sarah about the idea of entrepreneurial teacher leadership and her early involvement in developing ideas for using the Common Core standards to deepen student learning.

1. Tell us something about your middle grades background and experience.

I’m a middle grades language arts teacher in the Orange County Schools, not far from from Chapel HIll, in North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

I actually didn’t set out to become a middle grades teacher. I intended to teach high school English but changed my mind after a middle school tutoring job during my sophomore year of college.  I was drawn in by the middle school students I worked with – they were the perfect combination of joy and challenge.

When I began student teaching, I realized that, while my preparation program was thoughtful and strategic, I didn’t know enough about teaching my content to help my students be successful. So I returned to school for my master’s degree in literacy prior to beginning teaching.

Including my student teaching experience, I’ve been fortunate enough to teach all three middle school grades (6-8). I just wrapped up my third year in 6th grade at the same school, so I’ve had the benefit of watching my former students grow up to become 7th and 8th graders right before my eyes.

I love middle school because it’s such a time of adjustment and realization in our lives. Many people remember those days as being awkward and confusing years, but I think they’re exciting and full of potential. I enjoy being there to support, encourage, and inspire students during a crucial time in their young lives.

2. You’ve been involved with the Common Core State Standards movement longer than most teachers, through your work with a CTQ project. Tell us what you’ve been up to.

I’ve had the benefit of working closely over the past year on Common Core curriculum development and implementation within my state and district. This work includes collaborating with my content area to create essential learning outcomes and formative assessments, supporting CTQ’s Implementing Common Core Standards team, and participating in teacher-led staff development.

Theses opportunities have allowed me to delve into the standards, interpret the language, and visualize the impact on teaching and learning. They’ve left me encouraged and optimistic about the potential for authentic, higher-level curriculum for our students. I’m eager for discussions around the Common Core to continue so we can support each other, take small steps, and ensure a successful implementation. As I wrote in an Education Week post last spring, we’re really all in this together.

At my own school, one method my grade level has used to address Common Core State Standards is integrated units. We know that creating connected learning experiences is essential for supporting the cognitive needs of our middle school students. Through the literacy standards, Common Core provides perfect opportunities for integrating content and building, rather than recreating, learning links.

For example, last school year our grade experimented with interdisciplinary writing during the months of February and March. Students created a fictional character through their English Language Arts class. They then manipulated that role through content-specific writing assignments, following the RAFT writing development strategy. Student writing was expected to demonstrate understanding of content material and vocabulary for its assigned subject. However, these writings also became “seed” ideas for more extensive pieces in the English/language arts classroom.

This assignment created continuity among our core and elective classes, and it also addressed the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Literacy.

As we progress toward full Common Core implementation, it’s essential teachers collaborate. We must work through the standards together, have a voice in discussions with various stakeholders, and create resources that support our mutual success.

3. Year before last, you wrote a series of articles for Education Week Teacher, reflecting on your first year as a cooperating teacher, mentoring a teacher education major. Are you still working with student teachers?

I’ve just completed my second year of hosting a student teacher. This has been an intriguing and humbling experience. I’ve learned so much from stepping back, observing, and reflecting.

And I’ve also wondered what else we could to optimize this experience and improve the readiness and confidence of our future colleagues.

Teaching is intricate and challenging work. There’s also a level of unpredictability – we’ll never be able to prepare pre-service teachers for all of the scenarios they will encounter. But I’m hopeful that we can create opportunities for them to engage in authentic classroom experiences early and often. We can create meaningful connections between theory, policy, and practice to support their synthesis of what it means to teach.

Following my first year of hosting a student teacher, I considered recommendations I would make to pre-service programs to enhance the partnership they have with cooperating teachers. After this second year, I continue to see value in these suggestions and would like to make an additional request of cooperating teacher –reach out to the local university and offer your support. Help to create conditions you know will support your pre-service colleague and share these with other colleagues who are mentoring.

You’ve been involved in the work of the Center for Teaching Quality, so you’re familiar with their concept of the “teacherpreneur.” Can you tell us something about that?

The position of “teacherpreneur” was first coined in the CTQ book Teaching 2030. At its core, a teacherpreneur is a hybrid position where an individual remains active and grounded in the classroom while simultaneously having release time to engage in additional leadership roles within the school, district, or state.

Teacherpreneur positions offer great hope and promise as we look to transform our public school system into one that supports success for all of our students.

These positions can take many forms. For example, a teacher may be an active classroom teacher for half of their day while spending the other half mentoring early career teachers, partnering with local unions and organizations, or developing curriculum resources for their district.

This year, the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) is supporting six hybrid positions – four teacherpreneurs (partial release time) and two teachers-in-residence (full release). I’m honored to be serving as one of the teachers-in-residence for the 2012-2013 school year.

My first six weeks in this role have been full of learning! As part of my position, I’ll be facilitating teacher-developed resources and learning around the Common Core. In preparation for this work, I’ve spent time exploring policy, research, and resources and developing the understanding I’ll need to support teachers with whom I’m collaborating.

The flexibility of my schedule has been essential as I’ve connected with teachers on the West Coast, reached out to many school districts, and met with funders. This role also allows me to better serve the needs of teachers I’m collaborating with, thus enabling them to focus on crafting curriculum that meets the needs of their students.

When I return to my middle grades classroom next year, I’m confident that this experience will deepen my understanding and abilities as an educator. I’m already collecting ideas from the remarkable and thoughtful teachers I’m working with and developing a plan for sharing these strategies with my colleagues. I’m also using this opportunity as a chance to enhance my understanding of teacher leadership – how do we, as teachers, take an active role in advocating for the profession our students need and deserve?

Teacherpreneur and teacher-in-residence roles capitalize on the individual strengths and interests of teacher leaders by spreading them both within and beyond the classroom. I’m excited about the possibilities that lie ahead of me this year and look forward to seeing more of these roles as we move forward.

5. Where you imagine yourself in 20 years? Will you be a principal, a district leader, a college professor? In a second career?

I’ll be teaching kids and collaborating with my colleagues. That’s what I love.

In America’s post-analog, budget-stressed era of public schooling, many teacher librarians are struggling to justify their existence and explain their continued relevance to an audience of skeptical school boards and taxpayers who can barely remember a world without Google.

But Maryland middle school librarian Gwyneth Anne Bronwynne Jones has no problem explaining hers.

The Daring Librarian (you need only check out her blog) told the New York Times last June: “We are not expendable because we are guiding the minds of our students to lead them to become life-long learners, curious searchers and good digital citizens.” It’s one of the most exciting times ever to be a teacher librarian, she said, but “We must shift our language, adding words like attribution, tagging, widget, Creative Commons, transliteracy and authority.”

School librarians must become more like Lady Gaga, the Daring Librarian proposed, and less like the 20th century stereotype in owl-rimmed glasses. “Librarians need to establish a clear, pervasive, vibrant and involved presence in their schools, communities and on the Web.” We asked her five questions.

1. You’re on the board of ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education. In fact, you’ve just been elected to a second term. How did this come about?

((I know, ISTE, pinch me, right?))

It has been both an honor and a pleasure to serve the members of the ISTE organization as their PK-12 representative. I was nominated by a colleague & SIGMS professional development chair Brenda Anderson and since then have striven to be the voice of the school based educator.

What does a middle grades teacher librarian bring to the ultimate ed-geek organization?

Other than my immense geeky charm and natural immaturity? I mean, you are who you teach, right? Seriously though, my students keep me grounded. I’ve had opportunities to go corporate, non-profit, higher ed, and district level but I really can’t see myself leaving the middle school environment. A few years ago, my district opened a new high school that my middle school kids would matriculate into – and many of my students begged and tried to get me to apply to open that school so I could follow them there…but honestly, I’m just not grown up enough to teach high school. My awesome (read corny and sophomoric) jokes that get laughs here in middle school would probably only get sarcastic eye rolls in high school. I’m SO not an apathetic person – I’m an annoyingly positive but snarky Pollyanna type. I don’t suffer negative or toxic people gladly. If at all.

What are the messages you promote in your work with the ISTE board and its sizeable membership (including big organizations and giant corporations)?

The ISTE board is comprised of many illustrious and impressive professionals including college educators, district directors and administrators, CEOs and corporate luminaries. It’s my privilege to advocate for the PK-12 educator who is working every day “in the trenches” in the school. If they should ever go “off track” and move in a direction that I think would hinder or not serve the majority of our ISTE membership (school-based educators) then that’s when I would spring into action.

I haven’t had to to do that yet because really the ISTE board is comprised of a pretty amazing group of people, and the ISTE staff members in both Eugene, Oregon and DC are AWESOME. But believe me — I’m ready to pounce with the Daring Librarian cape firmly affixed! The messages that I promote in my service to the board and our membership are illustrated here.

Daring Defender of Books, Libraries, & Lifelong Learning! Fearless fighter of filters! Protector of Goofballs & Geeks! Super supporter of digital citizenship, & intellectual curiosity & freedom! Enthusiastic champion of transliteracy, creative commons, open source, & shameless sharing! Committed to being a fierce and positive change agent within my school, community, district, state, nation, world, & the universe!

What!? Was that too grandiose?

2. You were doing infographics before infographics were so cool. What got you on that path?

I’ve always been a visual learner. If I can picture in my mind something like a name, how it’s written, or a painting or photograph, I can recall it and decode it faster and it stays with me longer.  I’m also really good at putting together IKEA furniture.

Do you take credit for the infographic revolution in education?

Absolutely! It was without a doubt all me — I come from the internets and I’ve been doing infographics since 1997! All bow down before my graphic power, Muuwaaa!  Umm, kidding. I dunno — I guess it was because my district got an early license for the software Comic Life and I immediately bonded with it and eagerly showed my teachers how to use it to create engaging graphics and worksheets for their lessons and projects.

Once I started up our Daring Tech Wikispaces in 2006, I found that it was SO much easier to create comic directions with screenshots to help my teachers with day to day technology troubleshooting problems and professional development challenges. I’d discovered I was explaining the same thing over and over. So I figured that if I made a comic tutorial on how to do it and posted it to the wiki, I could just point them in that direction and they could be empowered! — Create it once, share it forever. Here’s an example.

The simple act of how to clean your LCD projector filter can turn a red light to green & save the day! The full graphic that I created in 2009 for cleaning that filter is here.  Another early comic was my Burn Baby Burn graphic, where I showed how my teachers could use their new iBook laptops to burn & backup their data to a CD! My stuff is all Creative Commons so feel free to snag it. Some of it was made before I was putting the CC graphic on the bottom of all my comics, but I’m tellin’ you: if there’s a comic that I ever made that you want, it’s yours! ;-)

What are the best ways for teachers to create and use infographics with students?

That’s a tough one because our district hasn’t purchased Comic Life for our students, just our teacher laptops. But you really don’t need fancy software to make an attractive infographic — basic MS Word can do lots! It’s all about the storyboarding & early planning, grabbing useful screenshots, & keeping the accompanying verbiage to a minimum.

Infographics should be more graphic than info, IMHO. This is also a perfect teachable moment for starting the discussion about Creative Commons: what it is, and why you should use it. Because you know, it’s not just a license — it’s a lifestyle!

3. What are 3-4 favorite infographics you’ve created (you and/or your audience)?

My QR Code series has been a favorite: what they are & how to make them. Check these out:

1. QR Codes At-a-Glance

2. How to Create a QR Code in 3 Easy Steps

They both still get a lot of views on Flickr (combined over 18,000! WTHeck!?)

What really tickled me was that a friend of mine in St. Louis saw my QR Code Comic blown up huge poster-sized in an exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center. She took a pic with her camera phone & Tweeted it to me. I ’bout died and went to geeky creative commons heaven! See here and especially here!

Another personal favorite is my Teaching Wikipedia comic to go along with my blog post – Wikipedia Is Not Wicked. That was picked up by the Washington Post which made my Mom super happy!

Can you point to some infographics created by others that you think are especially effective?

Tiffany Whitehead, the Mighty Little Librarian, has tipped the Comic Life kool aid with me and created some amazing infographics! Here’s one she did on Voki, the talking avatar software. Also, my mentor Dr. Joyce Valenza has also created cool comic tutorials! Here’s a great one on writing a thesis statement that she co-authored.

4. OK, give it up. How did you become The Daring Librarian? And how are you hanging onto your job in an era when many middle grades librarians are losing theirs? What do principals need to hear about the role of effective teacher librarians today?

After attending NECC 09 in DC I really wanted to go transparent & brand myself. That’s when I started my professional blog and called it Library Tech Musings — I blogged about the process of branding and asked for suggestions. I really wanted the Animated Librarian but it was taken….I went round and around crowdsourcing other suggestions. But of course, in the end, my Mom (a retired English and gifted and talented teacher) came up with it. The fact that The Daring Librarian is an assonance rhyme just made it giggle-worthy and middle school perfect. Heh heh assonance.

As for how I’m hanging in there with my job — I wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times last summer about how teacher librarians need to stand up, be noticed, and channel their inner rock star. But in the end there is no true safe in the world — the only thing any of us can do is to be damn good at our jobs, be passionate, and digitally adept to change — and ALWAYS make our students our first priority!

5. Publishers must be clamoring for a book from you, just to get your high-profile avatar-logo on the cover! Is there a book in the works? If so, what might we expect? And if not, how come?

You’re kidding right? I tried NoNaWriMo years ago and gave up after 15 days. Though no one seems to believe me when I say this, I’m very lazy! Although my inflated ego would LOVE my avatar on a cover of a book (Oh WHY did you have to say that? So tempting!), unless it’s fiction or education practice philosophy I really believe the days of writing Teacher Tech books have gone. By the time anything is published now, it’s out of date. That’s why I love blogging so much! Instant gratification! So, unless I get inspired to finish the 2 YA novels I’ve outlined in me wee little heid, I’m going to leave the writing to the other Gwyneth Jones of British science fiction fame! I know, quite generous of me, huh? You’re welcome.

I wish I could find a blogging job where I could get paid by the amount of !’s I use when writing about my library and teaching practice. I always feel like Elaine in that Seinfeld episode where she has to take out exclamation marks, because I do use so many. Those and ellipses!

But let’s face it: If you, as a teacher, find that when you write about your middle grades teaching practice, you don’t feel the urge to use an inordinate amount of !!!!!’s, then maybe you need to go re-kindle your passion or get the heck out. Our profession is so precious, our responsibility to our students is so great, that if you don’t have the proper enthusiasm and optimism for it then maybe some serious soul searching needs to happen – STAT!

John, hope what I’ve had to say works for you. As lazy as I am this was a lot of effort on my part. Can I take a nap now?

Yes, yes you can. Challenging work, well done. Slip into your steampunk dreams. And while you’re napping, our readers can peruse another Daring Librarian interview, conducted by our friend M.E. Steele-Pierce (a deputy school supe, no less) for the blog Voices from the Learning Revolution. I notice you have a good bit more to say there about the future of teacher librarians. Daring stuff. Right? Gwyneth Anne?

Donalyn Miller is a full-time teacher in Keller, Texas (near Ft. Worth) and a popular writer, speaker and advocate on behalf of joyous reading and plenty of it. Her first book, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child (Jossey-Bass), has been a top seller at Amazon since in first appeared in the spring of 2009. Donalyn was a finalist for 2010 Texas Elementary Teacher of the Year and has been a consulting teacher for the National Writing Project. For a wild ride, keep up with her GoodReads page. As we learn in this recent interview, she’ll be pursuing another adventure this fall: moving from 6th to 4th grade!

1. Your The Book Whisperer blog at Education Week Teacher, and your five-star book of the same title published in 2009 have both been big success stories. We’re sure other teachers who have a urge to write a book about teaching practice would love some advice. And how has this success affected your professional life?

When I wrote The Book Whisperer, I did not imagine that the book would be a bestseller. I was unknown other than my Education Week blog. I think this gave me a sort of reckless bravery. If I was only going to have the opportunity to write one book, then I was going to write about my truth—what I really believe about reading instruction and children’s reading. Talking with teachers all over the country, they tell me that they appreciate that I am a practicing classroom teacher and my voice is an honest one.

Writing, blogging, speaking, traveling, and teaching (as well as being a wife and mom) are challenging at times. I could choose to do less, but I don’t. I am dedicated to remaining a classroom teacher. I love working with children and I think that I have more credibility with teachers because I continue to teach. I spend about 50 days a year traveling and speaking—most of these during the summer. Sharing my ideas and learning from other teachers wherever I travel ignites my passion and helps me continue to grow as a teacher. I am not done learning how to be a good teacher. I hope I am never done. My husband and I believe that this is our shared mission and he is an incredible cheerleader and supporter.

It is much more difficult to find time to write now. When I wrote The Book Whisperer, I was not traveling and speaking, which demands a lot of my time, especially during the summer. Instead of writing whenever I feel the muse strike me, I must be more disciplined about writing these days. I think that anyone who wants to write needs to dedicate regular time to it and pack away excuses about inspiration and motivation. As my friend Jeff Anderson says, “A writer in motion stays in motion.” Kate Messner, who writes children’s literature and published the professional book, Real Revision, has an incredible online writing camp for teachers this summer.  Don’t write because you want to be published. Write because you matter and your ideas have value.

This school year, I am changing districts to work for an amazing principal, Dr. Ron Myers, who wrote the afterword for The Book Whisperer. I am also changing grade levels, and I will be moving from 6^th grade language arts to 4^th grade self-contained. I am excited about working with my own class in a workshop setting all day.

Every summer, I hold a Book-a-Day challenge on Twitter and my blog. I invite teachers, librarians, and other readers to read a book a day for every day of summer break. This is the fourth year for the challenge. My plan this summer is to ramp up my knowledge about series that my new fourth grade class will enjoy.

2. We read your recent Ed Week post where you share some ideas about how to encourage summer reading. Just how important is that? Are you optimistic, pessimistic or somewhere in-between about the impact of the Common Core on “real reading”?

I recently heard Richard Allington speak about the negative consequences of summer reading slump or summer slide. Kids who do not read over the summer fall behind their peers and the effect is cumulative. Several summers without reading can result in a year or more reading achievement gap. I think it is vital that children continue to read over the summer.

I encourage my students to make specific plans about what books they will read over the summer and I send lists of recommended reading home to parents during the final weeks of school. Our school also opens the library a few hours a week during the summer so that children can check out books. Just like hot meals, the school is the primary source of reading material for many children. Without school and classroom libraries, many students lose access to books over the summer.

I cannot predict how the implementation of Common Core would affect authentic reading. I don’t think that the architects and early responders of Common Core believe that children should read less. The more children read, the more capable they are at mastering grade level goals.

3. What are some hot new books for intermediate and middle school kids that could help energize summer reading programs this year?

I keep booklists on slideshare at www.slideshare.net/donalynm and I update these lists often. I also keep an ongoing list of book recommendations, sorted by age level and genre, on goodreads.

Two new books that I think should be on everyone’s must-read list are Wonder by R.J. Palacio and The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. 2012 is turning out to be a great year for middle grade fiction, but these two books are standouts and have wide appeal across age ranges and interests.

4. Late last year you joined some teacher friends to create the Nerdy Book Club website. How did that come about? What are your goals and why/how should people get involved?

The Nerdy Book Club began as a joke. Several reading friends on Twitter began using the hashtag #nerdybookclub whenever a tweet seemed especially reading-obsessed. Bemoaning the fact that many of the books our students loved were passed over for major book awards each year, my friend Colby Sharp and I decided we would start our own book awards, the Nerdies. We began a blog and created a nomination ballot for the awards. While providing time for readers to vote, we hosted blog posts from readers who reflected on their reading lives and how they became readers. These Reading Lives posts are beautiful testaments to the power of teachers, librarians, parents, and siblings in connecting children with books and sparking a love for reading.

After the 2011 Nerdies Awards ended, Colby and I recognized that the Nerdy Book Club blog was popular and filled a need in the teaching and reading community. We polled readers about what they would like to see on the blog and invited our tech-savvy friend, high school teacher Cindy Minnich, to join us in running Nerdy Book Club.

The membership requirements are simple. If you read, you are a member of Nerdy Book Club. Every reader has a value and a voice in our community. We invite anyone to post on the blog about their book love, their reading experiences, or their work with young readers. Last month, Nerdy Book Club was chosen the Best Children’s and Young Adults blog by the Independent Booksellers Association.

5. What about career plans? Do you expect to remain in the classroom? Other leadership roles? And the inevitable question: Are you working on a new book?

I am working on another professional book, Reading in the Wild, which will come out next spring. I surveyed 900 adult readers about their reading habits and generalized a profile of the lifelong reader.

Here is an article I did with Scholastic recently about the new book. I am lucky that I can write, speak, travel, and teach. I have opportunities for leadership without leaving the classroom and I have no plans to leave. It is hard at times to maintain a balance, but I am dedicated to remaining a classroom teacher.

We close with a quote from the Scholastic article:

“We give a lot of lip service to the idea that we’re creating lifelong readers in the classroom, but we aren’t being intentional about it. Where’s the list of habits we’re trying to create? How are we instilling them in kids?”

Heather Wolpert-Gawron is a middle school English/language arts and speech/debate teacher in San Gabriel Unified School District and a former California regional teacher of the year. Her popular blogs at Edutopia and TweenTeacher are frequently highlighted in various SmartBrief Education newsletters and other nationally circulated ed resource publications. Her first full-length book, ‘Tween Crayons & Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers, was published last year by Eye on Education. Heather is also the author of a series of guides for teachers around Internet literacy. You can learn more about her here.

Heather was one of three guest experts at our new-teacher webinar in July. Check out the archive and downloads at our webinar page.

1. It says “Middle School” in your book’s subtitle, but we know how publishers are. Where would you say the advice in your book fits on the grades 4-8 continuum? Where does your personal teaching experience lie? And how would you define a Tween?

‘Tween can be such a state of mind, can it not? I think there are “tips” in my book for most any teacher across these grades. And if you don’t find something useful now, who knows what you might be teaching next year? We live in unpredictable times.

I have taught everything from 3rd graders to 12th graders. I’ve even worked with students in higher education. I began my teaching career in elementary, but I soon found my style and my desire to teach deeper content urged me to “go up!” It’s like someone yelling, “Go West!” but, well, not.

Anyway, finding the age level you are called to teach can be a little trial-and-error. I went up to 4th grade and taught the California history curriculum of Spanish Missions (yawn) and Gold Rush (cool). I taught 5th graders American History (really interesting, but a little glossed over for this age group). In upper elementary, I found I missed the complexities of a deeper curriculum.

So I went all the way up to high school, and that was somewhat satisfying in that I was able to mine themes and topics in our literature that made students realize that words and combinations of words are puzzles to be teased apart and dissected. But I soon realized that I want the best of both worlds. I wanted Shakespeare AND silliness. I wanted middle school.

What many don’t realize is that there is a sweet spot for teachers in terms of the grade levels they teach. We aren’t interchangeable. I may have a multiple subject credential, but teaching 3rd is vastly different from teaching 6th. I may have a single subject credential in English, but teaching 8th is vastly different from teaching 12th.

All that, of course, is about human development. But it’s also true that many of the strategies that work for one age group can be tweaked and adjusted on the developmental scale so they’re effective with older or younger kids. An 11th grader is going to be just as excited about choosing their own project as a 4th grader would be. Creating a video trailer for a book, using an iPad, is as engaging to many 5th graders as it is to an 8th grader. In other words, so many strategies in my book have application across most or all grade levels.

I will say that there is the buzz of constant spring fever that sets middle schoolers apart from other grade levels. By high school, they tend to at least have made their peace with the changes happening to them. In middle school, it’s like one day they are kids and the next day they are casting themselves in the role of mature young adult. It’s confusing for them and it’s challenging for teachers. One day a student is reading Magic Treehouse and the next it’s Hunger Games.

And you, as their teacher, have to constantly adjust your game plan to match the mood of the moment and lure that particular student on that particular day into Learning with a big “L”. Tweens are slippery beasts! Don’t you love it?

2. In the first two chapters of your book, you offer a rich array of ideas about creating a high-functioning middle grades classroom and then building a community inside that classroom. What’s the most important advice here?

Heather’s classroom during Banned Books week

You know, I didn’t believe it mattered until I saw for myself the power of creating a learning community in the classroom. I really think that without community, the deepest kind of learning cannot happen. Students have to WANT to learn. Some come to you already possessing that trait; others discover it depending on the subject or depending on the teacher. Still others struggle to ever find it. Building community in the classroom, creating shared experiences, making students feel privileged to be in this very special place: that’s what pulls out the desire to learn and learn and keep on learning.

That’s also some of why building the right physical environment is so important. We don’t have room for all the details here (but here’s something I wrote about my Banned Books strategy). But it’s about making them feel that they are in a good and exciting place that’s unlike anywhere else.

And I’m not just talking about a room design that indicates learning is going on — it has to be a place that actively lures kids into learning, even when their brains want to go elsewhere: to the divorce, the lack of food on the table at home, the breakup with a boyfriend, crushing on a girl, Minecraft vs. World of Warcraft, the upcoming recital, a parent’s fight, greenhouse gases, a brother in the military, a sister going to college. There’s so much we compete with when it comes to “attention.” Putting in a little effort to give your classroom a costume of coolness will pay you back a tenfold throughout the school year.

3. Then you move on to the (drum roll) Tween Brain. Is that a scary place? We’re pretty sure you did a lot of extra research as you prepared to write this chapter. What surprised you? You know, the big Brain Aha’s.

I drew a lot on the science behind Dr. Judy Willis’s research. She’s a neurologist turned middle school teacher and she gives magnificent tours of the adolescent brain and the science behind improving its functioning. She was one of the first people in education, at least that I heard of, talking about the flexible IQ and the plasticity of the brain. It’s a very powerful and encouraging thing to know that the brain can become more than it currently is, for anybody. Teach that fact to middle schoolers and they don’t feel like it’s too late for them. (Here’s an Edutopia video interview with Judy, who is someone I really respect.)

4. Next comes data and assessment. Let’s skip that. Just kidding. Although we’d bet some readers do. Why is it that teachers don’t get excited about assessment for learning? What’s the case you make that might change some minds about that?

It’s very releasing, if given the chance, to change how you do your own student assessments. Recently I began focusing solely on Project Based Learning, and I think I got the best from more students this year than ever before. There are lots of resources on the Web about creating PBL units with the assessments — the learning progress — built right in. Here’s one: a Top 10 Tips guide from Edutopia, edited by my fellow blogger there, Suzie Boss.

For me, PBL is not just about accelerating achievement, important as that is. PBL follows my creed as a teacher — it makes me happy. I’m not only satisfied – but happy. I love thinking about the PBL lessons. I love learning about options for doing things, options I can pass on to students. I love learning from the students themselves.

The key to good teaching is to capture that same feeling in any lesson you teach, whether its a PBL unit that you yourself designed or a unit everyone in the school or district must accomplish. In almost any lesson there’s something interesting to tap into — a hook to create enthusiasm for the topic, both for yourself AND your students.

It’s not all about enthusiasm, of course, but I think excitement as a teacher can help bridge many gaps and get us through some mandated curriculum. Sometimes that’s what teachers have to do: find that hook that excites you about an otherwise boring or counterproductive obligation of a lesson. How can you find this? That’s where collaboration comes in. A single teacher can’t do it all; collaboration is what helps fuel our imagination, innovation, and inventiveness. That’s when we turn to fellow educators in our school or to our Personal Learning Network and communities of practice on the Internet. If you learn to reach out to other teachers effectively, there’s always someone out there with a good teaching idea you’ve never thought about. Look at this infographic about Connected Educators, created by my colleague Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach.

5. Last question – and 11 chapters to go! Okay, let’s do this. Give us 11 bullets, one for each remaining chapter, with the big message behind each. Then we’ll count on the newbies to check out your book for themselves if they want to survive (or just be more successful) in the coming year.

• Chapter 5 – Be transparent with students about why they must learn something and make lessons really relate to life outside of school.

• Chapter 6 – Use targeted strategies to pull out the deepest thinking from students. Help them freeze the “tickertape” going on at all times in their brain that makes connections 24/7. Help them harness that screenshot and leverage it to benefit their work.

• Chapter 7 – Give students the tools to show the highest level of content they’ve mastered by teaching them to communicate that content in high level and multiple ways. In other words, teach them how to teach.

• Chapter 8 – Build a classroom library. No matter your subject, build a classroom library that reflects your interests and you’ll find students that will relate to you and your content in a deeper way.

• Chapter 9 – Differentiate. Give choices. Honor the individuality in every classroom.

• Chapter 10 – Teach students how to question. Teach them how to develop high level questions and you will have developed an authentic assessment that recognizes the value of learning through confusion.

• Chapter 11 – Use social media and teach Internet literacy. Let them communicate online and you will be extending the school day substantially. Give them the tools to make good decisions online.

• Chapter 12 – Use specific strategies to deal with the mass of grading and feedback required to monitor students’ understanding. It can get crazy! Forgive yourself for needing to use some tricks to deal with the workload that comes along with teaching.

• Chapter 13 – Be flexible. Don’t enter teaching thinking it is a static, never-changing profession. Enter it with the knowledge that you will need to roll your dice and bend this way and that from year to year, unit to unit, and era to era. Learn to bend and you won’t break.

• Chapter 14 – Publicize your efforts. Don’t be modest. Scream from the rafters about what your students have accomplished.

• Chapter 15 – Take care of you. Pamper as needed, and whatever you do, keep learning…

Thanks, Heather. We’ll keep up with your adventures via your blogs at Edutopia and TweenTeacher!