John
Norton,
MiddleWeb Editor
John Norton serves as editor and manager of MiddleWeb. A native of Ocean Drive Beach, SC and a graduate of Clemson University, John is a former education journalist who worked at several daily newspapers in the Southeast during his 30-year education writing career. He is a long-time member and former vice president of the national Education Writers Association, and won the organization's first prize for investigative reporting in 1984. He lives in the mountains of western North Carolina with his wife Janice, an early childhood/ special education specialist, two Golden Retrievers, and the occasional visit from his adult daughter, who is also a writer.
From 1986-90, John was the first executive director of the South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruitment, where he helped create the national model Teacher Cadet program. In 1990, he joined the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Education Board as vice president for information, where he wrote and edited many reports on public and higher education. After six years at SREB, John struck out on his own as a freelance education writer and editor. Since the late 1980s, John has visited more than 100 middle schools and interviewed more than 750 teachers and principals in connection with his work for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and related projects. Among the projects he has worked on since 1996: Editor of the Focused Reporting Project and leader of a team of reporters and education researchers who produced a series of community newspapers about middle grades reform in Long Beach, CA and Louisville, KY; founder and editor of MiddleWeb since 1996; writer/consultant for the Alabama-based A+ Education Foundation and author of the 1999 Alabama task force report "Teaching and Learning: Meeting the Challenge of High Standards"; and editor of "Working Toward Excellence," the journal of the Alabama Best Practices Center. John is also "communications advisor" for the Southeast Center for Teaching Quality, where he is helping develop the Teacher Leaders Network. From time to time, John writes for the Journal of Staff Development and serves as a freelance editor for SREB and other education organizations. He can be contacted at norton@middleweb.com where he appears to be pretty busy.
