Back to Blogging

It's been quite a while since I've blogged, mainly due to my relief at being finished with my dissertation and my aversion to doing anything related to my dissertation after finishing. Earning a doctorate can be draining, and when you've poured your brain into a topic for so long, you relish time spent doing anything else. Now that I've read my fill of James Rollins and Stephen King, I'm back to reflect on teaching and teaching practice.

The first thing you'll notice is that I've changed the title of the blog to "Resilient Teaching" rather than "Optimistic Teaching." As I think about the implications of my dissertation research (I'll get to that in a later post, I promise), I feel as though being resilient is much more desirable than being optimistic. Optimism is an ingredient in resilience, but the real goal for all of us should be resilience - in the face of unmotivated students, unsupportive administrators, hostile parents, uncooperative colleagues, and combative legislators. If we can be resilient in the face of all this, teaching will be effective. I'll touch more on this throughout this blog.

I hope to engage people in healthy discussions of what makes teaching effective. Teacher effectiveness seems to be the "big idea" everyone is talking about today. What does it mean for teachers to be effective? How do you measure teacher effectiveness? What are the implications if a teacher is deemed ineffective - or, for that matter, effective? Does teacher effectiveness translate to school effectiveness? To student effectiveness? As I read the blogs of others, these are the questions of the day. And in today's economy, these questions have real implications for people's lives. I want to explore the answers to these questions and hypothesize the implications.

More later. Looking forward to this blog journey with you.