Jan 19, 2006 12:21 PM
How times have changed. In 1989, then President George H. W. Bush and then Gov. Bill Clinton convened an “Education Summit,” and not a single teacher was invited. It was not an oversight but instead a reflection of the view that classroom teachers are not the best judges of their own needs.
To cut through teachers’ isolation from their own profession, and to prove that they can provide direction to one another, the Teachers Network was established 25 years ago. There followed a quarter century of teachers innovating, networking and collaborating to develop a host of techniques and strategies to further the profession.
And each year, the group awards grants to some of the most innovative in the profession to allow them to develop ever newer and more innovative techniques and strategies.
At a recent ceremony on Nov. 22 at the McGraw-Hill Building in midtown Manhattan, the Network honored this year’s grant award winners and MetLife Fellows who have created either original projects or who took an existing project and fashioned it uniquely to their students’ needs. Many ingeniously integrate the Internet, and all grant-award-winning projects are published on the Teachers Network Web site, www.teachersnetwork.org.
The winners include an astounding range of originality: Laura Anderson’s “Sketching the Pythagorean Theorem”; Larry Busky’s “The Lessons of Emmet Till”; Denise Goldman’s “Uncovering Personalities in Othello”; Bonnie Glasgold’s “Who Eats Whom: A Food Chain WebQuest”; Donna Hannibal’s “Take a Spin Through the Solar System”; Stephen Earley’s “Interactive Character Journals”; and Cari Gersh’s “The ESL News Press.”
Lori Langsner, TeachNet disseminator and an art teacher from IS 24 on Staten Island, showed those at the ceremony how she conceived and executed an innovative unit on Vincent van Gogh, using every tool of exploration and discovery in such a way as must have guaranteed that her students would be lifelong art lovers.
Richard Gadsby, Teachers Network Leadership Institute MetLife Fellow from JHS 113 in Brooklyn, is a former corporate attorney whose students responded fantastically to his teaching them how to represent peers in disciplinary situations.
The award-winning projects as well as previous projects and other teacher tools are available on the network’s Web site. It contains resources on an encyclopedic scale for every imaginable avenue of educational inquiry and reform and includes courses, lesson plans, a “teacher store,” videos and much more.
The network’s influence extends into every aspect of the educational scene, including the preparation, recruitment, evaluation, retention and support of teachers, and it proves there is no contradiction between improving student learning and advocating for teacher leadership. Grants given by the Teachers Network have enabled 40,000 teachers to package and share their ideas.
Fellows are steeped in action-research in the areas of professional development, curriculum implementation, classroom management, school culture, assessment and preparation for assessment, parental involvement and overall policy and practice. They also participate in online dialogues with one another, meet with prominent educational leaders, and conduct classroom studies.
The Teachers Network is obviously very popular with its participants.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to be a major participant in the miracle of helping kids learn, and having my own imagination and intelligence respected in the process,” said one teacher who, after five years in the classroom, cannot imagine ever growing tired of her mission.
The awards event was hosted by Charlotte Frank, senior vice president of McGraw-Hill, one of the corporate sponsors of the group.
This is a jubilee year for the teacher-friendly Teachers Network, and countless friendly teachers share in the celebration.