It is not easy to "come out" as a teacher, particularly at the middle school level. The overwhelming reason to come out is to make school a safer place for youth who know, think, or fear they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Adolescence is hard enough without positive role models for every aspect of who one is or is striving to become.…

The study sought to determine factors that affect faculty decisions regarding their involvement in teaching online distance education courses. A survey was administered to online distance education faculty across the United States to determine those factors that encourage or discourage them from continuing to teach online courses. The factors were…

Background/Context: In response to state-level test-based accountability and the federal No Child Left Behind Act, school administrators increasingly view centralized curriculum and prescribed instructional strategies as the most direct means of increasing student performance. This movement toward standardization reduces teachers' autonomy and…

This article explores the use of scoring rubrics in the context of deteriorating material conditions of writing instruction. The author hopes to offer a consideration of rubrics that enables a revision of rubric designs, in order to facilitate teacher response to student writing, and that offers suggestions for uses of rubrics that account for…

In response to a California State education reform bill that requires professors of methods courses to return to the classroom once every three years, a university profesor of 15 years taught 9th-grade English in Watts. This essay presents nine tips for others who anticipate their own return to teaching. (IW)

The purpose of this document is to provide standards for the preservice professional preparation of teachers, to encourage inservice professional development, and to describe the necessary conditions for teaching and learning the social studies. These standards may be used as goals toward which the professional social studies teacher strives, as…