"Kappan"'s editor talks with the distinguished historian Vanessa Siddle Walker about the hidden -- and lost -- tradition of political advocacy by Black educational leaders in the segregated South. To promote equity and excellence for all students, she argues, today's educators will need to recover the sorts of extensive and…

Over the past two decades, researchers have gathered a wealth of evidence showing the critical roles that emotional intelligence plays in education, work, and life. But what does it look like to translate that research into practice? In this interview, Yale University's Marc Brackett takes stock of recent efforts to help K-12 educators address the…

Kappan editor Rafael Heller interviews Annette Lareau about her research into different experiences of childhood and family life. In her observations of families of different social classes, she learned that upper-middle-class families approach parenting as an act of "concerted cultivation" requiring ongoing attention, making them more…

People often think that power only flows downhill in school. The author draws on his own research observations, as well as the philosophy of Michel Foucault, to offer more nuanced insights. He explains that power is not a "thing" people can possess and that it flows in multiple directions, forming a web of influence. These insights…

In this article, the author shares that despite all the efforts he puts in his teaching, 30 percent of his 150 students still fail. However, when he calculate the needed hours to appropriately cover all the needs of his students, he realized that even 100 hours of teaching each week is not enough to have all his students succeed. The author…

Offers reasons to cherish eccentric teachers. (IRT)

In this article, the author shares the lesson she learned from her young friend, Mirabel, whose mother was dying. By following the daily path of support taken by Mirabel, she learned that it does not matter whether schools have a hundred kids, a thousand kids, or several thousand kids. Teachers must make sure that they can make room for each one.…

Discusses the careers (usually brief) great writers had as teachers and the attitudes those writers had toward teaching and students. (IRT)

Coaches are teachers and they succeed to the degree to which they understand that their job is the selfless task of educating students and not the selfish glory of a single-minded pursuit of glittering records. (Author/IRT)

Discusses educational benefits of teacher-centered school reform. Proposes agenda that includes offering teachers sabbaticals, providing more money for books, letting teachers choose what they teach, involving teachers in the evaluation process, changing hiring practices, making tenure mean something, reallocating the use of time to protect…

Uses four images of the key to discuss the role of the teacher in influencing students. (IRT)

Albert Blum discusses the need for "fallowships" for educators. These would allow educators to lie "fallow" for a year and not read, talk, or think about anything in their field. (MD)

Experience with the Child Development Project shows that poorly implemented community building may be detrimental to students. Caring is not synonymous with "easy"; teachers are pivotal in student-centered classrooms; schoolwide change is essential; school values must be examined; and assessment must be aligned with instruction.…

Presents a speech Harry S Truman made to a teachers' meeting in 1957. The speech concerns the influence of school on children and the need for discipline. (IRT)

Explains why teachers should study student work; examines three mutually exclusive traditions for "looking at" student work; discusses protocols for studying student work involving suspending judgment, tuning judgment, and extending judgment schoolwide that draw on all three traditions. (Contains 26 references.) (PKP)