Greetings!
On July 6th Chalkboard launched ChalkBloggers (http://blog.chalkboardproject.org), a blog with the goal of providing the latest news and opinions
on education in Oregon with the hope of sparking meaningful, solutions-based
dialogue. Our blog team includes six educators who will be offering their own
perspectives on how to strengthen Oregon's schools.
We invite you to follow ChalkBloggers and engage in the
conversation!
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How NOT to Retain Quality Teachers
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 Last week, Stasia Honnold posted an entry on ChalkBloggers entitled, "How not to retain quality teachers." Stasia recently left teaching after her
third year in the classroom. In her post she reflects on the reasons she left and
what it would take for her to want to return to teaching. Here's a passage:
"What my decision to quit came down to is that though I'm a
statistic, I made the conscious choice to be one. My students haven't made that
choice, yet our system forces them into it daily. We talk about them as
numbers: at risk, a passing score, an ethnic percentage, a graduation rate. I'm
not trying to say that we should get rid of data--certainly being aware of
trends about our students is a helpful thing. But it starts to become dangerous when decisions about students are
made with only the statistics in mind, when teachers, the ones who know students as people, aren't involved. That was my
largest frustration, the reason I ultimately left, and the reason I'm here
now."
How do we ensure that teachers are part of the conversation?
How do we keep great teachers like Stasia in the classroom?
Read Stasia's full entry and leave a comment: http://bit.ly/bObXxB
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