Published: September 25, 2007

Teaching Secrets: Hallway Hints II

In excerpts from their e-mail discussion group, members of the Teacher Leaders Network share advice on managing and thriving in the classroom.

“The fact that the teacher does most of the work at school explains why there is little learning in school,” Harry Wong, author of The First Days of School , has written. “The research says that the person who does the work is the only one doing the learning.”

TLN member Claudia Swisher, an English teacher from Oklahoma, agrees. “It’s amazing how much kids will sit back and let teachers do the work for them,” she says. “And if we let it happen, who can blame them? I haven’t read my syllabus to my high school students for years. They read it and each student writes a quiz based on the content. They also write a key to the quiz. I collect the quizzes and distribute them. Everyone takes a quiz then returns it to the ‘author’ who grades it. By the end, kids have been through the material three times, and I haven’t strained my throat or bored the socks off all of us. I always tell my students, ‘I wrote it; I don’t...