Interested in thinking about ways we can make education better for students, families, and teachers?
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Welcome! I’m excited to launch my newsletter “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way: Changing Education for the Better” as a place to reflect on the current state of education and how we can make our schools and colleges more effective in fulfilling their promises for students.
I know what you’re probably thinking. There are already lots of folks out there talking about education, right? Some of them are convincing and some leave a little more to be desired. Some of their ideas are grounded in evidence and experience, but some seem more like the pontifications of armchair policy wonks.
So how will this newsletter be different?
I will highlight some of the most important questions and problems in education today and offer commentary on why these issues matter so much. I’ll tell the stories of teachers, students, administrators, and families who are working hard to make education more progressive and more equitable. And I will challenge the status quo, the tyranny of inertia, the specter of “it’s always been this way,” so that we can reclaim schools and colleges as places of opportunity and hope.
Ready to get started? Let’s go!
A Little Bit about Me
I’m a writer and a teacher. I’ve written a book about the science of learning, and I have another one coming out soon called Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do about It (August 2024 from Johns Hopkins University Press). I’m also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Teacher Education and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning at the University of Mississippi. In other words, I think about education all day, every day.
Maybe an even more important piece of my biography, though, is this: I have wanted to be a teacher since I was five years old, and I’ve never really wavered from that. I believed then, and continue to believe, that teaching is one of the most important jobs in the world and that education can change lives. It changed mine, and I’ve seen it change the lives of students during my career.
This is why we need to amplify those aspects of our educational systems that are working well, and we must try to change the parts that ineffective, inequitable, and even harmful.
What You Can Expect Here
My colleague Derek Bruff likes to say about my work that I have “a lot of very strong (and research-backed) opinions.” I think that sums it up rather nicely. I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. There’s no time for that. We need to begin to address these issues as soon as possible, so it does no good for me to hedge my language and couch my writing in platitudes so that it has a softer landing. No, for better or worse, you’ll hear exactly what I think about the problems with education today, but I’ll always have evidence to support whatever position I take.
In terms of the newsletter itself, I will post new material every other week. Posts and archives will always be available to everyone, and you can subscribe for free if you are just interested in reading about the latest from the world of education.
Paid subscribers, on the other hand, can comment on posts and engage with me and other readers of “It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way.”
Paid subscribers will also have the opportunity to participate in “slow reads” where we discuss books about education together as a community (including one focused on my forthcoming book about grades). We’ll do 4 of these per year, beginning in April with Natalie Wexler’s The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It.
But we’re not finished yet! A paid subscription will even give you access to special content like reviews of books and films about education, reading recommendations, and more!
What’s Next
Topics for upcoming newsletters will include:
A Hippocratic Oath for education
The recent weaponization of “parents’ rights” rhetoric by conservative media, especially as it relates to schools
On-the-ground reports from SXSW EDU, one of the largest events in the world that focuses on the future of education
Updates on my forthcoming book
I’m also writing a few education-related pieces for The Saturday Evening Post over the next few weeks—one on the history of grades and one on what the new film The Holdovers has to say about teaching. I’ll share links to those pieces in future newsletters.
Until next time, thanks for reading!