By Knowles teacher leader mentor Jon Zehnder Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative News alert: teachers are overwhelmed. As a math teacher, I have been overwhelmed as a general state of being since I first stepped into a classroom over 25 years ago. There are lots of reasons for…

By Ben Blanco, Tess Carlson, Rachel Herrera, Casey Nolan, Albert David Valderrama and Takumi Sato Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative Knowles Fellows are high school math and science teachers across the U.S. who teach in unique contexts, which include teaching learners whose first language is not English. We…

By Gina Wilson—Knowles Program Officer, Teacher Development Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative Teacher preparation programs teach pre-service teachers the importance of creating relationships with students and families for good reason — strong relationships between educators and families result in greater student success. However, pre-service and early-career teachers are…

By Megan Fretz—Knowles Senior Fellow Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative “Ok, it’s time to put your student hats on!” Whether sitting in a school cafeteria or ensconced in your favorite armchair with headphones and a business shirt paired with pajama bottoms, this phrase always brings plenty of emotion…

By Swetha Narasimhan—Knowles Senior Fellow—and Ayanna Perry, Associate Director, Teaching Fellows Program Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative At Knowles, we invite teachers to research the relationships between the tasks they choose, the talk that students are able to engage with as a result of those tasks, and the…

By Carolyn Ross—Program Officer, Teacher Development Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative “all that you touch, you change/all that you change, changes you” – Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower In March of 2019, with an awful case of mastitis and a three-week old baby waiting outside, I finally…

By Zenas Lee—Knowles Senior Fellow Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative During the 2016 Knowles Teacher Initiative Summer Meeting and much of the prior school year, I was consumed with the question of how to change a system. At that time, I was trying to establish an advisory program…

By Samantha O’Connor—Knowles Teaching Fellow Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative It is nearly impossible to spend time in the Knowles Teaching Fellows Program and not become involved with the notion of inquiry as a foundational component of one’s teaching practice. Practitioner Inquiry as described by Cochran-Smith and Lytle…

By Jessica Watts— Knowles Senior Fellow and Program Officer Originally published by the Knowles Teacher Initiative Part 1: The Conditions of Allyship I began to write what, at first, seemed a simple, bright-and-shiny story illustrating how I utilized leverage, specifically money from a Knowles seed grant — a grant that…