Achievement Gap? Generation Gap!
July 20, 2007 10:54 AM
The current Teacher Magazine includes an article from a first-year teacher. Here's a sample:
No one wants to take a 20-something teacher seriously when she acts her age. While my elementary students appreciate my age, my colleagues don’t. My pigtails and flip-flops don’t fit into this new world. Just when I was sure that I could be myself and my students could relate to me, I was shot down.
The article provides a good reminder of just how young young teachers are. I know one who made bootylicious* a bonus word on a spelling test, but we'll save that story for another day. By the way, the teacher is getting plenty of advice -- from "change your clothes" to "keep your head up" -- on the TalkBack section of Teacher magazine's Web site.
*If I spelled the word wrong, I apologize, but there's no way I'm going to Google it on my work computer to find out.
UPDATE: The links won't work until this evening sometime because the Ed Week/Teacher magazine Web site is down, taking Alexander Russo and David Hoff down with them. The Teacher magazine Web site is back up.
