What Are We Doing to Support Great Teachers?

You can tell that Mrs. Obstgarten is a great teacher when you step into her classroom.

Walk in on the last day of school, a half-day when you’d expect kids to be bouncing off the walls, and you see every kid bright-eyed, eager to play a math game. Yes. On the last day. She is the kind of teacher that every parent wants, that every kid will remember. She is calm. She is in control. She is curious. She has this light in her eyes, this eagerness to learn, nothing you can measure or package, but there it is radiating from her, igniting the curiosity and creativity of her students.

In the past 12 years, as a children’s book author, I have seen more than 2,000 teachers at work. I have been in small and large, rural and inner-city, public and private classrooms from tiny Dover, N.H., to sprawling Phoenix. Schools bring me in for classroom workshops and all-school assemblies in which I share my passion and my process for...

Already have an account? Please login.

View the original article here