New Feature: Tales from the Trenches

Update: Until I figure out a better way to do this, I'm going to keep an index of all Tales from the Trenches at the top of this post

February 2nd: The Early Bird Can Stay at Home
January 29th: The Unpleasant Puddle

or see all posts here

Original Post

This is probably my best idea yet. Today marks the introduction of another new feature on this blog -- Tales from the Trenches. Tales from the Trenches will consist of some of the most memorable stories from current and former teachers. I expect that most of the stories will be from teachers who taught/teach in high poverty urban schools, but submissions are open to anybody. I hope that this can help me and the readers of the blog connect with life inside schools -- and put my ivory tower pontifications into context.

The first tale will be posted tonight, and I hope to post at least one a week from now on. I'll occasionally regale you with a tale from my teaching days, but I expect most of these to be from other teachers. If you have a war story that you'd like to share with the world, you can submit it for posting at corey[at]edpolicythoughts.com.

Here are the rules for submissions:

1.) Remember that this blog is supposed to be thoughts on education policy. As such, stories should be intended to provide insight to outsiders as to what working in a school is like and, as such, provoke thought. This is not a forum for simply venting about how you were wronged or how awful your job is.

2.) Try to let the story speak for itself as much as possible -- if you want to offer an in-depth commentary on what's wrong with schools there's another forum for that.

3.) At the end of the story you should provide a very concise analysis of what's to be taken from the story -- preferably in the form of a "moral of the story"