Important Facts About Teaching That Time Magazine Needs To Know

1. Teaching at its best is relationship building. You destroy that element of it, and the heart and soul of education depart with it.

2. The more unstable the circumstances a young person grows up in, the more they need schools as a center of stability and teachers who are mentors as well as instructors . That is why closing schools in low and moderate income neighborhoods and firing their teaching staffs is an unmitigated disaster

3. When people look back on their school experience, they rarely remember a test they took. But they do remember a song they sang, a play or video they acted in, a touchdown pass they caught, or a sculpture they made.

4. When new teachers enter a school, the most valuable advice they can get comes from experienced teachers. Systematically driving out veteran teachers to save money or minimize resistance to test driven policies they know are professionally inappropriate is catastrophic for the school and is likely to shorten new teacher's careers.

5. If you are faced with a choice between sacrificing tests, or sacrificing arts, sports, school counselors and librarians, sacrifice the tests.

6. If a school uses recess and physical education classes for test prep, it is moving well down the path to child abuse.