Today, May 9, is National Teacher Day, part of the annual Teacher Appreciation Week. Over three-fourths of us at Bellwether are former (or current!) educators, and we are deeply inspired and informed by our years in the classroom. Here are just a few stories from the team: Continue reading
Author Archives: Tanya Paperny
Applications Due This Friday: Better Blogging and More
“Marketing Your Work” session at the February 2017 Better Blogging training
It’s the most writerly time of the year! Yes, Bellwether’s annual Better Blogging training is coming up in June!
Better Blogging is Bellwether’s free session designed to improve the writing and promotion skills of emerging and aspiring education opinion writers and bloggers.
We changed the name a bit to reflect our broader approach: it’s now Better Blogging & More: Skills for Edu-Opinion Writing. So whether you want to contribute to your organization’s blog, write about education on your own blog, or pen op-eds and other opinion pieces for external outlets, this training is for you!
Past attendees have rated Better Blogging among the best of any professional development sessions they’ve ever attended, and our alumni are columnists and contributors at education media outlets across the sector.
Our upcoming session will be held June 27-28 in Washington, D.C. The training is free, but participants must cover their travel and lodging costs. A small stipend for travel and lodging may be available based on demonstrated need.
Applications are due THIS FRIDAY, and we’re always oversubscribed, so visit our website to learn more and apply today! If you have questions, you can also contact events@bellwethereducation.org.
A Day in the Life: Bellwether Analyst Andrew Rayner
Bellwether Talent Services analyst Andrew Rayner
Bellwether analyst and Chicago native Andrew Rayner always wanted to be a teacher. From a very young age, he says, he loved school, learning, and teaching people things. Teaching in the Marshall Islands and Bosnia after college reinforced his love for the world of education, so when he came back to the U.S., he worked as a behavioral specialist for kids with mental health and behavioral challenges. The following year, he was one of the founding teachers at a charter school in Boston, where he taught math and special education. “To see changes in my students, even over the course of a year, was so amazing,” Andrew explains about his love of teaching.
After five years in the classroom, Andrew joined Bellwether’s Talent Services team in August 2016. Below, we talk to him about his path from a classroom educator to an education graduate student to a member of our own nonprofit firm.
Why did you transition out of the classroom and into other branches of the education field?
My behavioral work with kids made me see the importance of organizational culture as a whole in terms of lifting up kids. The culture and environment you create for students, both in the classroom and in the school building, matter. I also saw how things outside the school building were affecting and enticing kids. When I was a charter school teacher, I taught the same group of kids for two years. Getting to know them reiterated the need to influence the culture inside the classroom, inside the school as a whole, and in the community outside of the school.
I love teaching. It is rewarding but also incredibly challenging. I wanted to find another way to impact the field. I’m a big believer that if you want to become an expert in a field, you should see it from as many angles as you possibly can. So, while five years is not an extensive period of time teaching in comparison to many people, I felt ready to see the field from a different perspective.
I went on to get my master’s degree with an interest in how to create safe and brave spaces in organizations to discuss issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). I went to graduate school thinking I was going to do that work with kids, but I realized that adults actually need a lot of support to deeply and authentically engage in discussions about how to accelerate progress toward building and running DEI organizations.
Can you speak to your identities and how they inform your passion for DEI work? Continue reading
Best of Bellwether 2016
Here at Bellwether, we’ve grappled with a lot of tough questions in 2016: Why did the Movement for Black Lives’ education platform reject charter schools? What does Donald Trump’s win mean for education policy? Why is talking about diversity in educational organizations not enough? Could personalized learning transform rural education? How should schools be graded under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)?
From a range of different topics, we pulled our most-read writing of 2016. Below are your favorite Ahead of the Heard blog posts and Bellwether publications of the year. (To read the top posts from our sister site, TeacherPensions.org, click here.)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and keeping up with our work in 2016! Stay tuned for more in 2017, including reports on modernizing student transportation, the Head Start workforce, and rural education in Oklahoma.
Top Ten Blog Posts from Ahead of the Heard in 2016
1.) 2016 FAFSA Completion Rates By State
By Chad Aldeman
2.) Donald Trump Won. What Does That Mean for Education Policy?
By Chad Aldeman
3.) Updated: There’s A Huge Flaw in the “Teacher Shortage” Data
By Chad Aldeman
4.) State Legislatures Attack Student Growth in Teacher Evaluation
By Kaitlin Pennington
5.) Movers & Shakers at Bellwether
By Mary K. Wells
6.) There’s a Reason the Movement for Black Lives’ Education Platform Rejects Charter Schools
By Max Marchitello
7.) New Proposed Head Start Performance Standards Released Today
By Sara Mead
8.) What Does it Mean to “Raise the Bar” for Entry Into the Teaching Profession?
By Chad Aldeman
9.) Diversity: Necessary (But Insufficient)
By Xiomara Padamsee
10.) Education Innovation is Everything, Nothing, Beautiful
By Jason Weeby
Top Ten Publications from Bellwether in 2016
1.) 16 for 2016: 16 Education Policy Ideas for the Next President
Edited by Andrew J. Rotherham and Jennifer O’Neal Schiess
2.) Peering Around the Corner / No Guarantees
By Chad Aldeman and Ashley LiBetti Mitchel
3.) The U.S. Education Innovation Index: Prototype and Report
By Jason Weeby, Kelly Robson, and George Mu
4.) A New Agenda: Research to Build a Better Teacher Preparation Program
By Ashley LiBetti Mitchel and Melissa Steel King
5.) Grading Schools: How States Should Define “School Quality” Under the Every Student Succeeds Act
By Chad Aldeman
6.) The Promise of Personalized Learning in Rural America
By Jennifer Schiess and Carolyn Chuong
7.) Moneyball for Head Start: Using Data, Evidence, and Evaluation to Improve Outcomes for Children and Families
By Sara Mead and Ashley LiBetti Mitchel
8.) For Good Measure? Teacher Evaluation Policy in the ESSA Era
By Kaitlin Pennington and Sara Mead
9.) Who’s Teaching Our Kids: Changes to Illinois’ Educator Workforce Since 2002
By Melissa Steel King, Leslie Kan, and Chad Aldeman
10.) The Learning Landscape: A Broad View of the U.S. Public School System
By Jennifer Schiess, Kelly Robson, Carolyn Chuong, and Kaitlin Pennington
Applications Now Open for February 2017 Better Blogging Session
This year’s education landscape is as heated as ever — there have been debates about the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit, the passage of ESSA, and just recently, the controversial 
Department of Education Trump appointee. But that doesn’t mean all the education conversations online have been informed, inclusive, and respectful.
In an interview with Education Pioneers earlier this year, I argued that education debates sometimes suffer from “name-calling, misinformation, and vitriol,” and that “nuanced and thoughtful voices, and those that reflect underrepresented viewpoints and experiences, have trouble standing out amidst all the noise.”
That’s where Bellwether’s Better Blogging training comes in. Through hands-on workshops and coaching, our participants improve their ability to express and promote important ideas in the education landscape. Our sessions are led by accomplished coaches, including Pulitzer Prize winners, editors at leading national publications, and social media professionals with deep experience in marketing. Better Blogging alumni consistently rate Bellwether’s training as one of the most effective professional development opportunities they’ve ever attended.
So what are you waiting for? If you want to attend the February 22-23, 2017 session in Washington, D.C., apply today! Applications are due December 12, 2016. Our trainings are supported by a generous grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, so stay tuned for the July 2017 session if you can’t attend in February.