I’m feeling a little exhausted and overwhelmed thinking about, reading about, dreaming about, and talking about the problems in education. The problems are enormous, and some of them aren’t the fault of education itself, but they falls on education’s shoulders to fix (I’m looking at you, poverty). So, for the next few days (I’m fearful of specific time commitments), I’m going to write about something that’s going right in education. Some of them will be small victories in my classroom (like today), great initiatives in my district, or stories I hear from other teachers. Either way, I’m going to put them out into the Tumblr-verse…

Today 63 out of my 65 academic civics students attempted the short answer questions on our second test. I’m shooting for all 65, but only 50 out of 65 attempted the short answer questions on our first test. After a lot of modeling and practice in class, 13 more students tried the short answer questions today. These are students who have a lot of difficulty in reading and writing, and some of them are embarrassed about their abilities. I’m so proud that they are trying, and I’m going to keep trying to help them with these skills every day.

What’s going right in education in your school, classroom, district, or state today?