Building a Better Teacher

The title to this post is a link to an article published by the New York Times titled, "Building a Better Teacher." It highlights a few researchers who have been trying to get down to the essentials of what makes a great teacher. It's encouraging that they are finding good teachers are not born but instead they learn specific techniques that increase student learning and are seeing incredible results. It also discusses how merit pay does little to improve student learning because teachers don't know how to improve learning so the competition only frustrates them. Though merit pay with the proper support and training could attract and hold onto better qualified teachers.