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This decision has left many people with little faith in the voting system and fearful of the future. Although we are yet to see the full impact of the new government, we are already starting to see major changes in the education system, and are set to see a lot more. This begs the question; what does the future hold for our teachers?

Surely the teaching profession is one which should be carefully nurtured because of the impact it has on the future of the younger generation. Education is one of the most important aspects of our lives. We need a good education to develop character, gain employment and live a happy and fulfilling life. In order to achieve this we need skilled and qualified teachers. Not only this, but we need teachers who are happy and respected in their work places.

In this article I lay out some of the greatest changes the new government plans on implementing with respect to teachers:

· One of the major decisions the new government has made is to cut back public spending, including spending on recruitment of teachers, and changes to the current salary packages being offered. The idea to reward “good” teachers. But, the question is, can such the determination of who a “good” teacher is really be made fairly?

· We have seen a lot of redundancies within the education sector lately, some voluntary, some involuntary. The plan is to reduce redundancy payouts, which means teachers, as well as other public sector workers, will only be entitled to a redundancy package of one years salary.

· New teachers will also be unable to access their pension until they reach 65 years old.

· Near the top of the governments agenda is the proposal to give parents and other organisations the opportunity to set up their own schools. This may offer more freedom within schools, but it could also lead to split communities and a lack of direction. More than ever, the onus seems to be on teachers having more control within the classroom. They would have more responsibility for disciplining and reprimanding the children within their control. The fear, however, is that this puts teachers in a very vulnerable and dangerous position, and it may not be something they feel particularly comfortable in dealing with.

· The new education secretary for the Department of Education, Michael Glove, recently announced that a substantial project called ‘Building Schools for the Future’ would be completely abolished. The scheme was put in place by previous government leaders, Labour, and was set to result in a £55 billion renovation of schools throughout England. As a result, many schools will now be left with incomplete construction. We know that spending cuts have to be made in the current climate but equally important are the surroundings we use to study and teach within.

Whether the new coalition government will have any positive effects on teaching still remains to be seen, but it is certain that we are set to see many more changes within the education system. We can only hope that these changes will not have a negative knock-on effect for the future of the country.

Lyndsey McLaughlin is a content writer for Online Schools who gives advice on the pursuit of education and living a healthy life. In her free time she enjoys writing, socialising and reading.

According to one camp, the main problem with our schools is that teachers’ unions protect incompetent teachers and give good ones no reason to do their jobs well. Unions make it very difficult for principals to fire teachers, and thus bad ones can skate along without actually imparting any knowledge to their students.

The other camp asserts almost the exact opposite. Schools suck, they say, not because of the teachers–the teachers are doing a great job–but because of more nebulous factors: lack of parental involvement, poverty, lack of funding. To get rid of unions is to get rid of the one perk of this underpaid, overworked, and under-respected profession.

Last year, in a large, miserable school in New York City, I found myself unwittingly thrust into the middle of this debate.
I was a 22- year-old first year Teach for America 7th and 8th grade English teacher. In New York City alone, there were 550 of us, most newly graduated and delighted that we had found a sort of “back door” to getting respectable employment. We had spent the summer in a sticky Bronx school while the directors of Teach for America gave lessons on subjects like “Classroom Management Tactics” and “Working with ESL Students.” We had taught summer school classes, most ranging in size from about 5 to 10 students. Armed with this training, we were ready to do what Teach for America told we must do: Raise our students’ two grade levels in reading, have them pass the state mandated test with flying colors, and, last but not least, EMPOWER THE STUDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES TO BREAK THE CYCLE OF POVERTY.

All this was fine except for one notable problem: I sucked. Did I suck worse than other Teach for America first year teachers? I don’t believe so, but I also don’t know. What I do know is that, despite trying to do what I’d been taught in the “Classroom Management Tactics” seminar, my classroom was distinctly UN-managed. No one ever had a pencil. At any given time, at least 5 students were not in their seats. Independent reading, which TFA had stressed was crucial beyond measure for my students’ success, dissolved into paper ball fights. Each day brought 20 separate arguments about the bathroom pass (No miss, swear to God, I will go right here if you don’t let me). Texting was rampant. And the gum. Over a year later, when I think back on that room, I can still smell the sugar and hear the relentless cracking of Dentyne Ice and Watermelon Bubblicious. I was not fast enough to catch them pop it in, often too overwhelmed to remember to tell them to take it out.

These were not the sort of classroom management problems that make a good movie. There were no knives, no gang fights. No one ever directly challenged my authority. In fact, individually, these kids were charming, polite, intelligent, and fun. They were far from the worst kids in the world–they were even far from the worst kids in the borough. But through a combination of my inexperience, their attitude about education, and the general school climate, my class wasn’t a place where very much learning was happening.
So what should be done with me? The anti-union camp says (and rightly, I think) that bad teachers should be fired. I was, without a doubt, a bad teacher–but it was also my first year. I was trying extremely hard, sleeping 3 hours a night, virtually living at the Teach for America office. Must I be fired so swiftly? The union camp would say instead that I was one of THEIRS, that NO ONE, not any principal or administrator would EVER, EVER take this job from me, unless I had publicly torn a student limb from limb with my own two hands. And possibly not even then.

The trouble with this debate is that there is no room in it for programs like Teach for America or Teaching Fellows. If schools get rid of unions and staunchly adopt a “be a great teacher or you’re out” policy, members of these programs will be shown the door. Some exceptional people are very good teachers by their second year in such a program. No one is good in his or her first year. How could they be? The program is described as the ultimate “sink or swim” test–and no one starts swimming the second he’s hit the water. Huddled around the copy machines at the Teach for America office, we would trade stories and commiserate about how many students had gotten into a fight that day (“13!” one teacher proudly announced) and how independent reading apparently meant “all band together to make your teacher’s life a living hell.” We smiled. We had hope. Next year, we would be better.

On the other hand, throwing the full force of the union behind people who don’t intend to stay in the profession doesn’t make much sense either. Teach for America has not been around for 25 years yet, but I will eat my shoes if anyone who comes into teaching via Teach for America leaves with a pension plan after 25 years. The program does not intend to make career teachers, and those entering the program do not intend to be teachers for their entire professional life. Why pretend like they do?

At my particular school, the sides of this debate became extremely heated over my particular “case” while I was oddly trapped in the middle. In October, my principal sat me down and explained that it would be best for the kids if I resigned, since I didn’t have good control of the class. When I told my fellow teachers this, they sat me right back down and explained that the principal was a horrible man who had no right to intimidate me and make me feel badly for having very normal first year teaching struggles. The teachers, on the whole, were on my side and demanded a union meeting in which I, to my surprise, was held up as a prime example of why unions were so necessary.

“Here’s this wonderful girl with all kinds of potential, he’s given her one of the most difficult special ed classes in the school, and he has the nerve to try to take her job from her!” Ms. S, the school’s union leader, shouted at the assembled bunch. “We will NOT let him do that without just cause.” I stood up next to her on the lunchroom stage and wondered what exactly had happened. I wanted to keep my job, very much. I loved many things about it, I loved the kids, and I had wanted to be a teacher for a very long time. On the other hand, though, it was his school. Did he really not have the right to fire me? It would be nice, of course, if he offered more support–but people are fired every day by their bosses, often unfairly. Why exactly was I different?

As I perhaps could have predicted, it was the worst of both worlds. The principal, angry at the union leader for making this into a fight, passive aggressively agreed to follow every single union regulation…but still get me out. The union demands an extensive paper trail to remove a teacher, and, in order to assemble that, he began to do what is best described as stalking me. He showed up daily at the door, walking around with a checklist and looking for what he could write me up for today. Had the lunch milk been ordered? Was the aim of today’s lesson written on the board? Was my lesson plan printed out? Was there evidence of differentiated instruction going on? Had I posted the weekly bulletin? Were all students quietly engaged in a productive educational task? As the year went on, I got much meaner and much better, and gradually the answer to the last question became a “sort of” rather than a resounding “no.” I felt like I was swimming upstream, though, in a losing battle with a massive binder cataloging all my faults as an educator. Sometimes when he slithered in the door, I would want to turn around and scream, “Yup, that’s right, there is definitely a kid with gum in this room. That’s your write up for today, you evil checklist wielder.” It’s a deep regret that I never did.

Teach for America, for its part, was wonderful, as much as they could be. What many people outside the program don’t realize, though, is that you aren’t actually employed by them. There is very little they can do. And in New York, as in many, many other places around the country, what Teach for America teaches you to do is not in line with what your particular school district, much less your particular administration, wants to see. TFA, for example, suggested that I make a competition between my 7th and my 8th graders to see who could do independent reading for the longest time without talking. I agreed with them that this was a good idea–it even seemed to be working for the first 2 days–before the principal saw the chart and wrote me up for “fostering a disrespectful attitude between students” or some other such nonsense. “Well, be flexible honey! Keep your chin up!” My TFA adviser said. I can’t blame her. What else was she supposed to say?

Though I am no longer in TFA (shocking, I know), no longer employed by the NYC DOE (also shocking) and no longer a member of the United Federation of Teachers (shocking, since I will never again belong to an organization that loves me quite like they did), the teacher union debate still appears everywhere for me, from bus conversations to the front cover of The New York Times Magazine 3 weeks ago. All parts of the debate are based on lies. Teach for America says “Our teachers will be so amazing right out of the gate that wanting to let them go will be out of the question!” The teacher’s union says, “There ARE no bad teachers. There are only bad principals who want to fire us unjustly!” The average person off the street says, “It’s the kids’ fault! They don’t want to learn!” Education specialists say something like “If only we had a more differentiated and integrated curriculum that educated students not merely as passive receptacles but as equal partners in their own development….” and other things that are too boring to write. The sides yell and yell and yell.

And meanwhile, despite 9 years in the public education system, some of my students still thought that “Bronx” was the name of their country.

Sarah McCarthy writes on distance learning for Guide to Online Schools.

E-books are not just for fun or a little light reading on the airplane. With dozens for e-readers on the market (notably: Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Nobles’ Nook, and the latest through the gate, Apple’s iPad) and more books becoming e-friendly, there’s really no reason not to cater to the first generation to have grown up on computers. And Amazon seems to have delivered the goods with over 6,000 textbooks available for the Kindle. Do you realize what this means? No more waiting at the campus bookstore for three hours during the first week of school with fifty pounds of books in your arms (and a line that winds around the block). No more ordering texts online only to sweat it out for two weeks until they arrive (while you miss the first four assignments or fight with twenty other kids for the only copy on library reserve). You can now get an entire textbook in less than a minute from the relative comfort of your own little dorm room. Not only that, in true Amazon fashion, books are offered at a discount. For example, the Clinical Textbook of Addictive Disorders, 3rd Edition (by Richard J. Frances MD) is $90 in print or $71.44 for the Kindle (no shipping, naturally). Applied Chemistry – A Textbook for Engineers and Technologists (by H.D. Gesser) is normally $169. Kindle price: $119.20. That’s a savings of seventy dollars on just two books. You can almost see the dollar signs in every eager college student’s eyes. And while the devices themselves can run into the hundreds of dollars, considering what will be saved (in money, time, and your aching back), they will soon pay for themselves.

Add in extras like Wi-Fi, text-to-speech, and pertinent functionality like highlighting and note-taking options and you are in serious business where college students are concerned. And while nay-sayers expound on the perils of eye-strain, most doctors say that it is no different than starting at a book or any other screen, for that matter. As long as you take frequent breaks, you should be fine. So it looks like everything’s coming up roses for this neat, new technology. It’s no wonder college students everywhere have started a love affair with greatest thing since care packages and key-chain can openers…and this one will actually help them learn.

Derwood Talbot is a writer for the popular book review website, Written Word. Browse the site to find information on the latest book gadgets and information on your favorite authors.

But how do you encourage them to expand their worldview and take a hand in shaping their own future when you’re not even sure what will grab their attention?  For starters, you could ask.  Go straight to the source to find out what your students watch and listen to.  Get in tune with their pop-culture preferences and you’ve already gone a long way towards earning their trust, which is essential if you want them to listen and learn.  Then incorporate their interests into your class.  If you’re studying poetry, have students bring in the lyrics to their favorite song and compare them to different styles of verse.  Or use some Lady Gaga beats to demonstrate real-world applications of fractions (i.e. this is a half note, these are sixteenth notes, etc.).  If economics is something you cover, talk about the contestants on American Idol and forecast what they can expect to earn on their albums based on how they place on the show (take a poll of student interest in buying their albums and extrapolate a chart for their sales growth).  Whatever the lesson, you can grab their attention by integrating the media they adore.

You can also use technology to your advantage.  Creating assignments that are internet based or that utilize apps for the iPod, iPhone, or iPad (or other mobile devices) can really speak to GenY.  For social studies, arrange volunteer opportunities and have the students tweet about what they have learned from the experience.  Or get them playing Scrabble on their cell phones to expand their vocabulary. There are all sorts of ways to make lessons more fun for students and taking it to a level they can relate to is a good start.  You may find it tedious to keep abreast of the latest technology, but I’ll relate a little anecdote along those lines.  I had a high school math teacher who wouldn’t allow calculators in his trigonometry class, because he “never learned to use one”.  As a result, nearly half the class failed and I dropped out before the end of the semester.  He may have been a poor teacher on other levels, but alienating himself from the students was his first mistake.

With children suffering from what has been coined a “narcissism epidemic”, it’s more important than ever for teachers to break through their sarcastic exteriors and reach the creative spark within.  It’s never too late to engage students in activities that open their minds to new possibilities.  As a teacher, you hold the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, and it is within your power to encourage your students embrace progress and adopt a socially conscious worldview.  These tools will prepare them to attack problems from many different angles and devise innovative solutions that create a better future.

Alexis Montgomery is a content writer for Online Universities, where you can browse through various online degree programs to find a college that suits your needs.

The explore/Hatch Award will be presented to the filmmaker whose short film shows a group or individual hero striving for a better world through selfless acts. If you or anyone you know has created a film highlighting a cause that inspires others to make a difference, submissions are now open. The winner will receive a full expense paid trip to HATCHFest in Asheville, North Carolina (April 15th - 18th) where they will have the chance to meet with prominent mentors as well as receive a prize from the explore.org co-founder, Charles Annenberg Weingarten! Submissions are due on March 25th.

The videos are each handpicked by our team in order to find the best films in terms of content, length and entertainment value. Each video is organized by its subject matter and categorized, making it easy to find quality films fast.

Be sure to also check out the recently launched “How-To” category, which features fun, instructional videos that teach various skills including How to Levitate.

We The Teachers - We The Teachers (WTT) is a social site for teachers who want to network, share lesson plans, and discuss education-related topics online. Site members can try out WTT alone or join groups of like-minded teachers.

LearnCentral - LearnCentral is a social learning network for educators who want to network with colleagues and collaborate on a global level. Teachers who sign up for a free membership are given their own virtual meeting room with two-way VoIP, an interactive whiteboard, and application sharing capacity.

Edutagger - Edutagger is a new social bookmarking site for K-12 teachers. It works a lot like Delicious and other bookmarking sites but focuses exclusively on education-related content.

Engrade - Engrade is the perfect online tool for teachers who want to create a secure, online classroom community. It can be used to track and store assignments, grades, class attendance, and much more.

Edmodo - This free social platform is an excellent resource for teachers who want to be able to share assignments, files, and other content with their students over the web. Edmodo can also be used to create an online group or class.

TeachStreet - This site provides an array of tools to help educators grow their teaching business. Teachers can TeachStreet to network with other teachers, list events, promote classes, and collect online payments from students.

Eduslide - Eduslide makes it easy for teachers to create and deliver their own presentations, slide shows, and courses online. Teachers can make Eduslide content publicly available to anyone who wants to see it or restrict access to a specific group of people.

TeacherTube - TeacherTube is an online community for teachers who want to share instructional videos. Videos can be aimed at students or other educators.

Teacher Lingo - This online community is for blogging teachers who want to share their content and ideas with other educators. The site has a blog feed, message board, and a space to share lesson plans.

Vyew - Vyew is a collaborative tool for teachers who want to host webinars, presentations, and meetings online. The site can also be used to create and upload course content for real-time instruction. The free version of Vyew allows up to ten real-time participants.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online college classes for OnlineClasses.org.

ATutor - Similar to Moodle, ATutor is an open source web-based learning content management system (LCMS/LMS). It provides students with a social learning network and allows teachers to conduct courses online.

SugarLabs - SugarLabs offers an award-winning learning platform for children. The free platform allows children to collaborate, communicate, write, and make music together in a safe environment. SugarLabs’ software is available in 25 languages and is used by more than one million students around the world.

MediaWiki - Originally written for use on Wikipedia, this free wiki software works well for classroom wikis. The software includes full installation instructions and allows users to restrict anonymous editing, reading, and account registration.

Elgg - This open source program can be used to create social networks for education and other school-related projects. Elgg provides everything needed to build a site or application from the ground up and offers frequently updated patches, plugins, and themes.

Anki - Anki is a free and open source spaced repetition system (SRS) that can be used to create smart flashcards and scheduled study periods. The software works online, on computers, on cell phones, and with several different portable devices.

Pauker - Pauker is an open source learning application that is available in multiple languages, including English, Esperanto, Dutch, German, French, Polish, Spanish, Slovak, and Vietnamese. The application is flashcard-based and meant to help people memorize everything from abbreviations to state capitals.

StarDict - StarDict is a free international dictionary and translator that works across multiple platforms. You can use the online version or download the StarDict software to your computer for free.

Tux Paint - Designed for children age three and up, this award-winning open source drawing program offers a friendly user interface and a wide range of drawing tools. Children can get creative with a paint brush, line tools, shape tools, text and label tools, rubber stamps, and many other easy-to-use special effects.

VoiceThread - VoiceThread is a web-based application that allows multiple people to collaborate on a slide show presentation. Users can comment together on images, documents, and videos. Several versions of VoiceThread are available; the free version allows unlimited voice threads and 2GB of storage.

Google Wave - Google Wave is a new Google tool that can be used to communicate and collaborate online in real-time. The software isn’t freely available yet, but you can request a special invitation to try out Google Wave with students or colleagues.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degree programs for OnlineDegreePrograms.org.

Excerpts from “‘Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!’ Adventures of a Curious Character” by Richard Feynman, Bantam Books: New York, 1986

I don’t believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I am making some contribution” — it’s just psychological.

When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don’t get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they are not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come.

Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!

In any thinking process there are moments when everything is going good and you’ve got wonderful ideas. Teaching is an interruption, and so it’s the greatest pain in the neck in the world. And then there are the longer period of time when not much is coming to you. You’re not getting any ideas, and if you’re doing nothing at all, it drives you nuts! You can’t even say “I’m teaching my class.”

If you’re teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These things are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn’t do any harm to think them over again. Is there a better way to present them? The elementary things are easy to think about; if you can’t think of a new thought, no harm done; what you thought about it before is good enough for the class. If you do think of something new, you’re rather pleased that you have a new way of looking at it.

The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I’ve thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn’t do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It’s not so easy to remind yourself of these things.

So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy situation for me where I don’t have to teach. Never.