Nancie Atwell won the first Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize award for being an ultra-exceptional teacher, the Nobel Prize for teaching." She's donating her $1 million award to her school, a private school she founded specifically to develop innovations in teaching excellence, the BBC reports.
Atwell's school in Edgecomb, Maine, is called the The Center for Teaching and Learning. Its website describes it as "a K-8 demonstration school dedicated to the development and dissemination of authentic, rigorous, and joyful methods for teaching across the curriculum."
So it may not be altogether surprising that one of the first things Atwell did after winning the award was tell CNN that she would not encourage today's college students to plan to teach at public schools.
Honestly, right now I encourage them to look in the private sector," she told CNN. "Because public school teachers are so constrained right now by the Common Core standards and the tests developed for children to monitor what teachers are doing with them.
"Its a movement that has turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners, and if you are a creative, smart, young person, this is not the time to go into teaching unless an independent school would suit you," Atwell added.
Dan Brown, executive director of the Future Educators Association, took great umbrage at Atwell's comments.
"The most celebrated educator in the world is discouraging creative, smart young people from considering teaching in the American public school system, which serves 50 million children," Brown wrote at Real Clear Education. "Thats shocking. To support that position to its logical end, in which creative, smart young people steer away from teaching in public schools, is to surrender the future of the public education."
Interestingly, Brown does not seem to engage Atwell on her specific beef with Common Core. He is more concerned with the impact her comments will have on the morale of the profession and new teachers thinking of entering it.
"Its a hard and necessary effort to elevate the teaching profession improving every stage of a coherent continuum from aspiring educator to accomplished practitioner," Brown writes. "Encouraging a brain drain from the public education system no matter how frustrating the current moment may feel moves this effort in the wrong direction, at great expense to us all."
Atwell's school in Edgecomb, Maine, is called the The Center for Teaching and Learning. Its website describes it as "a K-8 demonstration school dedicated to the development and dissemination of authentic, rigorous, and joyful methods for teaching across the curriculum."
So it may not be altogether surprising that one of the first things Atwell did after winning the award was tell CNN that she would not encourage today's college students to plan to teach at public schools.
Honestly, right now I encourage them to look in the private sector," she told CNN. "Because public school teachers are so constrained right now by the Common Core standards and the tests developed for children to monitor what teachers are doing with them.
"Its a movement that has turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners, and if you are a creative, smart, young person, this is not the time to go into teaching unless an independent school would suit you," Atwell added.
Dan Brown, executive director of the Future Educators Association, took great umbrage at Atwell's comments.
"The most celebrated educator in the world is discouraging creative, smart young people from considering teaching in the American public school system, which serves 50 million children," Brown wrote at Real Clear Education. "Thats shocking. To support that position to its logical end, in which creative, smart young people steer away from teaching in public schools, is to surrender the future of the public education."
Interestingly, Brown does not seem to engage Atwell on her specific beef with Common Core. He is more concerned with the impact her comments will have on the morale of the profession and new teachers thinking of entering it.
"Its a hard and necessary effort to elevate the teaching profession improving every stage of a coherent continuum from aspiring educator to accomplished practitioner," Brown writes. "Encouraging a brain drain from the public education system no matter how frustrating the current moment may feel moves this effort in the wrong direction, at great expense to us all."
