The Education Story the Media is Missing

Teachers are lazy,
Teachers don’t care.
Teachers lose interest.
Teachers are complacent.
Teachers teach because they aren’t smart enough to do anything else.

That story is all over the headlines; how the schools would be so much better if they didn’t have those terrible teachers gumming up the works.

Sure.

Image by kjarrett via Flickr

In late January 2010, a small group of teachers in Philadelphia and its surroundings had an idea:

Let’s put on a free event at which teachers, on their own time, will teach what they’re expert in to other teachers. The presenting teachers will do it for free. 

We’ll call it EdCamp. 

On May 22nd, that first EdCamp drew a couple of hundred lazy, complacent teachers who gathered together and learned from each other.

A movement was born.

Energized by what they saw at or read about EdCamp on Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the social network other small groups of teachers in other communities organized EdCamps. Before 2010 ended there would be six more EdCamps, all following the same model, in Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Kansas, Florida and New York City.

Today we held the second EdCampNYC. It was the 34th EdCamp this year, there are 14 more scheduled before the end of December and there are already eleven scheduled for 2012.

All of them organized by lazy teachers who don’t care anymore. All of them free. All of them attended by more than 5,000 complacent teachers and administrators, some driving more than five hours to attend.

Let me make this absolutely clear. There is a rapidly growing national movement of teachers and administrators taking it upon themselves to organize and attend free conferences at which teachers and administrators freely share knowledge, resources and ideas with the sole purpose of becoming better teachers and administrators.

Impressive, isn’t it?

So why hasn’t the general media noticed? Why aren’t you reading about this in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or USA Today. Why isn’t it showing up on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN or any other network?

Perhaps because they are too busy listening to the billionaires and the politicians make the same complaints, mouth the same platitudes, and push the same, stale ideas to notice the people who do the job every day working hard to do a better job.

But now you know.  Help spread the word.