Friday, November 20, 2009

I read with interest the news (Washington Post, Nov. 20, 2009) about The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s $335 million grants to improve teacher effectiveness.

The article cites a conference call in which, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the foundation, said she and Microsoft founder Bill Gates had discovered that innovation takes long-term commitment because school systems are often "entrenched" in their ways and teachers "siloed in their classrooms."

"We have been in this work for almost a decade" she said. "We've learned a lot about what works. . . . Let's focus on the thing that actually matters the most, which is the teacher." (Gates serves on the board of the Washington Post Co.)

Of course, we all agree that the individual teacher is critical. What we lose sight of, however, is the importance of foundational systemic changes which can raise the performance of teachers as a group.

The Frameworks Institute just published some very important research on the perception of the general public with respect to education.

"Teachers were seen as having the ability to motivate students and informants saw teacher caring as a particularly important trait. For a majority of informants, the focus on caring teachers being good teachers overwhelmed, overshadowed, and obscured the importance of teacher knowledge and training, characteristics that were not frequently connected with being a “good teacher.” Also missing from the interviews were discussions and explanations of the importance of school leadership, organizations, and other factors related to the school setting and environment".

It’s critical that we not lose sight of the needs for tools and systems that give teachers the resources and guidance they need to succeed with our children. Even (or perhaps especially) the best teacher is overworked and over-tasked these days. At Walch, by uniquely providing teachers with targeted materials that improve their efficiency and focus, we help remove some of these burdens, and help them spend time on what they are best at- teaching.

-Al.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

SFI OKs Walch Education Books

If you're up on your sustainability acronyms, then you know that SFI stands for Sustainable Forestry Initiative. And you know that, along with FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), they're one of the major organizations that certify whether wood products come from sustainably managed forests.

As a publisher, we use a lot of wood products, i.e. paper. We use less than we used to, because more and more of our titles are available as CD-ROMs or digital downloads. Plus, our on-site digital printing allows us to minimize the amount of paper (and books) we keep on on-hand in our warehouse. But we still use a lot of paper. And we're headquartered in Maine, the most heavily-forested state (by percentage of overall land) in the country. So we're particularly sensitive to the need for sustainable forestry. That's why we were so pleased, this past week, to get approval from SFI to print our books on SFI-certified paper. As Chuck Thomas, our VP of Operations noted, it was a big step to get SFI certification earlier this year. Now we've taken the next big step: getting approval to use that certification on virtually all of our books. Beginning now, all of our new books, and all of the reprints of existing titles, will show the SFI logo on the copyright page. It may not look like much, but it indicates that we're trying to do our job to ensure that the forests we depend on will still be there, and be healthy, many many years from now.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Georgia District Sees Test Scores Rise


We're very fond of Clarke County, Georgia. Yes, it's home to Athens and the University of Georgia. But we're especially fond of...

...summer school test results! (Well, who isn't?) This past summer, Clarke County 8th graders in summer school used our new Georgia Academic Support Program Comprehensive Mathematics, Grade 8. According to Clarke County School District Mathematics Coach Glenda Huff, “The 8th grade teachers loved the resource. The planning time was cut in half for a summer program that was packed with content.” Just as significantly, students using the program saw their test results rise 12.8%, from pre-test to post-test.
It's one thing to develop and publish programs that you think make a difference in the classroom. It's another thing to see some concrete proof.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Digital Downloads!

All new Walch Education tiles now come with a fully searchable CD-ROM attached to the printed book. But we're not stopping there: we now also offer 18 of our most popular titles as Digital Downloads on our web site.

That means that if you're searching for Dialogue, Discussion, and Debate: Science, or Daily Writing Fundamentals or Daily Warm-Ups: Prefixes, Suffixes, and Roots, or any other of 18 titles, you can purchase them as traditional print-format books. Or, you can download them right from our web site -- and save a few dollars in the process.

So go to the full list of our Digital Downloads and bring our best-sellers right into your classroom or home instantly!

You Gotta' Have Art!

...and we have it, hot off the press!

Meet Daily Warm-Ups: Art History, the latest addition to our acclaimed Daily Warm-Ups series. It's a stand-alone or a companion to our perennially popular Daily Warm-Ups: Art.

Difference is, Daily Warm-Ups: Art History zeroes in on how art mixes and mingles with culture and history over time. The familiar, successful format applies: 180 quick activities that require little or no prep time for teacher. These are ideal for the beginning of class, end of class, or any transition or down time.

Fact is, Daily Warm-Ups: Art has been well received year after year. So we went back to the teachers who use it and asked what more we could give them? More of this, they answered, and that's why we developed this new title. Needless to say, it includes a handy-dandy CD-ROM that's completely searchable, so you can copy from the book itself or project/copy from the disk.

Did we mention that Daily Warm-Ups: Art History addresses National Standards for Art Education? That it has links to other web resources? That it's spiral-bound and lays flat? That it's darn cute?

We did? Well, then, what are you waiting for?