What if the kids forget to close the classroom door?
The teachers took the children inside, as ordered by the frantic New York school authorities on the phone, and closed the classroom blinds.
She said Mr. Grunow told Nathaniel, "Don't point that at me" and started to close the classroom door when he was shot.
For all teachers' understandable complaints about overbearing principals, unresponsive bureaucracies and meddling parents (or parents who don't meddle enough), they still wield considerable power when they close the classroom door.
"When it rains it comes in everywhere and sometimes we have to close the classroom and move the students and it does interrupt their learning and it is very, very difficult," says Ms Raffee.
In particular, the administration and Congress need to preserve and strengthen provisions that hold states accountable for placing a qualified teacher in every classroom and closing the achievement gap between poor children and their wealthy contemporaries.
Custodians need them close to the classroom and cafeteria messes, but instead they may be tucked into a corner of a basement.
As the song wound to a close, the classroom, with its blackboards and posters, its scuffed wood floors and hulking seminar table, was lit by the setting sun.
By so engaging college students, universities are offering problems solving opportunities to learn by doing--a form of project based learning enhancing the learning experience and fostering interdisciplinary expertise, an effort to close the gap between classroom pedagogy and the real world.
No matter what policy makers dictate, when a teacher closes the door and is the classroom alone with the students, he/she is in charge.
