Sam Chaltain

In a recent Op-Ed for the Washington Post, New America Foundation's Maggie Severns urged states to rethink teacher preparation in light of our country's ongoing shift to a minority-majority nation. As Severns explains, immigrant youths and the children of immigrants are among the lowest-performing groups of students in...

After watching my beloved Boston Red Sox blow yet another game in the ninth inning over the weekend, I was reminded of a simple fact: some losses are more emotionally significant than others.

As my disappointment threatened to disrupt the rest of my Memorial Day, I realized there's a...

In theory, Buck is a documentary about horses and a cinematic profile of the laconic cowboy who has learned to speak their silent animal language.

In fact, Buck is a documentary about how people (and animals) learn -- and a reminder that just because something has always been done a...

It was fifteen years ago, but I still remember the first time I saw Blue Man Group. Watching those bald blue aliens discover how to eat a Twinkie, or investigate the queasy vibrations of a giant Jello cake, or climb the walls of the theater to learn more...

What would you say if I told you that all of our current national efforts to improve public education were blind to the actual way people learned and interacted with the world?

Depressing, right? But it's true. To prove it, watch this short video -- just 100 seconds long --...

Once again, David Brooks has written an important column about education. And once again, he offers a vision of modern schooling that is almost perfect -- but not quite.

In November 2010, I wrote a piece in response to a Brooks column in which he wrote passionately about...

Yesterday was one of those days every parent dreads.

My 2.5 year-old son, Leo, decided to make dinner a histrionic struggle for power. My energy reserves were at historic lows. And my larger visions of effective parenting had lost out to my smaller need to merely give in to Leo's...

The good news is that Republican lawmakers in Arizona are now retreating from their recent proposal to require teachers to limit their speech to words that comply with FCC regulations on what can be said on TV or radio -- a half-baked idea rightly characterized here at the...

Last week, CNN reported on recent events in Garfield Heights, Ohio, where austerity measures have led local school officials to shorten the schoolday to five hours, get rid of subjects like art, music, and PE -- and send kids home before lunch.

What didn't come out during the piece was...

In the halls of Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, a debate is raging over which set of economic proposals to pursue in order to rebuild the national economy. At the same time, K-12 education reformers are engaged in their own frantic search for the right recipe(s) that can...

OK, people, let's get specific: Out of all the schools in the world, which ones are the most transformational when it comes to imagining a new way to think about teaching and learning in the 21st century?

There are a lot of inspiring schools out there, so I want to...

If you're looking for the latest signs of America's cultural descent into inanity, look no further than this past weekend's Sunday Styles section in the New York Times, and its review of Maria Abramovic's performance piece at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's recent fundraising gala.

What...

Late Thursday night, alone in my TV room and still struggling to get back onto east-coast time, I watched Tim Tebow's improbable 95-yard game-winning drive, and marveled at the uniqueness of his unfolding storyline.

As the dumbstruck commentators on NFL Network made clear, we are witnessing something unprecedented...

On a recent crisp fall morning in the nation's capital, 3rd grade teacher Rebecca Lebowitz gathered her 29 public school students on their familiar giant multicolored carpet, and reminded them how to make sense of the characters whose worlds they would soon enter during independent reading time.

"What are the...

It wasn't until the end of her tragically short life that Thea Leopoulos first discovered the depth of her talent as an artist.

A buoyant, beautiful girl with dark eyebrows and sharp brown eyes, Thea spent her childhood believing the experts who first told her, back in third grade, she...

I just returned from my first visit to China in 15 years, and I still can't get over how aligned the Middle Kingdom remains around its core "mission statement" -- and how misaligned we remain in the United States.

In China, the mission that directs the priorities of its private,...

OK, I realize I'm late to the game -- I was in China last week when President Obama first outlined his jobs proposal to a joint session of Congress. But as I look at it I'm wondering if anyone else has made a simple observation about his idea...

With all due respect to Flannery O'Connor, my vote for greatest American short-story writer goes to Ray Carver. And with all due respect to America's current crop of leaders, my hope is that they convene a summer book club to read Carver's stories -- and heed his central message.

I'm...

How do we transform the quality of teaching and learning in America?

Like a lot of people, I've been wrestling with that riddle for the bulk of my career. And this July, three separate events are making me wonder in a new way about how to bring about such a...

Last week, I was asked by CNN to comment on the news that most states will soon phase out cursive writing in order to give students more time to hone their digital skills. Initially, I wondered why the issue was receiving national coverage - there are bigger fish...