Introduction

In 1931 George Miller wrote a delightful book titled Letters from a Hard-Boiled Teacher to His Half-Baked Son about entering the teaching profession. In it he offered serious advice that he presented in a straightforward way. Miller wrote, "You are now about to peep behind the scenes of this teaching game and see the secret wires, pulleys, slap-sticks, and other annoying contraptions, which were never mentioned in your college courses," and he went on to provide insights into and ways of addressing the wide range of problems new teachers face.

Miller's book has long been out of print and difficult to find even in libraries. Remarkably a search turned up no similar book written over the 83 years since it was published. For that reason Ray Patenaude and I have written and William R. Parks has published an update titled Letters to a Young Math Teacher. While that book includes two or three chapters that relate, as the title suggests, specifically to mathematics teachers, 90% of the text applies to all teachers setting out on a career in teaching.

This site is being designed to serve as a forum at which newcomers to this important profession and experienced teachers and others interested in the real world problems of teaching can interact. It will supplement and extend what we have written in Letters and parts of what will appear here may be reflected in later editions of that book, thus enhancing its value for beginners.

I propose to write approximately weekly short essays on topics related to classroom teaching in today's schools. I invite comments about what I write including reactions, disagreements, related examples and extensions to particular teaching areas. Thus a teacher of social studies or an elementary school teacher might feel that something said about teaching in other areas applies differently – or even not at all – to their specialty.

Finally, I urge new teachers to follow this blog in order to help them address their immediate problems and I urge experienced teachers to do so in order to serve as mentors to these newcomers, at the same time updating their own professional background. In each case the blog should serve as a kind of in-service training activity. By signing up you will be informed of new postings.