Teachers Wanted: Passion a Must, Patience Required, Pay Negligible

Across the country, an improving economy has pulled teachers and potential teachers away from the profession, creating a growing national shortage. Leaders at Elmhurst Community Prep managed not only to completely staff the school by early June, but to avoid taking on anyone who was not fully certified.

For-profit companies are making good private schools available even to Africa’s poor. They can do it – and can do it on an enormous scale – by hiring neighborhood residents to teach, and scripting out every word of every lesson on an e-reader.

Research in the U.S. suggests that a small class size is not enough but in combination with teacher training it leads to a change in achievement.

Can we improve the methods we use to teach math in schools — so that everyone develops proficiency? A grade-school math program is changing how children learn based on the assumption that all children can achieve a high level of understanding.

Kepler University in Rwanda reduces the cost of a university education by hiring teachers based on their willingness to innovate — not necessarily their expertise — and by blending online and in-classroom learning. Students receive the equivalent of a college diploma and job training in order to facilitate a possible rise out of poverty.

Medicine is in crisis; doctors face early burnout. Medical education contributes: it creates doctors who don’t show emotion. But The Healer’s Art, a medical school course delivered in an unconventional manner, reminds doctors that they and their patients are above all, human.

Across the country, jails hold 10 times as many people with serious mental illness as state hospitals do, according to a recent report from the Treatment Advocacy Center. To deal with the problem, San Antonio and Bexar County have transformed their mental health system into a program considered a model for the rest of the nation - the effort has focused on an idea called "smart justice" — basically, diverting people with serious mental illness out of jail and into treatment instead.

Rama Arora defied tradition and secretly pursued her PhD as a young woman in India, succeeding at becoming the first female professor at a women's college. Now she is inspiring more Indian girls to further their educatione, so they can help bring about greater equality in society.

Rates of problem behaviors and emotional issues among students are high - over 3 million elementary and secondary school students are suspended a year. To remedy the problem, a new program for educators delivers lessons on how to help students navigate their emotional lives.

PowerMyLearning, a program that any student, parent, or teacher can use for free, helps students take ownership of their own learning. When most attention is being placed on teacher effectiveness, this program redirects those efforts toward students.