OK, I make my living off words. But there are some things that words can never really capture. To accompany my story on What Makes a Great Teacher, the Atlantic has posted three videos of highly effective teachers, courtesy of Teach For America. These are teachers…
I occasionally take a break from writing about risk and human behavior to write about education--a kind of slow-motion disaster. This fall, I spent months obsessing over an old puzzle, using very cool new tools. The question was, What makes some teachers truly exceptional--and others, well, unremarkable? The story, which appears in this month’s Atlantic magazine, is my attempt to solve the mystery.
I had a lot of help. I got access to a treasure trove of data from Teach for America, which has been studying this…
Another emergency, another news story about ...(dramatic pause)… regular people behaving exactly as they normally do.
In Cape Cod yesterday, an ambulance got stuck in the snow on its way to help a man who had collapsed outside his home. Out of the haze, an untrained force of neighbors appeared. Five neighbors used snow blowers to clear the road ahead while the others dug out the snow around the ambulance with snow shovels. It took two hours, but the elite squad of regular people and emergency…
U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is right to impose a 50% tax on banker bonuses, as announced earlier today. I know, I know: It could lead to an exodus of “talent,” as everyone in the financial “talent” industry likes to tell us. (Although that is less likely if more countries sign up for such a tax, reducing the number of alternative options for banks in search of relocation.) And I know that clever banks will find a way to slither out of some of the taxes. I don’t care. Fairness matters. Even if we can’t get fairness, it’s…
Preparing for the release of The Road and 2012, my TIME colleague Rebecca Winters Keegan investigates how to survive the end of the world--Hollywood style. Best tip (from Viggo Mortensen): Resist the urge to eat your children.
Our cinematic fascination with the end of the world is perplexing and somewhat perverse, but not…
Despite the combined forces of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and frightened farmers everywhere, legal scholar Cass Sunstein has been confirmed as Obama’s regulatory czar.
A small victory for facts over fear. Also known, in contemporary politics, as a miracle.
The Senate approved Sunstein by a vote of 57 to 40.
A British PSA illustrating the ramifications of texting while driving has been making waves not in Wales where it was produced, but in the US via YouTube and major news outlets. This isn’t your average “this-is-your-brain-on-drugs” PSA. Instead it’s a long (over four minutes) and graphic dramatization of what happens when a teenage girl decides to text message while driving.
We know that people respond much better to stories than they do to statistics. This particular story revolves around a group of happy-go-lucky teenage girls unaware that their actions are about to destroy many…
I’ve always thought that the ability to talk on the phone while driving was part of the cabbie job description. But until this New York Times article I had no idea it was actually illegal for NYC cabbies to talk on the phone while driving (the same cannot be same said for Washington, DC and many other cities).
While the law is largely unenforced, the dangers of cell phone use while driving are undeniable (drivers using cell phones are ”four times as likely to…
When Schools Bribe Kids
What Makes a Great Teacher?
The (Real) Lesson from the Underpants Bomber
Learning to Live with Fear of the Flu
In Case of Emergency
The Relentless Mrs. Roosevelt
How Not to Get Trampled in a Crowd
Michelle Rhee: Can She Save Our Schools?
The Story of Barack Obama’s Mother