Isolation+As+The+Cause

Isolation can be a factor to consider when evaluating a teacher who is not employing best practices. Teaching is often described as an isolated profession because the teacher can go into the classroom, shut the door, and do what he/she thinks is right (or what he/she thinks is expected). Plus, the teacher usually is the lone adult in a classroom, which increases that professional isolation while supporting the teacher's feeling of autonomy. As a result, this isolation, coupled with autonomy, can promote and encourage the use of teaching practices that are not effective. In addition, the isolated teacher is not exposed to the effective, best practices that we want him/her to be employing in the classroom.


 * Establish Professional Learning Communities within the school
 * Encourage teachers to develop Professional Learning Networks
 * Use Social Media to communicate with other educator
 * Twitter
 *  Lots of educators are communicating with this tool
 *  Not geographically restrictive
 *  Easy to use
 *  Allows for the sharing of many different perspectives
 *  Setting up an account is easy
 * Facebook
 * Again, you can communicate with educators all over the world
 * Share strategies and practices
 * YouTube and TeacherTube for video examples of best practices
 * Encourage teachers to join professional organizations where best practices are shared
 * International Reading Association (IRA)
 * <span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS,cursive;"> State and local reading councils can be located at http://www.reading.org
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Also has state level organizations
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">National Science Teachers Association (NSTA)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">National Council for Social Studies
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">The Council for Exceptional Children