Clark/Binnsmead teacher wins national honors

December 6, 2008 4:37 pm by

Clark K-8@Binnsmead first grade teacher Bonnie Robb was honored Thursday with the Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award, along with its $25,000 prize.

According to The Oregonian‘s report, Robb teaches a class that includes 40% English Language Learners (ELL) and 80% who qualify for free and reduced lunch.

Congratulations, Bonnie!

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Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

filed under: Honors and awards

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6 Responses

  1. Comment from Nancy R.:
    December 7th, 2008 at 8:31 am

    Yay, Mrs. Robb!!!

  2. Comment from Terry:
    December 7th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    Well, good for Bonnie Robb!

    The problem with teacher awards, however, is that they reinforce the notion that we can make schools better by installing an excellent teacher like Ms Robb in every classroom.

    Nice idea, but it’s simply numerically unfeasible. There are approximately 6 million teachers in the United States. How many of those can we realistically expect to be excellent?

    Schools will only improve through systemic reforms like team teaching. Teacher collaboration is a proven winner at all levels of education. We need to allow teachers like Bonnie Robb to work with other teachers to ensure that what she does in her classroom has some carryover to other classrooms and a greater number of students.

    Firing “bad” teachers (and blaming the unions for protecting them) isn’t the answer.

  3. Comment from Steve Rawley:
    December 7th, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    I think the point of some of these awards is to encourage the recipients to share there expertise, like you suggest, Terry. Goals for the Milken award include the following:

    • encourage Milken Educators to help shape the educational policies that influence their classrooms and schools,
    • connect Milken Educators with the educational improvement efforts of state and federal education agencies, universities, educators, corporate partners and others.

    I think Bonnie’s got some valuable perspectives to share with PPS (and other districts).

  4. Comment from TheOpinionator:
    December 8th, 2008 at 3:05 am

    Terry, Interesting that you think firing bad teachers isn’t such a great idea. Seems that Chancellor Rhee in Washington D.C. HIGHLY disagrees with you…

  5. Comment from ohme:
    December 9th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    I think that an excellent teacher in each of 6 million classrooms should be expected by our country. We expect excellent doctors, nurses, firefighters, police. Do we want the so-so doctor to treat us? The police officer who has so-so aim to protect us? One less than excellent teacher can ruin school and learning forever for a child.
    As a country, we should place education as such a high priority that we expect only the best and the brightest to teach. Anything less than excellent is not acceptable for our precious children.

  6. Comment from Terry:
    December 9th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    You can expect excellence in any profession, ohme, but it will never happen in a workforce that employs millions. I’ve worked along side lots of excellent teachers in some pretty good schools. But never have I experienced a uniformly excellent staff in any of those schools.

    I disagree that one non-excellent teacher can ruin a school or a child’s education “forever”. With respect, it’s silly to claim that.