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Strategic Vision for Missoula schools – Excellent teachers, high expectations and a healthy amount of tension in the system.

To offer some guidance, Craig Barrett, former president of Intel and co-chair of ACHIEVE, began his presentation to the Missoula Education Summit with a definition of the elements essential for a good school system: Excellent teachers, high expectations and a healthy amount of tension in the system.

As he explained, everything depends on dedicated teachers who thoroughly understand the content they teach; respect the crucial relationships among content, appropriate teaching methods and ways of learning; model excellent writing, oral and math skills; have high expectations of themselves and their students; exhibit enthusiasm for teaching and learning; and motivate students to engage in learning.

These characteristics of excellent teachers reflect the reality in hundreds if not thousands of schools around the country and in most of the classrooms in Missoula County. More important, when classrooms lack the pervasive influence of excellent teaching, tension escalates while expectations remain frustrated. On the other hand, unless the community has high expectations and insists upon realizing them, good teachers will seek better prospects elsewhere.

This opinion piece was signed by Alex Apostle, superintendent of Missoula County Public Schools; George Dennison, president of the University of Montana; Dick King, president of the Missoula Area Economic Development Corp.; Royce Engstrom, Provost at UM; UM executive vice president Jim Foley; Bobbie Evans, dean of the PJW College of Education and Human Sciences; Chris Comer, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Barry Good, dean of the College of Technology.

Full Commentary: http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/article_1c8407c2-221f-11df-aa92-001cc4c002e0.html

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