Teacher Kenneth J. Bernstein, better known to DailyKos readers as "teacherken", supplies our latest TLN contribution to Teacher Magazine, which is literally the story of his finding The Courage to Teach and finally meeting Parker Palmer, an important teacher in his own "student" life.

It's a good choice, we think, for the 200th article contributed by members of the Teacher Leaders Network as part of a partnership with Teacher Magazine and edweek.org. You can read a sample of other TLN contributions at this index page on the Education Week website. Congratulations and thanks to all the teacher-writers who've helped us reach what would have once seemed to be an impossible milestone.

[Hint for first-time visitors to TM: All the Teacher Magazine content is free, but you need to register once as a guest to access these articles.]

The folks at Education Week and Teacher Magazine have a great idea for those of us who don't have time to gather in living rooms over coffee, cokes and cake to discuss professional books: an online Teacher Book Club.

Their virtual club kicked off over the summer with some excellent discussion of charter school principal Linda Nathan's The Hardest Questions Aren't on the Test (check out the archive here and see how it all works).

Ed Week's next Teacher Book Club chat starts October 29 and runs (asynchronously) for a week.The book is Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America by Helen Thorpe. The author followed four bright and ambitious students for five years from their Denver high school through college. At the heart of the story, says Ed Week commentary editor Elizabeth Rich, "are the personal identities of these four young women—two of whom are illegal immigrants—and how they balance who they are with their ambitions for the future."

You don't have to read the book (or finish it) before the chat. There's a backgrounder here in the form of an interview with Thorpe, who will be on hand during the week to interact with everyone who'd like to participate.

A virtual teacher book club is a great idea — and if you're able to drop by, you might leave an idea for a future book in this series. PS: You can follow the discussion on this page.

In this 9-minute Edutopia video clip, teaching scholar Linda Darling Hammond sorts though all the international student assessment data and makes the case that education policymakers in the U.S. need to shift their focus to actions that support the teaching of higher order thinking and problem-solving, if we expect to compete in the global economy. And she does this without bashing teachers, principals or parents. That's refreshing indeed.

In her new book The Flat World and Education, Darling Hammond describes a system of teacher development and support that recognizes the central role of the highly trained teacher in success for all students. “This is very eye-opening,” wrote one teacher-commenter after viewing the video. “She is very clear and is not presenting some new trendy reform for improvement but excellent observations…relying on the foundation of data.”

The Teacher Leaders Network recently celebrated the third anniversary of our partnership with Teacher Magazine and Editorial Projects in Education, the publisher of Education Week, to bring more expert teacher voice to the national conversation about our public schools. Nearly 160 individual essays and excerpts from our daily TLN Forum conversations have appeared in the online magazine and been spread throughout the Web by the power of social media and through large-scale e-newsletters like ASCD SmartBrief.

Here's a sample of our weekly postings from the last several months:

Giving Classrooms a Purpose
California author-educator Larry Ferlazzo explains why having a clear understanding of mission is the secret to classroom management and student success.

Teaching Secrets: Creating Positive Classroom Management
Rhode Island teacher-coach Marti Schwartz explains how helping students take pride in positive behaviors—and reflect on negative ones—can help change the classroom environment.

Does Grading Bias Apply to Education Reports?
A damning new report card on innovation in education relies on a selective view of the teaching profession, says math teacher Bob Williams, Alaska's 2009 teacher of the year.

Lessons in Democracy
A new book prompts Maryland's Ken Bernstein, a high school government teacher, to question how well schools teach—or even reflect upon—the art of democratic participation.

Should Teachers Sell Their Class Materials?
Members of the Teacher Leaders Network argue that teachers have a right to profit from their own intellectual work. (November 18, 2009)

The Experience Factor
Who said anything about retiring? Some Baby Boomer teachers find they're only now reaping the benefits of their hard-won knowledge and skills.

Making Professional Development an Inside Job
Anthony Cody, a science coach in Oakland CA, questions why districts insist on hiring outsiders to conduct PD when local classroom teachers have so much to offer.

All material at the Teacher Magazine website is free to visitors who establish a guest membership.

Ever hunger for an education blog that puts reasonableness ahead of shock value? A blogger who's willing to examine all sides of an issue and present a nuanced view of education policy and school reform? If so, the Public School Insights blog, supported by the Learning First Alliance, will satisfy your appetite.

PSI offers a mix of podcasts and interviews with visionary educators, newsy feature stories, and opinion pieces written by blogkeeper Claus von Zastrow, LFA's executive director, that manage to be both balanced and fiercely pro- public education. PSI also features guest opinion pieces by teachers, including nearly a dozen written by members of the Teacher Leaders Network.

In addition, the Public School Insights website has built an ever-growing collection of articles under the banner School Success Stories. Some are original products; others are based on previously published stories that have been condensed and vetted by PSI staff. Here's a recent sample, describing the successful literacy program at a high-poverty elementary school serving a small fishing community on Alabama's Gulf Coast.

The Learning First Alliance, by the way, is a coalition of 20 or so major education associations—from NEA and AFT to the National School Boards Association and the PTA. This helps explain, perhaps, the extra effort to make all opinion pieces as fair and balanced as possible. But this balancing act has not kept von Zastrow from writing timely observations that are not only lively and thought-provoking but frequently produce stimulating follow-up comments from the blog's many followers.

If Public School Insights isn't in your sights on a daily basis, it should be.