Some teachers become leaders within their profession after years of work--after mastering the best teaching methodologies, the best ways to work with their colleagues and administrators, and the best ways to shape their young charges' learning. But until recently, no leadership certificate was offered in university education programs. If tomorrow's teacher leaders are to be a vital part of our schools' improvement, we should be training them now to fulfill that role.

Teacher Magazine recently interviewed Tanya Judd Pucella, (a member of their Teacher Leaders Network) in their free, subscription-based e-newsletter. In 2007, Judd Pucella, a National Board certified teacher and assistant professor of leadership and education at Ohio's Marietta College, instituted a new program at Marietta's McDonough Center for Leadership and Business--an undergraduate certificate in Teacher Leadership. In addition to studying various leadership theories and behaviors, the students also practice leadership skills such as team building, facilitation, goal setting, communication, and project planning.

New teachers certainly need to spend their early years honing their classroom abilities and becoming effective teachers, but they can also use those years modeling the skills that will help them become leaders down the road. Judd Pucella said, "My students invariably come to the quick conclusion that while all teacher leaders are effective teachers, not all effective teachers are teacher leaders. To be a teacher leader one must do more--you must stand up for what is best for all students."

She says that her students identify other leadership traits, such as advocacy skills, the ability to analyze professional literature, an awareness of some key issues and trends in the field (such as the impact of NCLB), a knowledge of how to give constructive feedback to peers, and an understanding of how to be a successful peer coach.

Judd Pucella related how Meg, one of the first program graduates, returned as a guest speaker. She'd been able to utilize some of the leadership skills she'd learned in college in her first year of teaching. "Her proficiency in both technology and content-area reading strategies and her understanding of how to share these tools with more veteran teachers in a non-threatening way had established her as an informal leader. Meg also actively sought out an effective teacher-mentor to assist her, using her 'followership' skills to improve the experience in her classroom for herself and her students."

Judd Pucella said that Meg's principal had noticed her good work and asked her to take over the media center, which needed much repair. "He felt she'd done such a great job as a reading instructor and was so good with technology that she would be an excellent choice."

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "A leader is a dealer in hope." New teacher leaders like Meg certainly give me hope that the future of education is in fine hands.

I may live in Arizona, but it was the New York Times that informed me about an innovative Arizona school that has attached a mobile Internet router to one of their school bus' frame. The students have nicknamed it the Internet Bus

This school bus travels a 70-minute route along desert and mountain terrain. The ride, which used to be punctuated by rowdiness and sometimes fighting, is now filled with students doing homework, researching papers, answering email, and playing video games.

The school has district officials to thank for this innovation. They started traveling to meetings in Phoenix--a two-hour drive--in pairs so one could drive and the other could work on a laptop. Later one of them saw an ad for a mobile router for a car and wondered if it could work on a bus. And work it does. District officials have been pleased to see the amount of homework getting done, and the bus driver is pleased as well. "It's made a big difference. Boys aren't hitting each other, girls are busy, and there's not so much jumping around."

With so many questions raised about the best ways to reach and teach our children, the results of a 15-year study may offer valuable insight about successful schools.

About 20 years ago, researchers founded the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago to undertake independent research on Chicago's school system. The time was ripe for a study, as the public school system had recently become decentralized, giving more power and resources to parents and communities to transform their schools.

The original study, which focused on the period from 1990 to 1996, was duplicated with data from 1997 to 2005, after control of the school system went to the mayor's office.

The researchers compared approximately 200 schools--the 100 that showed the most improvement on standardized tests and school attendance, as well as the 100 that fared the worst. The analysis identified five "ingredients" common to the most successful schools:

1) Principals who are "strategic, focused on instruction, and inclusive of others in their work";

2) A welcoming attitude toward parents, and connections with the community;

3) Quality teaching staff, teachers' belief that schools can change, and participation in good professional development and collaborative work;

4) A learning climate that is safe, welcoming, stimulating, and nurturing to all students;

5) Strong instructional guidance and materials.

The findings showed that while each of these ingredients on its own could account for some improvement, a combination of ingredients multiplied the success dramatically.

I imagine you weren't surprised that these five factors were key to success--I know I wasn't. And while it may seem obvious that these ingredients are needed for schools to be successful, there still are far too many schools lacking in several of them. How many of these ingredients are present at your school?

Learning A-Z continually works to find innovative, creative ways to get the most useful educational resources into the hands of students and teachers. As a pioneer in delivering leveled readers and other content via the Web, we are proud to now partner with Language Technologies in offering our resources as Apps Edition(TM) ReadSmart on Apple's dynamic App Store.

We're offering eleven free apps as well as one hundred twenty (120) Reading A-Z leveled readers available for purchase at Apple'siTunes® App Store as ReadSmart Edition™ Apps. This catalog is the largest release of PreK-6 reading skills and literacy educational materials ever offered on the App Store and designed specifically for the iPhone® and iPod® touch.

As a former science teacher, I went to great lengths to capture the interest of my students. While I like to think I succeeded more often than not, I doubt that I achieved rock-star status. Perhaps if I'd participated in the Weightless Flights program as these teachers did, things would have been different.

The weightless flight experiences are expensive--about $5,000 per person--a price out of reach for most schools and teachers. Northrup Grumman Foundation accepts applications from eligible middle-school teachers for its Weightless Flights of Discovery Program, with the goal of giving them tools to stimulate their students' interest in the sciences. After one flight, teacher Adrienne Manzone pronounced, "My coolness factor will go up 100 percent." Teachers who are selected participate in hands-on science workshops as well as zero-gravity flights and experiments.

Geoffrey Bergen, another teacher on the flight, commented on how hard it is "to teach out of a textbook" when you consider the technological world students live in. The Weightless Flight program "gives you a new tool for Newton's laws." To achieve the weightless experience, the airplane flies in series of parabolas (a sort of curved freefall). The teachers experience zero gravity as well as gravity comparable to that of the Moon and Mars.

Very cool, indeed.

Imagine math class where, when the teacher asks for volunteers, every sixth-grader raises a hand. Imagine kids excited about learning because they think they're playing a game.

Technically they are playing games at Quest to Learn (Q2L), the first school in the United States with a curriculum focused on video games and game-based learning.

Students might learn about Newtonian physics through PS3's LittleBigPlanet, or design through Gamestar Mechanic. They learn how to research, work as a team, and solve puzzles.

Game-based learning has growing support. Earlier this year, the esteemed professor (emeritus) Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University said, "Games are the future in education." Kurt Squire, of the University of Wisconsin agrees. "We're starting to see agreement that video games are the new liberal arts," he said. "This school is the first implementation."

Q2L, a collaboration of the Parsons School for Design, New Visions for Public Schools, and the Institute of Play (a non-profit organization dedicated to game-based education), is a public (non-charter) school funded by the Department of Education. The school is in New York City, with 72 sixth-graders and six teachers. A new grade will be added each year until it reaches the 12^th grade.

With a 39% drop-out rate, New York City could be the ideal proving-ground for this type of innovation. Katie Salen is Q2L's executive director of design and believes that today's youth are digital kids. "They've already transformed society," she says, "why not education?"

Students not only needed to apply, but also to be chosen by lottery to attend Q2L. "I have friends who are jealous," says 11-year-old Beauchamp Baker. Baker has been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder and had previous difficulty in school. His mother Lesli admits that it took "a leap of faith" on her part, but that Q2L is "a great match for him. He's really enthused about learning."

I feel like a proud Papa. The other morning I opened up my local paper and saw a story about Tucson students making holiday cards for our troops. The article referenced one of Reading A-Z's books, "Hugs for Daddy."

"Hugs for Daddy" is a special book--written by a woman whose husband was deployed to Iraq. The story speaks to the special bond that a little girl has with her Daddy, and how she copes without him in her daily routine. We've already given over 500 copies to various branches of the military and promised hundreds more.

Learning A-Z's mission is rooted in meeting the educational needs of all children and in building strong communities. That's why we continually respond to community needs whether providing books to remote schools in Africa and villages of South America or offering timely free resources throughout the world. For example, with the swine flu epidemic hitting school children across the country, we developed a teaching packet with various resources on swine flu. It's free and available for download on all of the Learning A-Z websites: Reading A-Z, RAZ-Kids, Reading Tutors, Vocabulary A-Z, Writing A-Z, and Science A-Z. I hope these resources are appreciated and widely used as it is our intent to continue reaching out to the broader community.

If you are serious about improving the reading performance of struggling readers in your school or district, including students with disabilities and those served by Title 1, I have some good news for you. A scientifically based one-on-one, reading mentoring program has been getting great results in Ohio. And the wonderful thing is that it's an extremely affordable program costing approximately from $1 to $2 per tutoring hour to implement. This is definite good news when districts are tightening their belts during difficult economic times.

The program, known as Project More (Mentoring in Ohio for Reading Excellence), has been in effect since 2002. The Center for Evaluation Services out of Bowling Green State University has been gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data on the program for each year of its implementation. According to Dr. Rich Wilson, Co-Director for the Center, "Over the past six years, evaluation results have shown that Project MORE students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) have made a one-month reading gain for each month of structured intervention."

Learning A-Z has had the good fortune to be part of this outstanding program. Our involvement began in 2004 when, in collaboration with the principals of Project More, Dr. Jan Osborne, Superintendent of Putnam County Schools, and Amy Freeman, Project MORE Director, we developed the Reading-Tutors.com website to deliver packets of reading resources for use during tutoring sessions. When a volunteer tutor enters a school to tutor a needy student, he or she is handed a Reading-tutors packet that includes a book, a lesson, activity sheets, and a game. These packets provide learning objectives and an instructional purpose to each tutoring session.

I have personally visited Project MORE schools and have witnessed the benefits that Project MORE delivers to struggling readers as students meet with their mentors three to four days a week. I have also witnessed the benefits gained by those who are tutoring children. In particular, middle- and high-school students, who are serving as tutors in many of the schools, are learning the value of volunteerism and community service. This program truly benefits kids, parents, tutors, and the entire community.

Project MORE has demonstrated that one-on-one volunteer tutoring programs can have EARS--that is, they can be effective, affordable, replicable, and sustainable. This program can be implemented anywhere in the country. If you are interested in more information about Project MORE, contact Amy Freeman, Project MORE Director, at 888.319.3560, email afreeman@pm.noacsc.org, or visit ohioprojectmore.org. I would encourage you to learn more about the project and ways in which it can help your school or district's reading program. The Project MORE team is a tremendously dedicated group of educators with a burning passion to help children with disabilities as well as others who struggle to read.

Some New Jersey schools are building a community of readers through a program called One Book, One School. Started by a Seattle librarian about ten years ago, One Book programs strive to get students reading and to build a sense of community through a shared experience.

The challenge, of course, is finding a book that will appeal to a wide range of people and reading abilities.

"That's very much a challenge," said Allentown principal Christopher Nagy. "We said: Will this be good for all ability-level students? Will this meet students' interest? Is it a book that can be read across all disciplines? I want to have a conversation about one book taking place among all students."

Schools vary in how strongly they enforce reading the selected book. "We wanted to create that shared experience. We didn't want to make it something punitive," said Hunterdon Central Regional High School superintendent Lisa Brady. She estimated that 75 percent of the 3,200 students read their school's One Book selection.

Student reaction varies as well. "At first I thought, 'This is ridiculous.' But you see people reading it," said Michael Thomas, 17. "It means some kid I don't know is a little bit more like me, and me a little bit more like him."

To me, that sure sounds like building a community.

Reading A-Z books could easily be adapted for an elementary school One Book program. There are over 1,000 titles spanning 27 levels of reading difficulty with 50 of these titles written to multiple levels of difficulty. Subscribers can print out enough books for all participants, and students can assemble them. Best of all, students can keep the books they read, which fosters ownership and interest in reading even more.

Could your school system be eligible to receive an astronaut helmet from a space mission?

NASA is retiring the Space Shuttle Program in 2010 after its last scheduled mission. They are sharing the wonders of space exploration through donations to eligible educational institutions, museums, and libraries.

They are donating small items such as astronaut helmets, gloves, and boots, as well as large items, such as shuttle Motion Based Simulators and Crew Compartment Trainers. The artifacts are free, but recipients must cover shipping and special handling fees.

Organizations must meet eligibility requirements and register to preview the items. Download the free information pamphlet   for additional information as well as links to pertinent agencies.

The end of the Space Shuttle Program does not mean an end to space travel, however. The next generation of exploration, called the Constellation Program, promises some pretty exciting missions.

For the latest information about the NASA shuttle transition and artifacts, visit www.nasa.gov/transition.