DABA: Kilian Betlach

As I mentioned last week, each Friday I'm going to try to highlight a blog that I think deserves a bigger audience (DABA). The first recipient in 2008 of the crimson megaphone is... (drum roll, please)

• Teaching in the 408

Blogging under the nom de plume of TMAO, Kilian Betlach is probably my favorite education blogger. It's downright criminal that he doesn't have more readers. Here's the tag line at the top of his blog:

We must reject the ideology of the "achievement gap" that absolves adults of their responsibility and implies student culpability in continued under-performance. The student achievement gap is merely the effect of a much larger and more debilitating chasm: The Educator Achievement Gap. We must erase the distance between the type of teachers we are, and the type of teachers they need us to be.

Here are a few posts to get you started:

• On NCLB
• The Ledge
• I Hate This Time of Year
• The Teachers You Hate Sitting Next To During All-District PD

I'm not quite sure what needs to be done to boost Kilian's readership. Kilian's writing already has been recognized by Jay Matthews at The Washington Post and he finished fourth in the Best Teacher Blog category of this year's Edublog Awards. I agree with Dan Meyer that Teaching in the 408 is 'without question the best classroom blog on the Internet' and that Kilian 'deserves every page view.' If you only add one new blog to your reading list this year, this should be it.

Happy reading!

• See list of DABA blogs
• Read DABA posts on a web page
• Subscribe to DABA posts via RSS
• Subscribe to DABA posts via e-mail
• DABA clip code
• DABA blogroll code
• The Crimson Megaphone

P.S. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach had a nice roundup of some new, provocative teacher blogs. Thanks for sharing with us, Sheryl!

Comments

[Dan Meyer]

1.

Worthy pick.

[Cheryl Smith]

2.

I'm not quite sure what needs to be done to boost Kilian's readership.

I'm sure that it's my age, but I have a difficult time reading the white font on the black background!

Thanks for the recommendation and I'm looking forward to more.

[Ryan Bretag]

3.

I'll admit that I'm one of those that hasn't read Kilian Betlach's blog, but I had the opportunity to read through a few posts this evening and I'm glad I did.

Thank you for creating DABA as I would have continued missing the great blogging on this blog and I'm sure many others that you'll recommend.

[TMAO]

4.

Hey, thanks for this. I suppose part of garnering readership is doing the whole blog promotion thing, and that's not something I'm so good at.

I just write.