When you work hard to recruit outstanding new candidates to teach math and science in high-need schools, you do find some amazing people: fighter pilots, dolphin trainers, transportation engineers, and expert geneticists; brand-new grads who have tutored peers and coached kids while maintaining killer GPAs and experienced R&D scientists with stacks of publications and patents; veterans of the armed forces, ministers, moms, community volunteers.

At the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, those of us working with the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship are in awe of some of the Fellows who have joined the program. Not only are they willing to give teaching a shot in spite of the challenges, they actually want the challenges. They don’t want to do the easy stuff. They want to do the hard stuff, for the kids who need it most, and they want to do it right.

These Fellows have a lot to say about the art and science of teaching, about what it means to transition into the classroom, and about the difference that their experience as Fellows makes. They also speak with laughter and clarity and sometimes a little melancholy about how tough the challenges really are. And, being expert problem-solvers, they come up with solutions that we think others can learn from.

So here at Woodrow Wilson we decided to start this blog. It’s meant to be a forum for the perspectives that our Fellows can offer, and a clearinghouse for some of their suggestions and resources. It’s also aiming to pull in some of the best advice and tools that mentors, peer teachers, and education leaders offer. Beyond that, from time to time it will also feature major policy issues related to the teaching profession and run announcements about the Fellowship. Contributors will include not only Fellows, but also an array of guest bloggers… and sometimes just us, the Woodrow Wilson staff.

Comments are welcome—in fact, comments and maybe even guest posts on substantive issues are very important to us, and to the Fellows. We really want to engage the education community. And since everybody in this country, one way or another, is a constituent of education, that means we want to engage you.

So stay tuned.