Teachers are in the spotlight. More than ever, people know how important teaching quality is to a student’s learning experience. Not surprisingly, the conversation about teachers isn’t all necessarily productive or supportive. Recently, Time magazine stirred up quite a furor with its cover of an apple about to be smashed by a gavel, accompanied by the words, “It’s almost impossible to fire a bad teacher.” While the article that the cover promoted could be part of an important conversation about teacher quality, the cover image contributed to what is already a tense atmosphere around how we talk about teachers. So what if, instead of talking about teachers, we talk about teaching instead? We know that teachers are implementing new student standards — often while using