I was born to teach. I really was. I love everything about teaching--thinking about it, planning for it, studying it, worrying about it ... even the frustration and the exceedingly hard of doing I love that it allows me so many new beginnings and do-overs, that two days are ever the same, that it requires constant evaluation, innovation and creativity, skill, and patience--and, perhaps above all else, humility. Nothing is quite as exhilarating as watching people construct new ways of understanding, engaging, and living in their worlds. And nothing is quite as humbling as seeing that, although I can get it better, I can never get teaching quite right--even on days when everything seems sterling. I was not an especially good student of teaching, and my preparation program was more concerned with teaching me to run movie projectors and make bulletin boards than helping me to learn to think like a teacher. Still, I was a good teacher--award-winning even. And what made me a teacher was that I was a critical thinker and a problem solver. I loved stuff, and there was always so much to do. I thrived in the complex, ambiguous, and rapidly changing environment of elementary and middle school classrooms. So, as I with students preparing to teach, it's not surprising that the figuring out skills rank high among those things I emphasize with my students. Yes, yes, I know the ability to figure is not the only attribute of successful teachers. They need to know their content and be able to plan and assess and employ positive management strategies. They need to be able to collaboratively and to know the laws and standards. Sure. No argument there. But the skill they will use most--and that's required to get the most of all the other things they need to do to be good teachers--is critical thinking. Everything I do in my classes is designed, in one way or the other, to help my students develop the skill of thinking critically. NCLB and Critical Thinking Earlier this year, I realized that critical thinking is not valued--or even needed--in schools today. At a conference, I heard a speaker explain, know what they should do. We just need teachers who will do it. he knows teachers should do is follow the script and do what they're told--don't make waves, don't question, just do the program and whatever the state or other funding or regulatory agency requires. Do it without thinking or worrying about how well it fits your students. I almost hyperventilated. I mean, this guy was being paid to tell those of us in teacher preparation that we should prepare our students to be sheep! What a mess we're in, I thought. Fortunately for me, I came back home to my students and was able to move past my angst. But, since then I've emphasized to my students more than ever that, as teachers, they'll have the moral and ethical responsibility to say when is the right answer. I lay this mess at the feet of No Child Left Behind--and Comprehensive School Reform and the 1990s red-hot Kentucky Educational Reform Act, which gave birth to so much of the current mentality. In the last nine years, I've written often in this column and elsewhere about NCLB and the plague it's brought on our schools. To me, predicting its failure has always been a no brainer. Any program that bases change on carrots and sticks and tries to control what happens in the classroom through fear, shame, and scripted programs is doomed to fail. Friends and colleagues suggested that we could or should work with it. But I never could. When it came to the top-down, hyper-controlling, punitive reform NCLB created, I didn't need a weatherman to know which way that wind would blow. …