This is a guest post by Andrew Hollinger, English II Pre-AP/CP and Creative Writing teacher at Sharyland High School in Mission, Texas. Follow him on twitter (@ashollinger) and visit his blog for more about his experiences in education.

My son will be two in March. He gets accolades for things I can totally already do: drink from a big boy cup, put his straw in his juice box, remember the names of the people in his inner circle. He also loves to read. He pulls books from his book shelf, opens them up, and babbles away, pointing at the pictures. This excites me, both as a parent and as a teacher. I know what the research says about kids and books. (See, for example, Levitt and Dubner’s discussion in Freakonomics on the effect of the availability of books on the achievement gap. The linguist James Williams suggests in “Grammar and Usage” that few students grow up immersed in formal Standard English. The result is weak knowledge of Standard English conventions and rhetoric. In “Remember Writing, Remember Reading,” Deborah Brandt describes how parents that place value on writing and reading more often have children that place an intrinsic worth on writing and reading.)

I remember my childhood home very well. My house had a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The shelves held volumes and volumes of professionally-oriented books (my parents are educators): pedagogy, theory, motivation, strategy. There was some fiction. There was nonfiction of all kinds: memoir, concordances, commentary, random subjects my parents found interesting, thick dictionaries, two sets of encyclopedias.

My whole elementary life, all the information for my reports came from those encyclopedias. There was the report on blue whales, the one on orcas, the one on West Virginia, the one on George Rogers Clark. When I had to study Greece in fourth grade, I looked in the encyclopedia for the flag and a list of foods Greece is known for. Then my parents helped me make baklava for international cuisine day. My house had a set of encyclopedias as long as I can remember.

Last night I realized that my own home doesn’t have a set of encyclopedias. And then, kind of nostalgically (the roots of “nostalgia” translate to pain and memory), I realized my son might very well not grow up with a set of encyclopedias. I can’t parse out how I feel about that. With the Internet and encyclopedias on DVDs or by subscription, why should I buy a set? But, what about just the value of having the books available?

It’s about values. What do I value, and what knowledge do I have to help my son understand the worthiness of those values? These are hard questions, and require intense introspection and reflection, knowledge and practicality in open confrontation. The same way a doctor might look at his own child with suspicion at every sniffle, because he knows what a sniffle could be indicative of, I look at my son every time he approaches a new developmental level.

It seems to me that my professional life has also been inundated with questions of value. What’s the value of technology? Is Common Core good or bad? Is STEM concentration wise or misguided? And why are we not doing what Finland is doing? Most important is this: the U.S. educational system is under attack—it’s broken say politicians, official reports, reformers, the media. Since I’m a teacher that operates within this broken system, does that mean I’m broken, too? (And, by extension, do I have worth? Is it even possible to increase my worth?)

Allow me some transparency. I struggle with my self-worth as an instructor. Every few months the doubts boomerang back. Do I know enough? Am I doing enough? Am I doing right by the students? I believe most teachers are somewhat like this, and that the oft-cited lazy or ignorant teacher is the exception, not the rule.

Value is complex, especially for teachers. It requires intense introspection: What do I know about my subject? What do I know about teaching? What do I know about my students? What do I know about policy? What do I believe is right to do? For some of us, the question really is, What can I do to be better tomorrow than I am today?

Here, at the beginning of 2012, I understand that one of the key things I did in 2011 to increase my value as an instructor was become an active participant with Laying the Foundation.

LTF has an abundance of resources: full lessons, vertical alignment charts, assessments, skill and lesson alignments to state and national standards, a newsletter, a blog, Twitter and Facebook, forums (which are free for anyone to join).

Two things set LTF apart from other educational resource sites: participation and philosophy. The forums are some of the most active teacher forums I’ve seen. The atmosphere is smart, supportive, and genuine. There are no prima donnas. The online LTF community is seriously interested in sharing information, strategies, personal examples, and much else. That is, LTF is not exactly a menu of things do to in the classroom. It is a professional learning community. We learn together.

On January 2, 2012, educational activist Susan Ohanian tweeted, “The role of courtiers is to parrot the official propaganda. Shame on courtiers in the media, in prof organizations like NCTE, NCTM, ASCD.” On the same day, LTF tweeted that they were excited to be joining NMSI for some cooperative work. LTF, though, has never been a courtier—and that’s another reason I like them so much. LTF does not ask its participants to believe a certain thing. Their philosophy, as far as I have experienced, is to provide teachers with as many different kinds of resources as they can (lessons, technology, training, support, forums, assessments, handouts, scholarly articles), and let the teachers make decisions themselves. That has Socrates all over it. LTF is not an inoculation of one policy or theory. Instead, they provide information, discussion, ideas, and ask participants to enter the conversation and really investigate the complications and intricacies of contemporary education—things like the role of standardized testing, the effects of poverty on learning, the purpose of education. I’m proud to have been even peripherally associated with as smart and as open an institution like Laying the Foundation.

I sometimes feel like I am the unprofessional. My classroom agenda is dictated by policy makers and administrators far removed from my students, my classroom, and me. The media reminds me that it’s probably true that those who can’t do, teach. At times like these, I start thinking about encyclopedias. I still don’t have a concrete answer: should I buy a set or not? Perhaps, though, it isn’t as important for my son to see WorldBook on the shelves (we do have lots of other books) as it is for him to understand that I place value on searching for answers, and if he needs me to, I’ll get online with him or go to the library. I don’t know if it’s important for me to have a definite answer. Maybe it is only necessary to work from a set of values. I value learning.

The new year is a time for resolutions and clean slates. This year, I resolve to take back my place in the professional world, to add value to what I do. My best tool: Laying the Foundation.