Or they can submit questions and problems to Mandel, who gets between 20 and 40 queries each day. Some of the queries will grow into a future special topic of the week. But in the case of an emergency, Mandel will supply an answer within 48 hours. The Web site's most revealing page is the guest book, which serves quite literally as a bulletin board for teachers. Each listing includes a brief comment from the visitor, along with an e-mail address to which others can send responses.
Many teachers ask an open question and invite answers from other visitors.
At one point, the guest-book list grew so long that Mandel had to start deleting entries that were more than three weeks old. On a typical day in August, the guest book is sprinkled with signatures from all over the country. I just found this section while browsing. And a principal, one of a handful of administrators in Mandel's audience, writes from Kentucky with a request for elementary school lesson plans that integrate all subjects. Respondents aren't just from this country, either.