
Secrets of amazing teachers: What both sides of the education debate get wrong - tokenadult
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/09/secrets_of_amazing_teachers_what_both_sides_of_the_education_reform_debate_get_wrong_about_autonomy_and_accountability/
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glenra
The article is an excerpt from a book called "Building a Better Teacher: How
Teaching Works (And How to Teach It to Everyone)", but it feels like an
introduction; it doesn't say anything useful or even give much of a hint as to
what the author believes. Certainly it doesn't live up to the title. It
doesn't tell us what the "secrets of amazing teachers" are, nor establish that
there are only TWO sides of "the education debate" and as for the subtitle, it
vaguely appears to be knocking down a straw man.

Certainly some teachers say "we need more autonomy!" and some teacher critics
say "we need more accountability!" but neither one is saying "...and if we had
THAT, everything would be perfect and teachers would know what exactly they
need to do to improve!" So it's not clear that the people who want autonomy
and accountability are actually getting anything wrong.

The writer appears to think that good teaching can be taught, but doesn't (in
this article) say how.

~~~
javajosh
_> doesn't say anything useful_

Doesn't it? The author asserts clearly that a great teacher is, first and
foremost, defined by their ability to gleen "where the mind fired
incorrectly", rather than it being some innate, unlearnable thing. A great
teacher is more like a programmer debugging a problem in the kids head than a
"born performer". And I found this insight, well, insightful.

~~~
glenra
She does indeed seem to assert that, supporting the point with an anecdote I
found less than convincing. But suppose we grant her that point. Let us
suppose that "master brain debugger" is indeed _the_ crucial skill that makes
for a good teacher. Here's the problem: she doesn't (in this article) indicate
how THAT skill can be taught either! So for all we know, being able to do THAT
- debug what's going on in a student's head - might be an innate, untrainable
thing that teachers are innately born with or magically acquire through
experience without knowing how it's done.

So for this point to be useful, we'd need both (a) stronger evidence that it's
actually true, (b) evidence that it's teachable. Absent those things, it's
just somebody's random assertion. And wouldn't it be just as easy to tell a
story of that sort claiming _the_ key to great teaching is empathy, or
flexibility, or knowing the material really well?

(Actually, the featured anecdote featured TWO attributes. (1) skill at
debugging what's going on in the student's brain, (2) skill at figuring out
how best to CORRECT the misconception without unduly harming the student's
ego. And I'm sure these are both useful skills for a teacher, but I would need
more convincing that they matter more than all the OTHER skills such as being
organized, speaking clearly, presenting NEW material effectively, etcetera.)

Side note: in the back of my mind while I read the piece I was probably
thinking about Direct Instruction. One provably superior teaching method is to
have teachers follow an exact _script_ that is carefully designed to minimize
misconceptions in the first place. If teachers could get better at not
_introducing_ misconceptions to their students, it might be less important to
be good at _debugging_ those misconceptions.

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HarryHirsch
Oh dear. When a student answers that 7/12 is 1.5 and doesn't immediately see
why this couldn't possibly be true you know that the problem is rote learning
of algorithms. Whoever gives such an answer does not connect classroom
learning with the real world, he does not understand what the answer means.

You see this often, even in university students. The problem isn't solved with
more accountability or more teacher autonomy. The only solution is better
teacher training and a different syllabus.

Also this:
[http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/benezet/](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sanjoy/benezet/)

~~~
21echoes
or, as explained quite clearly in the article, a simple misunderstanding of
symbols: the kid interpreted it as 12/7 instead of 7/12.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Two misunderstandings: the kid also thought that 1.5 means 1 remainder 5.

That's a profound lack of knowledge, he does not understand decimal notation.
If you do not know what these number symbols mean, how can you communicate
using those symbols? It all degenerates into futile pattern matching.

~~~
yuliyp
Yes, yes it is a profound lack of knowledge. But he's still a fifth grader,
and once you diagnose the problem (pattern matching gone wrong), you can fix
it. In this case, the teacher identified that there was a sloppiness error
(note it and allow them to work on being less sloppy using grades as
motivation), as well as the misunderstanding of "remainder" vs "decimal part".
The goal isn't just to grade the student, but to actually fix the things that
are blocking their learning.

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mkal_tsr
The best teachers I've had throughout school (preschool to uni) were the ones
that were A) passionate about students learning and B) didn't let the
curriculum get in the way. Looking back, the inverted-teaching model was what
worked best for me (lessons/readings at home, in-class time is used to work on
problems & troubleshoot w/ teacher). Unfortunately all the teachers now are
following curriculum that encourage specific lesson plans with specific
homework to pass specific tests. I don't think that's a great way to learn,
for me at least.

~~~
afafsd
I agree with you in my own experience, but let's face it, we were (I'm just
gonna guess here) among the smart kids, and what works well for smart kids
isn't necessarily what works well for the average or dumb kids. Maybe dumb
kids learn more effectively through different methods.

~~~
ams6110
In the article this jumped out at me: “From the moment our children step into
a classroom,” Barack Obama said in 2007, “the single most important factor
determining their achievement is not the color of their skin or where they
come from; it’s not who their parents are or how much money they have. It’s
who their teacher is.”

That's just absolute nonsense or he was pandering to a constituency. Their
parents and their family income and where they live are absolutely the most
important factors. You take a school where the average kid lives in a single-
parent home, with an uneducated, unemployed parent on welfare, who moves three
or four times a year, or whose parents are in and out of jail, meth users, or
otherwise completely irresponsible and negligent, and you can put the best
teachers in the the world in that school and it will still be a failing school
on every standardized measure.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_Barack Obama said ... "the single most important factor determining their
achievement [is] who their teacher is."_

An alternative hypothesis is that Obama's intention was to shift the Overton
Window. The budget for public education is huge, and it's not unreasonable to
assume that some of his campaign donors are associated with charter schools or
testing services.

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bostik
I'm surprised by the tone of the comments so far. In the article I see a clear
parallel between the example teacher doing things right, and the hacker
mentality.

Think of it as an overall problem with code - how _do_ you teach someone how
to get good at debugging? A more generic version of that question may be
simpler, but maybe even harder to answer: how do you teach general problem
solving skills?

The teacher in the article was doing nothing less than debugging erroneous
logic as applied by her students. Not just for the procedural errors, but for
the underlying faults which allowed the logical errors to manifest.

That's pretty hard core.

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beloch
It's true that some teachers have a special aptitude for the job. However, you
can't rely on a few exceptional individuals to fix a system that is deficient
by design. You need to change the average teacher. This article pays homage to
the exceptional but does not address how to change what is typical.

Compare teacher salaries to average salaries in countries with the highest
academic performance on standardized tests. The ratio in such countries (e.g.
Canada) is almost always significantly higher than in the U.S.. Educational
requirements to hold teaching positions are also typically higher. That's the
secret to improving teaching quality on a demographic scale. Pay more, but
expect more.

~~~
tuukkah
This. _Change the average teacher._ Require and provide them with a Master's
degree in education (in primary schools) or in the subject matter together
with a minor in education (in high schools). When they graduate, they will
contain the nucleus of the expert teacher in them and will grow with
experience. The feedback they get from the students (and parents) - no need
for performance evaluations!

Why does autonomy work in Finland, as mentioned in the article? First, we have
invested in the teacher training. Second, we have provided more resources to
the schools with a more troubled student body. No need for the blame game that
is the recent Global Education Reform Movement. Could you implement this in a
US state similar to Finland such as Massachusetts, if not staight away in all
of the US?

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MaysonL
Probably a better article, by the author of this book, from the NYT Magazine:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all)

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wmt
Accountability is irrational if you are just enacting something someone told
you to do, and autonomy with no feedback leads to random results.

The thing that teachers and schools need is more responsibility, more power to
plan and decide how they teach, but still keeping an eye on the results.

The mentality of punishing schools with low scores will however not help.
Beating the weak rarely makes them stronger. Give more resources and guidance
for schools that are lacking behind, and award more autonomy for schools that
work properly.

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zachsnow
Sounds like another "it can be learned!" vs "you must be a natural!"
disagreement. Practice 10,000 hours, no wait you need that innate talent. I
haven't yet heard a conclusive argument one way or the other; so far I'm
thinking "both".

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lelifer
nothing beats self education through prospect motivation. teachers are
becoming and will be outdated and software WILL replace teachers eventually if
not soon. its already replacing them...you can see the trends in webapps such
as blackboard and online courses etc. Anything that is repeated in a loop can
be systematized through software, teachers constantly waste human resources by
repeating the same things over and over again, books are also an extreme waste
of resources and much harder to update. software is just soo much more
flexible, its only a matter of time before teachers stop existing all
together.

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stefan_kendall3
Teachers become excellent with this one weird trick.

10 things you've been doing wrong for years.

etc.

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ASneakyFox
Whoever taught this person to write an article didn't do a good job.

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jessriedel
This article needs an abtract.

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glenra
The article doesn't actually say anything useful, so it would be hard to write
one.

