
Can good teaching be taught? - MarkMc
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/06/magazine/student-performance-atlanta-teaching.html
======
japhyr
I've been teaching for over 20 years, and I've loved it. One of my biggest
frustrations over the years, though, has been this notion that good teaching
can't be taught. There's this notion that you have to be born a teacher, which
is ridiculous. Certainly talent has a role in the profession, as it does in
any profession, but there's a whole lot that can be taught.

Here's a few ideas that can be taught:

\- Relationships are important. Students learn best from people they trust,
and you can do things in a school and in a classroom that develop trust
between students and their peers, and staff.

\- Formative assessment is critical to growth. Formative assessment is
assessment for the purpose of growth and learning, not for the purpose of
grading. It's written and verbal feedback.

\- When conflict arises, restorative approaches are more effective than
punitive approaches. Restorative approaches look at what happened, why it
happened, what harm was caused, and what can be done to address the actual
harm that was caused. Restorative approaches are not weak if they are done
well.

\- Classroom management is important, but if you go at it by being too
controlling you won't be a good teacher. A healthy amount of interaction is
more effective than a silent classroom where everyone is afraid to talk.

\- There's no place for zeroes in a grade book. A zero doesn't represent a
student's learning, and it throws off all other measures of learning.

I could go on, but the bigger point is that there are many techniques and
ideas that can be taught and modeled in the school and in the classroom. I
think many student teachers get pulled into old, ineffective ways of teaching
because of how it's modeled to them. They're taught many good approaches to
teaching, but their ed school teachers just lecture at them. They're told to
use well-researched, effective techniques, but then they're paired up with a
mentor teacher who only uses an old-school lecture style, an overly strict
approach to grading and assessment, and a punitive approach to discipline.

~~~
lisper
Another item that I think it vitally important but often overlooked: put
yourself in the mindset of your audience, particularly with respect to
vocabulary. For every word you choose, ask yourself: does the person I'm
speaking to know what this word means? It's really easy to lose sight of this
because _you_ (obviously) know what the word means, and so it's easy to assume
that your audience does too. But they may not, and if they don't, then as soon
as you say the word, you will lose them because you'll be going on but they'll
be back on that word thinking, "What the heck does that mean?" This is
particularly important in STEM education.

Grant Sanderson (3blue1brown) is a master at this. He will go out of his way
to coin and define new vocabulary in order to sound less intimidating. My
favorite example is his invention of "squishification" as a synonym for
eccentricity when talking about ellipses. It's a much better word because it's
friendlier, it doesn't have semantic baggage related to weird mental states
associated with it, and no one can ever forget what it means.

~~~
mncharity
> invention of "squishification" as a synonym for eccentricity

I wish I could find a community with which to work on innovation like this.
Instead, people largely work in isolation, without the benefits of
collaboration. So for instance, I thought "squishification" didn't have quite
the right emphasis - process rather than property - and wondered if something
like "squishedness" might have been better. Perhaps a new
ImproveThisExplanation subreddit, sort of a cross between ELI5, "What If?",
and AskAScientist...???

~~~
asrp
I'd be very interested in such a community if it existed. I'd go as far as
creating/hosting/maintaining such a place if needed.

~~~
lisper
I suggest starting with a Google Group. That's trivial to set up. I'd be
interested in participating too.

~~~
mncharity
I wonder what success looks like?

Here's another use case to add to "squishification". Some weeks back, I was
exploring how temperature is taught, preK-12. I noticed that mention of 'Sun
heats Earth' was wide-spread, but that 'Earth is cooled by the deep-space sky'
was almost never mentioned. Half of the energy balance was ignored. So
explanatory leverage is left on the table - "Why are nights cold? Especially
with clear sky? Especially in the desert? Why are mountains snow-capped? Why
is winter colder?" etc. It doesn't seem inaccessible - "Between bright hot
Sun, too hot, and dark cold deep-space sky, too cold, Earth spins, mixing too
hot, and too cold, into not too bad." Like a person huddled next to a campfire
or heater, turning around to warm their back. Spacecraft "barbeque roll"
thermal management. Earth's surface as thermal mass for peak smoothing.

Maturing the idea to that point, and then finding and fleshing out
opportunities for leverage, benefits from a diversity of expertise. Physics,
teaching (various ages), engineering, planetary geology, etc.

So I wonder if it would be useful to think in terms of not just discussion,
but also of leveraging existing communities? Orchestration, federation, cross
pollination. So bits about radiative cooling rates could go to
PhysicsForums.com; about 'why the sky is cold' to /r/AskScienceDiscussion;
about 'nice videos of spacecraft doing bbq rolls' to /r/spacex; about teaching
aspects to... sigh, it's a mess of mailing lists and blogs and... well, maybe
prototypes to teacherspayteachers?; and so on. All pointing back to someplace
able to coordinate the input.

Thoughts?

------
jimhefferon
It is hard to see how many children could possibly succeed:

> Most of all, Gunner worried about her students, most of whom lived in four
> low-income apartment complexes, which saw a lot of transiency. Thirty-seven
> percent of the school’s students arrived or left midyear. The day before, a
> family showed up looking to enroll and was so poor that both the adults and
> children were barefoot and hoping for a free school lunch as much as
> classroom seats. When a school-board member asked Gunner at a district event
> early in the year what she needed as a new principal, Gunner immediately
> said a washer and dryer, so she could wash the clothes that many students
> wore day after day. Many students had experienced trauma — the violent death
> of a loved one or homelessness or physical, sexual or verbal abuse — and
> arrived in the mornings in emotional distress, easily dissolving into tears
> or erupting in fury. Over long weekends, students sometimes went untended or
> had little to eat, which made returning to school both welcome and
> difficult. Yet the school had only one full-time social worker and a
> counselor for more than 450 children.

~~~
turingcompeteme
Exactly. It's not about the teachers.

My sister was an award winning teacher when she was at a good school. Now that
she teachers on the edge of a reserve she has suddenly become "low
performing".

Take 50 ideal teachers who have all the best training and have learned all the
best techniques, and put them in a low scoring school. The test scores of the
school will not improve. Most of the teachers will be focused on surviving
until they can transfer elsewhere.

------
jccalhoun
This article seems more like a profile than actually addressing the question
raised in the headline. It is an interesting profile and I would guess that it
is enlightening for people that haven't taught high school.

To answer the headline's question, as a former high school teacher and current
college professor, I know that while a lot of teaching is about learning how
to teach, I did have a leg up on a lot of my grad school cohort because I had
a BS in English Education and had taken a number of education courses. That
gave me some (admittedly limited) background in educational psychology and
pedagogy that my peers who had never taught did not have.

However, there is a big gap between theory and practice and I think I learned
the most about teaching by trying things and seeing what worked and what
didn't. The most important thing is to resist the temptation to get lazy and
just keep teaching the same things and the same way semester after semester
and year after year.

------
yodsanklai
I'm both a CS professor and former ski instructor (in Europe). As I was
reading this thread, I realized that I've never had a single lesson on how to
teach CS, and besides my students, nobody has ever gave me any feedback on my
teaching. On the other hand, to become a ski instructor, I went on a rather
extensive training with a lot of emphasis on pedagogy.

~~~
anonymous5133
No one has ever gave you feedback on your teaching because you've never
surveyed your students.

~~~
mikekchar
Not the OP, but when I was teaching, surveying my students was a technique
that a colleague introduced to me. It was probably the best thing I ever did.
I handed out a small sheet of paper to all the students at the beginning of
class with some multiple choice questions and a space for general comments and
asked for it back at the end. They didn't have to fill it in. I just told them
if they get bored in class, just jot down whatever. Usually I think about 20%
of the forms were filled in any class, but the info on them was really
amazing. Since I did it _every_ class, the students soon got used to it. Kills
a lot of trees, though :-)

In defence of the OP, though, students can seem _some_ parts of the teaching
process. They can't see all of it and they definitely do not have the
experience to provide good advice. Looking at surveys, you've potentially got
good data, but you need to translate that into good action. What a student
imagines will work and what will _actually_ work is often very, very
different. This is why you need help from experienced teachers.

I was lucky to work in a situation where I did "team teaching" a lot -- two
teachers in the same class room. It's incredible what you can learn in that
situation -- either just watching the other teacher handle a situation, or
getting feedback on what you are doing.

------
chongli
I've had a number of different people tell me I should become a teacher, that
I'm really good at explaining things, and I'm still skeptical of the impact of
teaching in general. I don't know how we're supposed to measure it.
Controlling for the individual variation of the students themselves is a non-
trivial problem. The best schools tend to be highly selective in their
admissions and the worst students seem mostly unteachable.

I challenge anyone to take the best teacher they've ever met and put them in
charge of a class full of students from the first percentile of test scores.

~~~
dasil003
Not everything can be quantified, and I think it's a dangerous line of
thinking to equate impact with measurability. Particularly in education, the
focus on standardized testing has had real negative impact in the fuzzier
areas like critical thinking and the joy of learning. Of course I can't
quantify this, but that doesn't mean it's not true.

I get that standardized tests are necessary to some extent, but I would not
equate the things that led me to do well on them as the most impactful events
of my education. One-on-one human interaction and empathy has been what
elevated me past the hoop-jumping to a higher level of agency and self-
motivated productivity.

------
jayalpha
There are good teachers and bad teachers.

Government tries to make bad teachers good teachers by an ever increasing
administrative burden. This does not make bad teachers good teachers but burns
out good teachers.

~~~
Pulcinella
Administrative burden has become a problem at my school. Teaching has become a
small part of my actual job. Now I run an entire beaurocracy within one
person.

For example, we have to submit attendance multiple times a class. Apparently
our attendance system isn’ good enough and we also have to submit attendance
through different google forms and on paper. We can’t do anything without
documenting it. I spend more time documenting than doing the things I am
documenting. We can’t meet with other teachers to lesson plan unless we draw
up an agenda, a list of goals for the meeting, and take minutes of what we
discussed and then submit it to admin.

~~~
jayalpha
"We can’t meet with other teachers to lesson plan unless"

When I worked as a teacher I had to create a curriculum, monthly plans, weekly
plans and lesson plans. The "lesson plan" was a multiple page bullshit orgy. I
worked for two years in one of the best schools in the US. They had no "lesson
plans" (yet, the best teachers).

If you go to teach a lesson you should be prepared and have a plan. A good
teacher is also able to immediately cancel the plan and just to a review. You
may have planed to teach a new complex science topic but the kids walk in from
a math test into your class room and are "dead". I have seen the worst
teachers sticking to their "lesson plans".

I miss the kids. But the administrative bullshit will prevent that I ever
teach again.

~~~
Pulcinella
“I miss the kids. But the administrative bullshit will prevent that I ever
teach again.”

Yeah it’s not the students that make my job difficult, it’s the
administrators.

------
kryogen1c
It depends on what you mean by "good".

In the US nuclear navy, instructors are taught many things that make them
better instructors: peppering the crowd with questions, active listening,
elimination of crutch words (um, uh, like, etc), changing volume levels when
speaking, practicing in front of peers who's purpose is to immunize the
speaker against bad crowds (pen clicking, sleeping, tapping, talking, etc).

They are better. Does this make them good?

Pull learning is better than push learning in basically every case. Most
people recall teachers that _inspired_ them to learn, not the ones with good
oration skills. Objectively, what results in "better" learning?

~~~
ouid
The teachers I remember the best are the ones who lectured well. I learned
more from them.

------
lacker
_Third were the teachers “who can but won’t,” in Gunner’s phrase; these
teachers had the capacity to become more effective educators but appeared to
have no interest in doing so. They were already set in their pedagogical ways
or didn’t think change at the school was necessary or possible or didn’t want
to put in more effort._

There is a fairly simple solution here. Rather than improving the skills of
people who aren't interested in improving, just fire them.

~~~
sdenton4
This is addressed in the article; turn over in these schools is a huge
problem, especially mid-year, where students dealing with lots of instability
in their lives suddenly have another major change. There's no guarantee that
the replacing teacher will be any better: indeed, given the stress and low
pay, it seems a decent chance you'll end up in the same place you started.

Furthermore, firing a third-to-half of the teachers (even during the off
season) will create a pretty trash work environment, where /everyone/ is
fearing for their jobs.

I thought the principal in the article did a great job of managing the issue.
She made it clear that she was building a new culture of higher expectations.
When confronted with the higher expectations, low-performing teachers can try
to get with it (which is a win), or quit, as many did.

~~~
MarkMc
> given the stress and low pay, it seems a decent chance you'll end up in the
> same place you started.

Perhaps a solution would be to increase class size and increase teacher pay.
Singapore has one of the highest student achievement levels in the world with
an average class size of 36 students [1]

[1] [https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/30/what-other-
coun...](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/30/what-other-countries-
can-learn-from-singapores-schools)

------
lurquer
This title brings to mind the Paradox of the Court. A famous
rhetoritician/lawyer in Greece taught his craft to a student. The student
never paid his bill, claiming the teacher sucked. The teacher sued the student
for the fee. The student represented himself.

The teacher pointed out that if the student wins, he must pay up as it would
be proof he had learned the craft of lawyering. And, if the student lost, then
he should have to pay as well.

The student argued the opposite: regardless of the verdict, he shouldn't have
to pay for similar (but opposite) reasons.

In short, if s teacher cannot teach one how to teach, then the teacher was by
definition not a good teacher.

------
lutorm
This is a ridiculous question. Of course teaching, like any other skill, can
be taught. I'm sure there are differing aptitudes among people, but unless you
think that "good" _anything_ can't be taught, it's hard to see why teaching
would be this snowflake skill that's unlike any other...

------
codingdave
Another challenge in education is that every area has different problems, and
needs different solutions. In Utah, for example, our problem is teachers
sticking with the job. There is a trend of young women graduating school,
teaching for a bit until they get married, having kids, and walking out of the
classroom having taught sometimes as little as only one year. On an individual
level, I respect the choice to leave a job that isn't right for you, but its
does leave us with an abundance of young inexperienced educators.

------
wallflower
If you want to be a good teacher, first, you have to manage the classroom.
This is important if you are coming to teaching from a non-teaching background
like software development.

Having had experiences dabbling in teaching in actual classrooms, the most
difficult part for me was my weak classroom management skills. I am always in
awe at my teacher friends who command the classroom, sometimes without saying
a word or very little.

~~~
neonate
Can you give some examples?

~~~
wallflower
Like tormeh said, it is really about situational awareness.

The best teachers I've seen have a constant vigilance and constant banter. Not
complete military drill control like Mastery Charter Schools but not chaos.
Somewhere in between. And, yes, they all called out the student by name. They,
as tormeh said, knew each student's weaknesses and strengths intimately. Tough
love.

One example: One great teacher I know would go up to the
whiteboard/blackboard, turning his back to the class, and, if he sensed
"mutiny" in the making, he would randomly call out one of his student's names
and ask them a question. He also said he had eyes in the back of his head, and
I think the students believed that in the sense that he knew when they were
trying to mess around.

My own example:

Teaching 10-12 girls CS which required laptop usage. It was really hard to
stop girls from messing around on Facebook when I was on the other side of the
"U" table, working the rounds. A better teacher would have managed that
situation.

As an aside, this is why programs like ScriptEd work so well. They give
"training wheels" to people who would like to teach CS to kids. ScriptEd has a
system where everyone gets a chance to teach in front of the classroom. When
you are not teaching, you are learning from the side/back of the room.

~~~
alexashka
My 2 cents - the classes that had the least (if any) mutiny were classes like
woodworking, where everyone came in, and got to working on whatever their task
was. I built a chair, made some shovel handles etc.

When people are actually doing something, these problems don't exist.

The skill of keeping people from going crazy through intimidation/fear tactics
seems like a necessary skill, only because the school system is structured
like a detention center, rather than a place to help people learn and discover
themselves.

------
coldtea
I'd say as much as having a nice/interesting personality can be taught.

Because most of what constitutes good teaching is in fact the teacher being
passionate about the subject and having an approach that reflects it. I don't
think it can be replaced by someone that just goes through the same motions.

That said, better teaching (that what teachers in average do) can surely be
taught.

------
codr4
I'm sure it can, but it takes longer and works differently than we like to
believe.

Empathy, sensitivity -- the ability to connect to other people on their level
and feel what kind of nudges they need to evolve.

But of course you can't expect that to happen if you treat teachers like
garbage and stuff them in sterile rooms with 30 over stimulated kids.

------
sagefy
Hattie's effect size list is a good place to start if you're interested in
what teaching practices leads to better learning results: [https://visible-
learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effec...](https://visible-
learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/)

I few others I'd recommend:

\- How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles by Ambrose, Bridges,
DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman

\- How People Learn by Bransford, Brown, Cocking, & Pellegrino

\- Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley

\- Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Ericsson and Pool

Discloser: I wrote [https://sgef.cc/tldrideas](https://sgef.cc/tldrideas) and
am building Sagefy, a learning platform

~~~
Baeocystin
Thank you for the resource links/recommendations.

------
dschuetz
Teaching is also a talent. Much like in singing or dancing there are people
who excel in teaching, because they not only use the correct methods, but also
manage to improve them, or adapt to circumstances when necessary. Very few
people are capable of that, and you cannot train that.

The problem is that there are teachers who do not want to teach at all. And
those who want to teach are rare, and those excelling at teaching are as rare
as people like Richard Feynman.

------
JackMorgan
As a former middle school teacher who escaped into programming, I think the
problems of teaching are systemic to the education system itself. Teaching to
a test is short-sighted and a phenomenal waste of effort and money.

Some rare teachers can use a combination of persuasion, charisma, fear, and
group dynamics to be very successful at teaching to a test. They can make
students jump through the hoops, remembering just enough to get it all out
before summer hits and they forget it all again.

The current model of education is a "push" model, where the skill of the
teacher is the defining measure, and the goal is temporary memorization of
facts.

Instead we need to move to a "pull" model, where students learn to love
learning, and through this teach themselves fact checking, research, critical
thinking, and civic responsibility. I believe this is the obvious next step
for a world where any fact is freely available inside one's pocket or library.
I do not believe this is possible with grouping by age or with lecture and
test based classes.

The Sudbury school is one such attempt, and it apparently is quite effective.
We need to start moving all our schools this way!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_school)

------
50
This reminds of this good read:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/what-c...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/what-
classrooms-can-learn-from-magic/425100/).

------
alexnyc
Can anyone think of an article or book that explains how to be a good teacher
(in the classroom, military, etc.)?

~~~
DoubleCribble
Article, no. Graduate degree programs, yes.

~~~
dorchadas
I say the graduate degree programs are _highly_ variable. I'm currently in one
for a MAT, and it's really just mostly busywork that's useless. My classes are
either all geared towards elementary/middle school or, the one that is on
secondary schools, the teacher hasn't taught in a public school for about a
decade, and has never taught in the state that most of us are based in, or in
a rural area.

I'm sure there are some good ones, yes. I feel like the in-person one near me
here would be better, since they can tailor to our needs, but it's also _much_
more expensive. And still doesn't deal with the fact that a lot of the
professors aren't in the classroom, or are in more privileged schools. It's
the same issue I have with a lot of the professional development stuff you
see, too.

~~~
DoubleCribble
The number-one-most-powerful tool that I can recommend in teacher development
is getting mentored by a Master Teacher once you are in your own classroom
(ie, not student teaching). The good news is that you will likely get exposure
to many/most of the big ideas in any graduate program. However, it's very
difficult to integrate those big ideas into your own classroom without a
guide. Having somebody regularly observe your work and hold you accountable
for your choices can make an enormous difference in outcomes (and often very
rapidly). If a formal mentorship program is not available, then I would
recommend seeking out an informal one.

------
zombie2
yes but you have to have the personality for teaching

~~~
badrabbit
Personality can't be taught?

~~~
mathattack
You can’t teach someone to care. Teachers that don’t care deeply can’t push
through all the barriers to succeed.

~~~
badrabbit
Why can't you teach someone to care? Why can't you explain to someone why
exactly you care and help them to understand and accept your reasoning?

As an example,there are lots of health care workers that get into it for the
money and start caring about patients(and vice versa).

I for example care,I would love the process of teaching but I would be
terrible at everything else.

To be a good teacher,the biggest requirement imo is to be a good student. Much
like how you need to be a good worker before you become a manager and how you
need to be a good soldier before you give orders to other soldiers.

I just think "can't" is too strong of a claim that demands a clear and logical
rationale to back it up.

~~~
mathattack
I concur that teachers should be good students, as well as your analogy that
managers should be good workers. In both cases it’s necessary but not
sufficient.

------
DoubleCribble
Sure it can. Here's the formula:

Good teaching = subject mastery + good public speaking + good classroom
management + lessons designed with a low floor and high ceiling (allowing for
a wide range of zones of proximal development)

~~~
watwut
Your great teacher formula assumes one way communication where students are
talked to but ignored. That is suspect.

~~~
DoubleCribble
That's actually completely the opposite. Low Floor High Ceiling lessons are
the antithesis of monologues. Here's a primer:[0]
[0][https://nrich.maths.org/7701](https://nrich.maths.org/7701)

~~~
watwut
Still, there is nothing about ability to listen or interpret human children -
no expectatin about understanding of brain development (that is not just
difficulty, there is way more to it) nor how their emotions affect their
behavior. Nor ability to figure out which particular thing it is they don't
get and need to be told to move on.

I can't recall good teacher thet would not had that.

~~~
DoubleCribble
What you describe falls under the good classroom management skill set.
Maximizing student engagement and time on task requires some familiarity with
concepts in child development, educational psychology, emotional intelligence
and group dynamics. I'd also sprinkle in a little conflict resolution training
for extra credit.

~~~
watwut
No it does not falls there. Not at all. Engaged studen on task does not imply
what I wrote about.

------
adamnemecek
I feel like in the future, there needs to be a move away from teacher based
education to some sort autodidactism. The current models waste so much time.

~~~
ddingus
The hard truth is not everyone can do that. The current models are broken, but
something like them is necessary. I think what you really reach for here is
Teachers as mentors when the door is open. We used to allow for that. We don't
very much today.

~~~
dorchadas
I honestly think the best way might be the method advocated by Sal Kahn. [1]
Basically, instead of students going over a lesson in class then taking home
work to do to master it, they reverse that. They watch the lesson at home the
night before, answer a few questions as an "exit slip" and then sleep on it.
The next day they go to class and work on problems/ask questions with the
teacher present to help them.

While it does have its issues, such as making sure students actually watch the
videos, I think this is the best approach for certain subjects, especially
math. It allows the students to do the problems where they can get feedback
and guidance, instead of struggling with something they're failing to
comprehend, which just leads to demotivating them. It also allows them some
time to come up with questions related to the topic that might further their
learning. There will likely be abuse from students who don't pay attention,
and there are plenty of other issues (internet access being a huge one), but I
could see some hope in this method.

[1] [https://blog.blackboard.com/why-salman-khan-thinks-
students-...](https://blog.blackboard.com/why-salman-khan-thinks-students-
should-do-their-homework-in-class/) is a nice write-up about it.

~~~
anonymous5133
That method is far superior to the current method but teachers don't like it
because it takes "resources" away from the teacher. That's the argument I've
heard on other forums when discussing the flipping the classroom method. The
teachers say that it is better if they explain the material in the classroom
and answer questions immediately. So expect to get quite a bit of push back on
the flipping the classroom method. That's the reality. I've noticed that there
are quite a few teachers that are basically fearful of some new technology or
method popping up that replaces them. Education has become far too political
from what I've seen.

~~~
dorchadas
Yeah, I've heard that argument as well, but I think it fails. As a math
teacher myself, I would love it if kids would go read about the lecture at
home and then we could work problems the next day. I try to do that anyway,
but it's difficult when I've got a lot of material to cover and can't give
them a day to practice after every lecture. Not to mention that a lot of kids
don't know what they don't understand until they attempt to do it

~~~
ddingus
Those attempts do three very important things:

Clarify poor understanding.

Result in awesome (for them) questions. They will be the ones they need, and
often the more aggressive people will ask want type questions, seeking. All
high value.

Educator will be challenged more deeply and broadly over time as they see
better questions over time. New ones require effort, and that brings both
greater mastery of the topic and how best to frame it up for people about to
jump in and start understanding.

Should educators analyze those questions, they can augment all this by a quick
"chalk talk" prep session to help all this along, stimulate more and better
thinking.

This has been standard for me in various education roles over the years. It is
rough the first few iterations, then very rewarding for all involved after
that.

Turns out people, and their diverse backgounds and experiences will both
approach things in surprising ways, as well as think in diverse, at times,
equally surprising ways.

Understanding that better, as well as having some broad experience seen over
time, very seriously improved my ability to identify with a given student and
have a more accurate mental map of where they are. I can then seek to fill in
gaps, or entertain extensions (their seeking) as time and their desire permit.

Worth it. Not the easiest way, but is my goto every time.

~~~
dorchadas
I completely agree. I try to do it as well, but my biggest issue with it ends
up being time constraints and the teacher I mentioned in another post who
wants us to all be doing the same thing on the same day (said teacher also
prides herself on how fast she covers the material... Kids don't like it as
she never reviews or spends more than a day on any topic)

~~~
ddingus
Just revisited this. There should be topics and time.

How that time gets used is really driven by students. They get there, or they
do not.

And, doing all this is expensive human time. They really want, need and should
get there.

One thing I get to do, as my role is rarely formal education, is prepare 200
percent topic agendas. Prep as if I have Feynmans in the room. Look out! Here
they come. :D

(And I am always hoping, because when that happens I myself am definitely
going to learn something. Often pain in the ass learning, but it keeps my
blood pumping, leaving nothing but getting after my own understanding.)

Then, assign priorities.

Basics get done no matter what. I do not want fails. Just quietly drop extras.

From there, I am highly likely to be golden. Usually, someone asks something
new. Good. I got the prep done solid, so I research that one, add to the
library of stuff I have ready.

Then, I coach them, they tackle stuff, wash, rinse repeat. I will, depending
on material, also show a solution or few, again depending. Discuss, on to the
next.

Over time, I get super good at whatever it is, and students can generally max
out, getting all they can.

When I can, I set a chunk of the time aside as open time. People can fill a
gap with that. Or explore, seek. Whatever. I am there to assist and challenge
as they need.

This is a challenging way to do the work, but it works well. Often, I am doing
this for people who just took jobs, or who have some requirement. Fails are
painful. That is why I do it this way.

Just some context for my comments above.

There is a bonus. Once I have prepped and delivered a few times, I can often
do the course by rote. My own mastery ends up solid, and I've got a ton of
context, accumulated one student at a time, to work from when identifying
where people new to me are, and what they are likely to need. Those go into
the chalk talk, which almost always has custom bits tuned for the group at
hand.

And that is tools, not solutions. They do that, picking up the reference
material, exercizes, and the bits from the coaching talk.

Competency tends to come reasonably quickly. Then we do fun stuff, entertain
any seeking, special needs, wants as time allows.

------
mncharity
"Computer" used to be a job description. That bundle of roles no longer
exists. The roles have been partially automated, and moved elsewhere. Jobs
that use spreadsheets for instance.

Surgery once did far more harm than good. Then took killing people for
granted. Now it's discovering checklists, and teams, and crew resource
management. Surgeons are discovering their roles of skilled technician and
team manager conflict. Medical error is still a major cause of mortality. For
a given condition, there's a very very broad spread of institutional
competence. The best, are learning organizations with an intense focus on
continuous process improvement and on not failing each and every one of their
patients. The worst... don't wash their hands going from bathroom to ICU.

Instructors at first-tier universities describe incoming introductory science
students as expecting to be "spoon fed" \- lacking both the skills and
willingness to wrestling with a body of knowledge to extract understanding.
With wealth, they've had such "good teachers", they haven't needed to.
Consider a country with a focus on memorize-and-regurgitate - even more so
than the USA. When a school fails to teach memorization, it's at least easy to
recognize the failure. But what might equitable and effective science
education look like? If every freshman class resembled incoming Ivy, a
question might then be: "ok, we've nailed equity... now when are we going to
make a start on effective?" Chemistry education research describes pre-college
chemistry education content as "incoherent", leaving both students and
teachers deeply steeped in misconceptions. With science education at least,
we're currently failing badly and pervasively.

Tech is coming. VR/AR, hybrid human-computer teams, ML, spoken dialog system,
etc, etc.

"Classroom teacher" is bundle of roles of breathtaking difficulty and scope.
As with surgeon, those roles are now being specialized and rebundled. Like
barber surgeon, it was a bundling that required accepting that we would
pervasively fail our patients. Perhaps decades from now, we'll end up with
something like a "classroom teacher", but with a vastly greater support
system. Or perhaps people will forget that "classroom teacher" was once a job
description.

------
MarkMc
There seems to be a strong divide on whether excellent teaching can make a
significant difference to poor kids. Typically this mirrors the left-right
political divide.

To quote from the article:

 _" While teacher effectiveness may be the most salient in-school factor
contributing to student academic outcomes, it contributes a relatively small
slice — no more than 14 percent, according to a recent RAND Corporation
analysis of teacher effectiveness — to the overall picture. A far bigger wedge
is influenced by out-of-school variables over which teachers have little
control: family educational background, the effects of poverty or segregation
on children, exposure to stress from gun violence or abuse and how often
students change schools, owing to homelessness or other upheavals."

"Teaching does matter, and it can improve. But there is little evidence — at
least to date — that it can counter the effects on children of attending
neighborhood schools that remain racially and economically isolated."_

I find this attitude difficult to reconcile with other things I've read about
teaching poor and minority kids. For example, here is a summary of a few
studies as reported in Teaching as Leadership [1]:

 _" The schools that are highly effective produce results that almost entirely
overcome the effects of student background"_ [2]

 _" Having a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four
years in a row would be enough to close the black-white test score gap"_ [3]

 _" Differences in this magnitude -- 50 percentile points in just three years
-- are stunning. For an individual child, it means the difference between a
'remedial' label and placement in the accelerated or even gifted track. And
the difference between entry into a selective college and a lifetime of low-
paying, menial work"_ [4]

Many charter schools use a lottery to determine which students are enrolled,
and many studies have taken advantage of such 'natural experiments'. This
paper [5] represents a good overview of such studies. It seems that _some_
charter schools can have significant effects on learning. In a Boston study,
_" Abdulkadiroglu et al. (2011)...find very large average effects: charter
school attendance increases state-level English/language arts and math
performance test scores by 0.2 and 0.35 standard deviations per year
respectively. Given that that the achievement gap between black and white
students in Massachusetts is about 0.7 to 0.8 standard deviations, these
estimates suggest that three years of charter school attendance for blacks
would eliminate the black-white performance gap."_

However, the same paper also says that at KIPP charter schools, " _School
hours are extended typically to between 7:30AM and 5:00PM and include
occasional Saturdays and summer weeks, and tutoring is also offered during
these times._ " so I wonder to what degree the 'value added' by top charter
schools comes simply from teaching more.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-As-Leadership-Effective-
Achi...](https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-As-Leadership-Effective-
Achievement/dp/0470432861)

[2] Marzano, R. J. What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action.
Alexandria, Va.: ASCD, 2003, p. 7

[3] Kane, T., Gordon, R. and Staiger, D. Identifying Effective Teachers Useing
Performance on the Job Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2004, p. 8

[4] Peske, H. and Haycock, K. Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority
Students Are Short-Changed on Teacher Quality: A Report and Recommendations by
the Education Trust. Washington, D.C.: Education Trust, 2006, p. 11

[5]
[http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/JEPCh...](http://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/JEPChabrier2016.pdf)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you for this.

I homeschooled my twice exceptional sons for years and did some volunteer work
with an educational organization to support that.

I pulled my sons out of school in part because they didn't want to work with
me or my sons. One son was a straight A student whose writing was below grade
level. Rather than acknowledge that he had a disability, they pointed to his
gifted status and chalked up this one weak area to _laziness._ Meanwhile, the
teacher was unwilling to meet me for a couple of minutes at the end of the day
to help me help him stay on track.

There are many wonderful and dedicated teachers. But they aren't all wonderful
and dedicated (among other things).

------
camelite
It's a lot easier than many people believe: you give them a good script, and a
year or two of training in how to deliver it.

------
raverbashing
While there is an art/talent to it, there are a lot of basics that _are not
followed_ by a lot of teachers.

Like ENUNCIATING. Like not putting students on the spot or saying "this is
wrong, what is the matter with you" when given a wrong answer.

Balancing strictness with the level and audience.

Balancing between getting to a point and explaining some other details that
might be important.

Trying to find a best way of explaining some concepts, maybe explaining it
differently to different students.

Usually the higher the study level the worse the professors/instructor are at
pedagogy.

~~~
sdenton4
While there is an art/talent to it, there are a lot of basics that are /not
followed/ by a lot of shitposters.

Like READING THE ARTICLE. Like not assuming that one has all of the answers
(or even all of the questions) for a complex, thorny problem.

~~~
japhyr
That wasn't a shitpost. I've spent my life teaching, and a good part of my
work has been trying to undo the damage done by teachers who say things like
"this is wrong, what's the matter with you".

I became a teacher because I love math and science. When I was in college I
noticed how many people hate those two subjects. When I started asking around
and trying to figure out why so many people hate these subjects, it almost
always came back to how they were taught.

Some people are resilient enough to hear things like this and let it slide.
But many young people who spend a year or more with a teacher who tells them
there's something wrong with them are significantly affected by that
experience.

~~~
sdenton4
The article is about a pretty herculean effort to improve the level of
teaching in a particular low-performing school. The post was effectively
"teachers would be better if they were better teachers" which doesn't engage
at all with the content of the article, or the central question of /how/ one
might take on the problem of improving teaching quality.

------
jaequery
a good teacher is a good motivator. it's simple as that.

