“In 20 years they won’t remember what you taught them, but they will remember how you made them feel.”

I agree.

I’ll tack this on: Some students need to feel like they’re screwing up or that they’re not doing their best.

Students need to feel guilty when they don’t do their work for no good reason or plagiarize or not follow directions. Correcting behavior is an important part of school, and it is the defense for “schooliness,” the subject of a recent blog I read somewhere.

1) “In 20 years they won’t remember what you taught them, but they will remember how you made them feel.” (author unknown) Make the students feel like an important part of your classroom and you have made HUGE classroom management gains. Kids need to feel important. They don’t give a crap about the Pythagorean Theory or factoring Binomials.

2) Teach the kids, not the subject. The kids are the reason you are there, not your love of your subject area. Let the kids know you want them to learn, expect them to learn and then find ways to help them learn. Its your job. Finding the length of the Hypotenuse will be learned, but not if you just expect them to be as interested as you are!

but between the two, I think I’d elect the one I could adapt to my own context.

Exactly why examples are better than aphorisms.

Maybe it’s just me, but the most descriptive generality will rarely, if ever, teach me more than the most specific real-life occurrence.

Terri, correct me: whether you’re reading a book of prescriptive advice or watching a bummer classroom management scenario unfold, those are both academic exercises, both split from the real classroom deal.

Neither of which compares to an in-classroom flop + subsequent mentor-teacher post-mortem, but between the two, I think I’d elect the one I could adapt to my own context.

I’m gonna try to piggyback on Ken’s and Terri’s ideas, somewhat, by trying to shift the needle back to what I think you’re absolutely best at — as a writer with a critical eye — in terms of capturing your blog-audience’s attention.

With an eye on employing a Trojan Horse spoof strategy to get to the real ‘art’ (or ‘heart’) of education in this day and age, I suggest you pen the following:

Write a year-in-the-life early-career teacher memoir.

Use a “Fake Steve Jobs” pseudonym tactic (thanking his/her mentor Dan Meyer, of course).

Fill out the chapters and sidebars with a John Stewart ‘textbook’ aesthetic that allows you to throw in legit teaching and presentation strategies.

Layer content/topics with a slightly Onion-esque quality in their assumption of truth-i-ness with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge slap in the head paradigm for good measure.

Employ a supernova of design workhorses to showcase how information can be displayed/expressed.

Stir it up. Serve on ice. And sit back as the crowds buy multiple copies for friends and colleagues alike.

Personally, I think you’d absolutely crush such a project out of the park idea-wise while simultaneously inspiring mad Amazon link love in the edu-blogosphere (and beyond) with something penned in such a spirit.

Frankly, very few could pull off a humorous, truthful, and ironic look at education (while still in the classroom)…and manage to bring in both the haters and lovers in the process.

This doesn’t suggest that you should get rid of any virtual commiseration process that allows folks to kick around classroom management strategies that have been the center of 2 recent posts of yours. Hardly. Go there, too.

But think about what book YOU’D both buy and proudly display on your coffee table that had education in the center of its sight. And how could you bring the unique Dan Meyer sensibility and razor-sharp tongue to such a project?

Here’s how:

Onion + John Stewart + “Fake Steve Jobs” + Feltron-style + Dan Meyer.

Amazon is waiting! So am I!

Adding nothing, but somehow, I think I’ve added something.