My answer to this was a bit long, so I answered it on my own blog. I hope the self promotion isn’t inappropriate.

Dan, I am very grateful you took the time to respond. I am sure to have more questions as I attempt to improve my teaching practices, but for now, you and others have addressed my initial questions. I would be so star-struck if I were to run into you at a conference, but I do hope to see you present live sometime as I have been very impressed with the videos I have seen. Thanks again!

I particularly liked what Bob Lochel said about finding the epitomic math problem from a unit, and I think this is a great place to start for me. As I see it, ideally I would organize my units around such a problem and radiate outward from there, fleshing out the beginning (within a perplexity framework) and end (an assessment of some kind) and filling in the rest using Bryan Anderson’s notion about guiding student inquiry. (Whew, I’m already exhausted with the possibilities of paths a topic could diverge and evolve into – graph theory anyone?) The tough part for me is finding that cohesion and fluidity, but that just might come with experience (uh… and trial and error. Sorry kids!) After all, SOMEONE at sometime had to encounter a problem where this topic was necessary and/or useful, right? Right??