Scott is usually a lot more subtle than this, but he overplayed his hand this round, and tipped the table to his low regard for classroom teachers. I encourage my readers (and his, to the extent that we overlap) not to forget this. Fair to say I’ve succumbed to his kind of contempt in the past but it became obvious to me, not long after, that I had a) underestimated my colleagues, b) overestimated myself, and c) seriously overestimated the effectiveness of contempt as a precondition of reform.

I think I have an angle on this prompt, but the commenting has been especially sharp around here lately and I’m interested in your take:

What is a core practice relating to teaching that every new teacher should be required to learn at a very high level before entering the classroom?

New city. New home. New toilet. One of those pricey Toto jobs. Here’s the question:

You need a puzzle-piece button – one of those buttons that’s cut neatly into two buttons. One side flushes out more than the other. The best button design gets an extra-credit contract to manufacture one million of them.

I’d leave it to the student to ask how much each side flushes out: .9 and 1.6 gallons. (Be less helpful, etc.)

Here the question for you, the math-curious blog-reader: which of these buttons is the best design? Essential secondary question: in each case, what question do you ask students to nudge them away from an inferior design to something superior?

Here’s Toto’s answer, which prompts the question: did they get it right?

A: Sort of.

And yeah, this is what happens when I leave the classroom. I blog about bathroom fixtures.

Jimmy:

We’ve lost another good math teacher, that’s what’s wrong. [..] I know everybody wants to be the big cheese and be the big hero. But what we need is teachers, not more professors, advocates, rabble-rousers, or whatever.

Mathematically, what’s wrong with this schedule? I mean, it trips me up every time I look at it.

So in case you were wondering:

• CS 106A – Programming Methodology. Mehran Sahami. Introductory Java, basically. My program requires me to do a minor and I’d like to get something under my belt to help me articulate theory to classroom teachers who may not have the means or interest to pick up a journal. Incidentally, everything about this class is available online, even to non-students. [Video. Coursework.]
• EDUC 200C – Introduction to Statistics in Education. Kenji Hakuta.
• EDUC 250A – Inquiry and Assessment in Education. Mitchell Stevens, Susanna Loeb. Towards a research proposal.
• EDUC 325A – Proseminar. John Willinsky, Martin Carnoy. Part one of three classes required of all doctoral candidates. They’re trying to get us up to speed on the entire history of schooling, basically. First-week reading included the LA Times value-added kerfuffle. Next week we’re into Adam Smith and Rousseau.
• EDUC 329X – Teacher Professional Development. Hilda Borko. What works and doesn’t work in professional development? How do you move a professional development program from “boutique” (where the person who developed the program also facilitates it) to a scalable, sustainable program that is effective for non-volunteers and can be facilitated by anybody?
• EDUC 465 – Pedagogy of Teacher Education. Pamela Grossman. How do other professions – nurses, rabbis, pilots, etc. – induct new members and what can teacher developers learn from them?

Strays:

1. Maybe my expectations were soft going in but I love every class. We’re doing three-hour blocks and all of the professors, many of whom are known more for publishing than teaching, know what to do with that time.
2. I’m also a big fan of my cohort: fifty-ish people, none of whom seem particularly interested in comparing resumes, undergraduate GPAs, Feedburner subscription numbers, that sort of thing, which is great. Everyone seems well aware of what one of the professors said day one, that “we’re all here by accident.”
3. The iPad is chewing its way through grad school and, with printing fees running ten cents per page, it may well pay for itself before this is over. I’m doing Papers for cataloging PDFs, SimpleNote for notetaking [BTW: SimpleNote scarfed two of my essays, reverting them back to their first saved state. I don’t recommend SimpleNote.], Google Calendar for storing assignments.
4. If the only outcome of these four or five years is a paper and a few letters after my name, somebody please punch me.

Any advice from those who have been here, any questions from those who haven’t yet, you know where to put them.