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> My question (I'm having my first child with in a month) is what do I do as a parent other than be patient: You could look into how your local public school s

> My question (I'm having my first child with in a month) is what do I do as a parent other than be patient: You could look into how your local public school system teaches. Taking to the people who teach there, for instance, is helpful. Expressing support for an NCTM-like approach, if you find you do support it, would also be great. > Education techniques particularly math has changed so many times that it is beginning to look like diet and exercises. We are all a little jaded so I can understand the plethora of pre-formed opinions. I understand and as a person who teaches math, and teaches teachers too, I feel the same impatience. I want to know why we don't just go out and see, on actual students, what actually makes them better at understanding and being able to solve problems. Try different things and see what works. Review video tapes. Give before and after tests, and focus groups, and see what the people in the class learn the most from. Train teachers in the details of doing the job, as an engineer or doctor would be trained in details. The thing is, that's what the folks described here are doing. Have they got the final answer? I doubt it, particularly as the impacts of tech is so little understood even now. But they are making progress, at least it seems that way to me. (If you are interested, Building a Better Teacher is a source that would give you more of an understanding of what the discussion is. This article was part of the marketing people's plants for the book.)

mordocai 10y ago
> I want to know why we don't just go out and see, on actual students, what actually makes them better at understanding and being able to solve problems. Try different things and see what works. Review video tapes. Give before and after tests, and focus groups, and see what the people in the class learn the most from. Probably because parents don't want their kids to be one on the receiving end of an experimental technique that doesn't work and sets back their child's learning and development by an unknown amount.
bpyne 10y ago
This comment is related to your muse starting with "I want to know why..." I'm simply pondering and looking for feedback from someone who is actually a teaching professional unlike myself. "There [my comment: Finland], as in Japan, teachers teach for 600 or fewer hours each school year, leaving them ample time to prepare, revise and learn. By contrast, American teachers spend nearly 1,100 hours with little feedback." This line took my notice. I have to wonder if their school systems are such that teachers do not have to be in front of students 6 continuous hours daily as my daughter's teachers do. (My daughter is in elementary school.) By the time her teachers finish with students, attend after-school meetings and grade, I can see there being precious little mental energy left for professional development. My friend Scott made a career change a decade ago. After being a software developer for 22 years, he switched to teaching tech in a middle school. His comment to me after his first year was that teaching is much more exhausting because you have to be "on" 5-6 hours daily. If you're "off", students pick up on it and reflect it. His opinion hasn't changed after a decade.
- jimhefferon 10y ago
  My only comment would be that I find what your friend Scott finds. I don't teach middle school, I teach in college, so my day is more mixed than his. But my training was as a high school teacher and my wife is a high school teacher, and I do find that her routine is exhausting. I hear you about having little mental energy left. There are lots of intensely dedicated teachers but it is unreasonable to expect that they will be on 24-7. They get to have families, to have hobbies, etc., just like everybody else. Just like engineers, police officers, and any other highly trained professional. (It is especially discouraging, for me, when someone writes a letter to the editor seeming to assert that teaching is something women do so they get summers off with their kids, kind of a hobby. Those make me cringe.)
  - bpyne 10y ago
    IMO a culture developed in the US in the past few decades - I would be hard-pressed to pinpoint when but it's been within my professional life in IT - that we should minimize any activities in a work environment that do not have a direct tie to revenue. The result is that professional development is all but non-existent unless you do it on your own time. The US is scrutinizing its education system right now. Unfortunately, we're looking for simple answers and pinning blame on teachers when the problems are more systemic. My neighbor is a visiting professor from Germany. His wife is a teacher in grades 5-8 in Germany. My wife and I had dinner with them a while back. They made the observation that blaming teachers took place in Germany about 10 years ago. When all was said and done the problems were more systemic, they were corrected, and the system is considerably better now in their opinion. Hopefully we'll follow suit.

mordocai 10y ago

> I want to know why we don't just go out and see, on actual students, what actually makes them better at understanding and being able to solve problems. Try different things and see what works. Review video tapes. Give before and after tests, and focus groups, and see what the people in the class learn the most from. Probably because parents don't want their kids to be one on the receiving end of an experimental technique that doesn't work and sets back their child's learning and development by an unknown amount.

bpyne 10y ago

This comment is related to your muse starting with "I want to know why..." I'm simply pondering and looking for feedback from someone who is actually a teaching professional unlike myself. "There [my comment: Finland], as in Japan, teachers teach for 600 or fewer hours each school year, leaving them ample time to prepare, revise and learn. By contrast, American teachers spend nearly 1,100 hours with little feedback." This line took my notice. I have to wonder if their school systems are such that teachers do not have to be in front of students 6 continuous hours daily as my daughter's teachers do. (My daughter is in elementary school.) By the time her teachers finish with students, attend after-school meetings and grade, I can see there being precious little mental energy left for professional development. My friend Scott made a career change a decade ago. After being a software developer for 22 years, he switched to teaching tech in a middle school. His comment to me after his first year was that teaching is much more exhausting because you have to be "on" 5-6 hours daily. If you're "off", students pick up on it and reflect it. His opinion hasn't changed after a decade.

jimhefferon 10y ago
My only comment would be that I find what your friend Scott finds. I don't teach middle school, I teach in college, so my day is more mixed than his. But my training was as a high school teacher and my wife is a high school teacher, and I do find that her routine is exhausting. I hear you about having little mental energy left. There are lots of intensely dedicated teachers but it is unreasonable to expect that they will be on 24-7. They get to have families, to have hobbies, etc., just like everybody else. Just like engineers, police officers, and any other highly trained professional. (It is especially discouraging, for me, when someone writes a letter to the editor seeming to assert that teaching is something women do so they get summers off with their kids, kind of a hobby. Those make me cringe.)
- bpyne 10y ago
  IMO a culture developed in the US in the past few decades - I would be hard-pressed to pinpoint when but it's been within my professional life in IT - that we should minimize any activities in a work environment that do not have a direct tie to revenue. The result is that professional development is all but non-existent unless you do it on your own time. The US is scrutinizing its education system right now. Unfortunately, we're looking for simple answers and pinning blame on teachers when the problems are more systemic. My neighbor is a visiting professor from Germany. His wife is a teacher in grades 5-8 in Germany. My wife and I had dinner with them a while back. They made the observation that blaming teachers took place in Germany about 10 years ago. When all was said and done the problems were more systemic, they were corrected, and the system is considerably better now in their opinion. Hopefully we'll follow suit.