The reason I got to thinking about entropy recently is because I started seeing a pattern: relationships with students often fall apart. I’ve written a lot about how relationships aren’t the point of school — it’s actually not “all about relationships” — but they sure are important. Perhaps most critically, caring relationships enhance my credibility; […]
Archives for February 2020
The Law of Entropy Says You’ll Need to Focus
“Only entropy comes easy.” Russian playwright Anton Checkhov, as cited in Weinburg and McCann’s Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models The second law of thermodynamics essentially holds that, without new investments of energy, things fall apart — hot things become cold, neat things become messy, clean things become dirty. As physics professor Denis […]
Good Teaching + Good Practice
The fastest way to master anything is simple: good teaching and good practice. Good teaching makes clear what needs to be learned, discerns and pursues the most promising means for students to learn it (regardless of whether or not the means align with whatever teaching dogma is presently in vogue), and takes pains to create […]