Last time, I wrote about how our relationships with students are sure to break down. This is why I’ve added “Repair” to the CCP of teacher credibility that I wrote about in These 6 Things, Chapter 2: Care, Competence, and Passion. If you cannot identify and repair faltering student-teacher relationships, you’re bound to be befuddled […]
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How to Repair Relationships (And Why You Might As Well Accept that You’ll Need To)
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; […]
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 […]
Is the US Naturalization Test a Standard for Fair, Straightforward Assessments of Knowledge?
Part of the naturalization process in the United States involves memorizing 100 facts about the country. These facts cover its government, its history, its geography, and its symbols. (Here’s a PDF of the full list.) They are formatted in a Q&A style. (Example below.) On test day, would-be citizens are asked 10 random questions from […]
