[9] Do you want to know what I’ve hated most about teaching in person during the Covid-19 pandemic? The way mutual mask-wearing scrams my reactor. With my facial expressions concealed, my deliveries don’t land as consistently. With the students’ expressions concealed, I am deprived of the energy I would gain by getting a reaction out of them. The parts of the job that used to recharge me drain me instead. I don’t have words to describe how awful this feels.
[3] A widespread bias I see in education is viewing every subject as a technical one with a straightforward dependency tree. Take my subject: English. The delusion held by seemingly all district-level curriculum czars is that, if Johnny’s reading scores are deficient, there must be one or two very specific dependencies he lacks. They will often look to a single wrong answer on a diagnostic test and say, “Ah! There it is. ‘Deducing the meaning of a word from context.’ Teacher, give them lessons on that until they master it.”
Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. Johnny, like most humans, intuitively understands how to derive meaning from context. But in this case, he didn’t understand the context, because it’s one of the millions of things he’s naive about. He’s young and hasn’t read very many books. If we want to get reductive, I will concede the hypothetical possibility of making a shaggy graph of the millions of micro-dependencies that underpin an individual’s reading skill. But maybe we should just try to find Johnny some books he might like.
[8] I remember the first time I appreciated this skill. It was when I saw this hilarious exchange between Louis CK and Conan O’Brien, and then saw the same content later as a bit in one of his shows (4:39). It seems embarrassing to have not seen it, but it hadn’t occurred to me that talk-show ‘interviews’ with comedians might sometimes be adaptations of their bits. Seriously, though, Louis CK really comes across as a spontaneously funny guy in that first clip. He elevates the convincingness of spontaneity into another layer of comedic art.
[7] She goes by many names around the world. In the UK, teachers swap scary stories about Bore-a-trix Lestrange, Lady Macbarf, and Nary, Queen of Nots.
[5] This book would be somewhat redundant in a world where we already have David Didau’s What if everything you knew about education was wrong? I crossed paths with this title during a pensive season of my life and appreciated the way it asked questions from first principles, challenging orthodox assumptions without jumping to new conclusions. In particular, Didau had the words to express what I was feeling about forgetting.
[4] Consider how a serial television show uses a “Previously, on [title]” to remind you of plot threads that are going to be relevant to this episode, some of which might be from several episodes back. This is superior to how they used to do it, which was “Last time, on [this show].” The primitive form would fail to remind you of relevant threads from older episodes and needlessly remind you of irrelevant threads from last week. When you review with your students, are you just reviewing the most recent stuff, or are you choosing the stuff that’s about to be relevant again?
[2] You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I, too, have motivational and administrative reasons that keep me testing on occasion as well. But I approach and design them differently, when I can.
[1] Neel Nanda beat me to a discussion of this. Worth a read. The comments are great, too. I was reassured that others like me with real experience, a little research, and rigorous thinking on the topic had reached such similar conclusions.
Footnotes (each footnote is a reply to this comment)
[9] Do you want to know what I’ve hated most about teaching in person during the Covid-19 pandemic? The way mutual mask-wearing scrams my reactor. With my facial expressions concealed, my deliveries don’t land as consistently. With the students’ expressions concealed, I am deprived of the energy I would gain by getting a reaction out of them. The parts of the job that used to recharge me drain me instead. I don’t have words to describe how awful this feels.
[3] A widespread bias I see in education is viewing every subject as a technical one with a straightforward dependency tree. Take my subject: English. The delusion held by seemingly all district-level curriculum czars is that, if Johnny’s reading scores are deficient, there must be one or two very specific dependencies he lacks. They will often look to a single wrong answer on a diagnostic test and say, “Ah! There it is. ‘Deducing the meaning of a word from context.’ Teacher, give them lessons on that until they master it.”
Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. Johnny, like most humans, intuitively understands how to derive meaning from context. But in this case, he didn’t understand the context, because it’s one of the millions of things he’s naive about. He’s young and hasn’t read very many books. If we want to get reductive, I will concede the hypothetical possibility of making a shaggy graph of the millions of micro-dependencies that underpin an individual’s reading skill. But maybe we should just try to find Johnny some books he might like.
[10] If you’re a fellow teacher, you know that this is the differentiation problem solving itself.
[8] I remember the first time I appreciated this skill. It was when I saw this hilarious exchange between Louis CK and Conan O’Brien, and then saw the same content later as a bit in one of his shows (4:39). It seems embarrassing to have not seen it, but it hadn’t occurred to me that talk-show ‘interviews’ with comedians might sometimes be adaptations of their bits. Seriously, though, Louis CK really comes across as a spontaneously funny guy in that first clip. He elevates the convincingness of spontaneity into another layer of comedic art.
[7] She goes by many names around the world. In the UK, teachers swap scary stories about Bore-a-trix Lestrange, Lady Macbarf, and Nary, Queen of Nots.
[6] When it’s releasing more energy than you’re using to contain it.
[5] This book would be somewhat redundant in a world where we already have David Didau’s What if everything you knew about education was wrong? I crossed paths with this title during a pensive season of my life and appreciated the way it asked questions from first principles, challenging orthodox assumptions without jumping to new conclusions. In particular, Didau had the words to express what I was feeling about forgetting.
[4] Consider how a serial television show uses a “Previously, on [title]” to remind you of plot threads that are going to be relevant to this episode, some of which might be from several episodes back. This is superior to how they used to do it, which was “Last time, on [this show].” The primitive form would fail to remind you of relevant threads from older episodes and needlessly remind you of irrelevant threads from last week. When you review with your students, are you just reviewing the most recent stuff, or are you choosing the stuff that’s about to be relevant again?
[2] You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I, too, have motivational and administrative reasons that keep me testing on occasion as well. But I approach and design them differently, when I can.
[1] Neel Nanda beat me to a discussion of this. Worth a read. The comments are great, too. I was reassured that others like me with real experience, a little research, and rigorous thinking on the topic had reached such similar conclusions.