There’s a program that brings together kids from two schools. One school is public and in the country’s poorest congressional district. The other is private and costs $43,000/year. They are three miles apart. The hope is that kids connect, but some of the public school kids just can’t get over the divide.”
“Ideally 'butterflies' have most impact when they reinforce any of the following comments from Judith Little who said you know you are in an outstanding school where you can see that: 1) Teachers talk about teaching. 2) Teachers observe each other's teaching. 3) Teachers plan, organise and evaluate their work together. 4) Teachers teach each other.”
The charge against credential requirements is that they are simultaneously too restrictive and too lax. They are too restrictive in giving a huge advantage to those who booked early passage on the IQ train and too lax in their sloppy relation to the skills that truly make for competence… If sports were run like the meritocracy, the Miami Dolphins would choose their starting lineup on the basis of high-school times in the forty-yard dash and analyses of the players' muscle tissues to see who had the highest proportion of “quick-twitch” fibers. If the Dolphins actually did this, they'd face a long losing season: the coach cares about speed but finally chooses the players who have proved they can catch the ball or stop the run.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson