Building a Better Teacher

There was a fascinating article in The New York Times Magazine section this weekend called "Building a Better Teacher" by Elizabeth Green. The article discussed training teachers in the techniques developed by successful teachers and developing teachers’ knowledge of how students may misunderstand new ideas. Doug Lemov, a one-time principal and now education consultant with Uncommon Schools, believes that getting students to pay attention is not only crucial but also a skill as specialized, intricate and learnable as playing guitar. Lemov has a new book coming out called "Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College". In it, he discusses the many techniques that he found successful with teachers such as the "Strong Voice" technique devised to make sure students remain attentive or the "Cold Call' technique which holds students accountable for listening. I found the entire article so interesting and have already pre-ordered a copy of his book on Amazon. Here is a link to the article which also provides many more interesting links to videos of the techniques in action...www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html .

Language Arts, Math, Arts, Technology......

So many standards to incorporate! As of two weeks ago, I was really confused but after our last class, standards are making more sense to me! In all of our lessons, we must incorporate New York and National Standards for different areas of study. All standards have key ideas which are the final results of what students will learn and performance indicators , which are things you can do to prove the key ideas were achieved. Yet it is one thing to understand and another to apply it a unit plan which is what we will be starting next week! Wish me luck!