Genius Freak

It was late. I was on the couch, pretending to be comfortable between the piles of graded, and to be graded. Wanting to move one last paper from the latter pile (by far the larger) to the other before calling it a night, I read through one senior's exploration of the concept of "American exceptionalism." Noting good arguments and places where more information would strengthen the writer's position, in the margin I wrote, "This would be a good place to add some statistics." Or I meant to write that. I was about halfway through the word statistics when I realized it was looking more like a child's drawing of some choppy ocean waves than anything resembling a word in any language. I looked at it through tired eyes and thought, "Oh, he'll figure out what that says," even as I knew that was hopeless.

I know it's easy, and maybe cliché, to quote Einstein and hope the golden glow of his legendary genius provides the backlighting for whatever it is you want to say. But the reason that it's easy is that he said so many things that are brilliant, and understated, and true. Not surprisingly, he said many quote-worthy things about learning, and teaching, both of which he did with great passion.  Not surprisingly, I'm turning to Einstein now to encapsulate something I have been thinking about this week: teaching by example.  "Example isn't another way to teach, it's the only way to teach." - Einstein Of course we do examples of math problems, look at examples of lines written in iambic pentameter, develop an understanding of how writing works by looking at examples of things other people have written. When we want students to sing a particular note, we sing it for them first. When we want students to learn how to do an overhand volleyball serve, we show t...

As someone who believes that powerful teaching is at least as much art as it is science (with all due respect to the data-driven instruction boom), I know that there is no single, magical, component that makes it happen. As I continue to explore what I have learned about teaching by teaching, I come back again this week to the idea that content expertise is one very important component of the foundation on which we build a pedagogy. At least in secondary education, it is by content that we label ourselves.  We are math teacher or history teacher or art teacher or science teacher or English teacher. And while elementary educators may not label themselves by discipline, their days are generally divided by those same labels.  So content is inextricable from teaching.  It is the foundation of many of our learning standards.  It is our vehicle for teaching the thinking skills we really want students to develop. So we must be masters of our disciplines. But the teache...