Thinking about School Reform, Teaching, and "Great" Teachers

Larry Cuban:

Writing about school reform from a historical perspective can be, well, depressing. So many examples of hype-on-steroids, past and present, of school reform solving community and national problems. So much policy talk, past and present, that overestimates success while underestimating the difficulties of converting words into classroom deeds. But melancholia and teaching a seminar twice a week do not go hand-in-hand.

For me, teaching about school reform and the history of making "good" schools and districts stimulates the brain and clutches the heart. It lifts me up. My mind races with the questions that I need to ask students. And in asking questions, who do I call upon, which student to probe further with a follow-up question, what to do when a student asks me a question-answer it? Redirect to the class? Ask student to answer her own question?

And over the past six weeks in the seminar of "good' schools and districts my brain has raced a lot. So, too, have my emotions. In any given class, they range from anxiety to a soaring feeling of connection with a group to tedium to spontaneous outbreaks of laughter. Thus, both the brain and heart are fully engaged when I am teaching my seminar. I am not depressed when I teach although when a part of a lesson flops I surely feel blue for that moment. But most of the time, student engagement with the readings I assigned, questions I ask, questions students ask, when students disagree with me, all of these keep me thinking on my feet as I improvise my way to what I had hoped would happen in the lesson.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 6, 2012 1:05 AM
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