Leadership

There is a “teacher crisis” in America because the number of people preparing to be teachers is significantly under the projected number of teachers that are needed. This is already true in math and science, where teachers with this skill set are highly sought after and given significant federal incentives (scholarships, loan forgiveness, etc.) to pursue this path. The question, then, is how to get more teachers into the field, and once you get them to pursue the field, how do you best prepare them?

One suggestion is to take people who already know something and have spent years in many different industries (business, government, law, etc.) and just get them into a classroom. These people already have the skill set, they already know content and even better, they know how this meaningful content can be used in the real world in which they worked. They have what many teachers do not have: experience with the application of knowledge. This experience is priceless.

But some people (usually professors in the Education Department of some University) don’t want these people to teach until they have taken 20 credit hours of pre-requisites and spent $30,000 on university classes. Furthermore, these people have a significant voice in the creation of licensing standards, and therefore, they are in a position to oppose non-standard routes to licensing.

This is a problem. continue reading this post

Schools play an odd role in society. They fulfill many different functions for many different people, but perhaps their most important function is to provide an environment of learning. However, there is a fundamental (and irreversible) flaw to schools that inhibit the level of learning that can occur within their walls. What is this flaw?

School is not real.

School is only a simulation. continue reading this post

As I was driving along on an epic road trip last week, the song “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce came on. Now I don’t jam to Beyonce that much, but as I was listening to the song, I realized that Beyonce was telling me a secret about how to never lose my job AND how to date her at the same time! Who knew Beyonce, besides being an excellent vocalist, also has some great career and relationship advice?

What was her advice, you ask? continue reading this post

Photo: Kevin Dooley

I have found that there is a very quick path to insanity: trying to control things that you cannot control.

I was reminded of this today when I went and observed my brother's fourth-grade classroom. The fourth-graders left for math class, but when they came back an hour later, half of them were crying and the other half was either mad or kicking their backpacks. It was an emotional train wreck. When my brother asked them what was wrong, they said that they all received bad grades on their test in the previous class. My brother was trying to assure them, telling them that "your parents aren't going to ground you for a month" and "no, it doesn't mean you are going to get an F on your report card", but this had no effect. These fourth graders were convinced that the end of the world was at hand because they had a piece of paper with a number lower than a 70%. The teacher who gave them the bad grades even came back into my brother's classroom and told the students that she had decided that the assignment was just going to count as extra credit, so they didn't have to worry. But this didn't matter. They were still crushed. continue reading this post

Millions of Americans play a game of financial roulette with their meager wages, a game called “The Lottery.” Even though 82% of all lottery tickets are purchased by low-income minority men, these low-income players continue to buy tickets. And after years and years of buying tickets, some of these people finally get their wish and win their millions. However, over time, the money doesn’t stay around. 65% of all lottery winners go bankrupt in less than 15 years. It is a sad reality that so many poor people play such a statistically foolish game, and furthermore, those who win the game still end up loosing.

The problem is that these people thought money would fix their problems. They thought that if only they had more money, they could finally “make it”. But in reality, money didn’t fix the problem. Adding more money only proved what had already been demonstrated: they were not good at keeping money around. They didn’t understand how money behaved, and unless they got their act together, the sudden influx of money, ultimately, was destructive.

With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, an extra $80 billion will be appropriated towards education in just a few short years. Education in America has just won the lottery. And that concerns me. continue reading this post

On a beautiful day in the summer of 2005, I hopped on my bicycle for a ride amidst the cornfields of Indiana. I always liked to ride my bike but I never rode more than 10-20 miles at a time, so I wasn’t going far. As I was riding, the thought occurred to me that the following summer would be a good time to fulfill my dream of riding my bike across the country. As I approached the end of my ride, I got more and more excited about the trip. I thought of all the adventures I would have, and I thought about how much fun it would be to ride across deserts, mountains, and cornfields and to go cross-country with a bunch of friends. I became more and more enthusiastic envisioning the whole trip until, finally, something within me snapped. I made a definitive decision: the following summer, after my second year of teaching, I was going to ride my bike across the country.

You must understand that I knew absolutely nothing about how this trip would work. I didn’t know how to fix a flat tire, I had never ridden more than 20 miles on my own, I didn’t know how much it would cost, I didn’t know if anyone else wanted to come, and I had no idea about where we would start, where we would finish, or the route we would take. There were so many unanswered questions that needed answering, but the decision had been made: I was going to ride my bike across the country, even though I knew absolutely nothing about how to make it happen. continue reading this post