Differentiated Coaching for Educators

I recently began reading, then frantically flipping through a major education publication on using multiple measures to assess student achievement. Every measure mentioned was basically a test of knowledge. I'm all for objective standards, but as I understand the real world, knowledge is the least important component of what students need to learn in school. Current estimates are that even the children leaving school with the highest test scores will have only 2 percent of the knowledge they need for careers in the 21st century. To attain the other 98 percent requires curiosity, critical thinking, the ability to ask great questions, and an imagination to consider possibilities beyond current reality. To summarize, what has become a trite phrase, "creating lifelong learners," needs to become central to education.

In fact, I think that the most important "multiple measure" might be student engagement--not whether students are superficially entertained in the classroom but whether they are interested enough to ask questions, dig a little deeper, or push to understand the relevance of a lesson to their lives. Why? Because curiosity creates the patterns of discovery that motivate lifelong learning. For many students, school is something they finish, not a place that sets up lifelong patterns. (more…)

I recently spent several days in the heart of Washington DC. As I walked to and from the NCTM conference, to restaurants and museums, I watched the seconds tick down on the walk/don't walk clocks at each street corner. The time allotted for pedestrians to cross ranged from 12 seconds at one corner to 60 seconds at another.

I pondered the wide range of times. They weren't related to the width of the street or the average number of people standing there (some corners, especially around Chinatown, were definitely busier than others). Instead, the signals were timed to accommodate the vehicle traffic whizzing through the green lights that corresponded with the walk signals. (more…)