People will pay for what they want, whether it’s alcohol, gasoline, cellphone service, or dinner.  The political debates about education are simply distracting.
 
Education needs to do a better job selling the most important fact in improving and sustaining education:  a great teacher costs money.  

And like dental work, the roof of your house, or great seats to an amazing concert, she is worth it.


For more on the NPR article or the study conducted by the Foundation for Child Development, see:
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/22/305692733/for-early-childhood-education-tulsa-okla-stands-out
http://fcd-us.org/sites/default/files/Evidence%20Base%20on%20Preschool%20Education%20FINAL.pdf
further info for this hilariously short article was found at 
http://newamerica.net/events/2013/too_much_evidence_to_ignore

Image used without permission. As soon as I start making money, I'll take it down. I swear.

"DIY" is really "TIY"
So I want to hardwire a lamp in the bathroom.  You know, like a real man.  My plan of attack?  Youtube.

You see, my dad didn’t show me how to hardwire anything.  Sure, he taught me how to put Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage in a bowl spaghetti.  He taught me that five Coors Lights is better than three.  He taught me that winning isn’t everything—but that it beats the hell out of losing.

But hardwiring a lamp? No.  So, back to youtube.  Or, if you prefer, what I call the "TIY movement." A movement so big, I guarantee you are a part of it and don't even know it.

Instructions Make the Teacher

If there’s something teachers notice about the ubiquitous TIY instructions out there it's how good (or bad) the instructions are.  Because great think about instructions all the time- because great instructions allow people to teach themselves.

Anyone who has used an easy to follow instructional video or read a great manual (think workout plans or cookbooks), knows that these instructions can be great teachers, too. Great-instruction-givers allow us to invest in ourselves. It's schooling at it's most distilled:  education improves us.

The best of DIY is really just great teaching.  And, with the internet, its reach across age, gender, economic and social class, and geography barriers make DIY instructions the most powerful force in Education today.

Want to do what great teachers do?  Study what makes instructions easy to follow, efficient, inspiring, and delightful.  Look at the wide range of instructions available online and in books.  See how directions are put together, how words and images can be used to model and guide.  Now that's teacher training I could get behind.  Great instructions are encoded teaching.

For my teacher friends and teacher advocates out there: instructions cannot REPLACE teachers, of course.  Great instructions are the products and tools of great teaching.  And great teaching is teaching other people to teach themselves.

Now, the way to CREATE and DEVELOP good instructions is much more complicated, certainly. For one, it's about knowing and connecting with your audience (students). But getting into that right now will keep me from a delicious meal of breakfast sausage spaghetti washed down with a raft of Coors Lights.  

Just the kind of preparation I need to hardwire a lamp.

Images from and thanks to
the awesome blog http://harmonioushomestead.com/2013/08/07/homemade-cold-smoker/
and the fun site http://www.ohthelovelythings.com/2011/12/happy-friday-4-diy-projects.html

A great coach can change everything.

A lot of attention has been paid to college sports in the last month. March Madness had people around the country filling out brackets. A court ruling on the potential unionizing of college athletes led by a group of students at Northwestern also got a lot of buzz.

But I couldn't take my ears off of a conversation on a radio call in show here in New York on station WNYC.  "The Brian Lehrer Show" brings in all kinds of guests and puts them on the phone with people listening in their cars and at home and work. Like many shows like it around the country, this call in program is more of a community service than straight entertainment programming.  I think Lehrer does a hell of a job.

Anyway, he did a segment on "Coaching" that got me thinking about Teachernomics.  

Lehrer asked people to call in about great coaches they had and the responses were telling. We heard folks talking about track coaches, soccer, trumpet, baseball coaches... even life coaches.  Nearly everyone who called in told the story of someone from her past who gave never-diminishing advice.  Aside from the wise words of a mentor, what other kind of work doesn't diminish or lose its value over time?  Invention?  Art?  

That's got to be the topic for another article.

What got me thinking about the value of a coach, however, had less to do with the lasting emotional/psychological impact on a player or more to do with the actual price tag.  How much is a great coach worth, financially?

The answer, of course, depends.  Little league coaches often get paid nothing or close to it. On the other hand, college football coaches of elite or enormous schools can get paid millions of dollars a year.  

Both render incredible value to their teams.  Some of those little league coaches (or middle school or high school coaches) will do the best coaching the players will get their whole lives. Some highly paid professional coaches will be the subject of great derision. Some coaches, no matter the level, will give advice and instruction that will be cherished for decades. Others will be forgotten.  

What a coach gets paid will have almost no correlation with their effectiveness.

The point is:  we have a huge problem figuring out how much coaches are worth, financially, despite the fact that their players can often easily estimate their impact value on them. Culturally, we don't know up from down on the value of good instruction. Remember that when you hear parties from unions to governments to parents to business talk about the cost of education.

What is the difference between a great coach and a bad coach?  Depends on what you mean by "great." For must of us, it's an important personal question that weirdly has no bearing on financial ramifications. 

What is the difference between a coach and a teacher?  Nothing, of course.

Check out Brian Lehrer's awesome show here
http://www.wnyc.org/story/the-brian-lehrer-show-2014-03-18/

Image from WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show"