Blog Posts

Chief Teachers

3/27/2017

Mike Kleba speaking about teacher leadership at SXSWedu 2017.

Teachers are one of our culture's greatest undervalued assets.

The fact that teachers are overwhelmingly absent from leadership in companies, policy think tanks, edu organizations, and politics isn't merely sad-- it's foolish. Specifically, companies that work in education are wasting money and time, bereft of the rich and dynamic input that working teachers could offer.

there is a surging energy out there

a teacher leadership movement waiting to happen

A few weeks ago, the amazing team at SXSWedu invited me to come to Austin to tell my story. SXSWedu offers a week of tacos, good beer, and in one of the live music capitals of the world-- along with the chance to mix it up with leaders of the state of the art in education. Who would pass that up?

Not this guy.

I've been fortunate in connecting with SXSWedu. I've gotten to work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, started relationships with and consulted for various companies, got scouted to speak at the National Charter Schools Convention in Nashville, and traveled to London to speak at EdTechX Europe.

And it's been fun. I've learned a lot, heard tons of stories, and met people who are truly passionate about improving education in this country and around the world.

More than anything, I've gotten the chance to see just how much people want to talk about the paucity of teachers in leadership. There is a growing energy out there-- a movement waiting to happen. It's a movement that I know will change schools, change companies, and impact how people are learning.

Put teachers on your leadership team. Hire teachers-in-residence. Invite a working teacher to sit on your Board of Directors or Advisors. Hire a Chief Teacher Officer.

You want to improve schools? You want to make money doing it? Get some working teachers in your bullpen.

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Farm to Table, Education Style

2/23/2017

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Alice Waters wasn’t trying to convince all of us to start eating organic eggs.

She just wanted to open a restaurant that served what she called “real food.” She wanted greens from local garden, beef from a farm near town, and eggs from chickens close to her restaurant-- not from an industry a thousand miles away. In a world of packaged and industrial food, she was an outlier—but Waters was on to something. Her restaurant became a sensation, inspiring chefs around the country helping to spark what came to be known as the Farm-to-Table movement.

Everyone has always known that our food comes from farms. The farm to table movement hasn’t changed WHAT we think about food—it’s changed HOW we think about food.

That revelation has sparked a revolution—and now you can get organic eggs everywhere.

What the hell does this have to do with education?

what the hell does this have to do with education?

We’re on the verge of a similar movement, people. Yes, education is overrun with movements. We’re awash in ‘em, from Artificial Intelligence to Flipped Classrooms to 21st Century Skills Instruction.

But I think there’s an Alice Waters-level insight, something simple and familiar, that could change education across the country.

Study after study says that a student’s success in a school are dominated by two factors: her family’s income level and the quality of her teacher. It’s not the school buildings, advances in Ed Tech (sorry), or even (gasp) the students.

A school's quality
ingredients are its
teachers.

It’s time for a Farm-to-Table Movement for Education. The quality, locally sourced ingredients are the teachers. And the “farms” are the richness of their experiences, the broadness of their lives.

Whether hiking a trail in the Andes, taking a welding class, training for a marathon, talking shop over a coffee with a fellow teacher, raising a daughter who loves to code, or finishing a masters in biochemistry, teachers become better teachers living full lives outside of the classroom.

Want to help improve our schools? Don’t just care about WHAT teachers are doing. Care about HOW they are living and learning outside of school.

It’s a revelation that might just spark a revolution.

Speaking of a trying to live a rich teacher life, I'm headed to SXSWedu 2017. See you at a session or keynote or maybe at the taco stand. I’ll be with a crowd of teachers, talking about life.

SOURCES:
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/blueprint/great-teachers-great-leaders.pdf
http://www.rand.org/education/projects/measuring-teacher-effectiveness/teachers-matter.html
http://www.edudemic.com/guides/flipped-classrooms-guide/
https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/10-hallmarks-21st-century-teaching-and-learning
https://lettuceeatkale.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/cultivating-controversy-in-defense-of-an-edible-education/
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/22/travel/alice-waters-culinary-journey/

PHOTO CREDITS:
taco/beer photo credit: http://www.martinresortstravellog.com/

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Teachersplaining

11/25/2016

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I’m an English teacher and, obviously, people expect me to be the Tom Brady of punctuation. I'm not, of course-- I'm much more the Bill Murray of metaphor-- but people have expectations. At Thanksgiving dinner this past week, my brother asked me about the lyrics for Bill Withers song “Just the Two of Us” and whether it should be “you and I” or “you and me.”

“Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us, you and I”

I know the answer to this, luckily—“you and I” is correct. My brother didn’t agree. He wanted me to explain it to him and I, using one of my best teaching techniques, refused. I asked him if he understood the concept of “Nominative Case.” He loved that response so much he stopped talking to me.

By the way, that’s a way to end any conversation you don’t want to have. Feel free to borrow it. By the way, sorry about that, Paul.

Was my intent to shut him down? Hell no. My brother was shut down already. He didn’t want to understand anything—he just wanted a fast answer. And teaching has little to do with fast answers.

You don't already own this record? What?

he didn't want to
understand anything-
he just wanted a
fast answer.

...and teaching has
little to do with
fast answers.

I f@#$ing love grammar. I should also say that I know that “none in the accident was hurt” is correct and that “he handed me a beer” is, literally, insane. I also know that my usage of “literally” in the last sentence is inappropriate and overblown—but, let’s be honest, people think that it would be “inappropriate” for a teacher to have a glass of wine in the teachers' lunchroom. I would call it “civilized.”

While we’re on it, the word “lunchroom” is a crime against humanity.

Teachers aren’t walking Wikipedias and yet, stupidly, that’s the way we are widely seen. In fact, we often see ourselves that way. Good teachers should know stuff and explain it to everyone. We teachers like this role, I think.

But that’s jacked up—and it reveals an enormous problem in how we see what great teachers actually do.

Teachers Explain Things To Me

This past summer, I stumbled upon Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant and bestselling book Men Explain Things To Me. I liked the text so much I’m reading it with my senior communications students this year. Solnit nails the issue of “mansplaining,” a term she used in the Los Angeles Times in 2008 to describe how some men cluelessly tell women “how things are.” We so obviously live in a man’s world—a place where men are encouraged to be successful and confident much more than women. Mansplaining reveals how certain men rarely recognize this fundamental reality and explain things entirely from their own privileged and oblivious point of view.

But I don’t believe Solnit’s message is necessarily just about gender. It’s about how a culture of explaining is, inherently, self-deluding. Power creates a sort of blindness in communication. “Explaining” itself is the problem.

As a culture, we misunderstand the purpose of teaching, learning, and school. Most of us believe that school is where we go to acquire content and skill mastery. Anything we can’t learn on our own must be “taught” to us, we believe. And the way we learn is through explanation.

Here’s where teachers come in. Good teachers are good explainers, we think.

"Explaining" itself
is the problem.

New teachers are evaluated on their “lesson plans” which are, at their most fundamental, “activity and explanation plans.” We evaluate teachers based on their students’ test scores—based on the presupposition that a student’s results on a test will show how well the teachers explained curriculum.

But great teachers don’t explain much of anything.

The greats ask questions. They patiently advise students through moments of frustration. They pay attention to students, crafting responses that direct inquiry. They shine the light on a different part of a problem and say “what about that?” A great teacher sees a student’s ignorance not as a problem to be stamped out, punished, or conquered. Ignorance is an opportunity to spark curiosity. Learners don't want answers. They want to learn.

When we explain things, we diminish curiosity and discovery. We disable and we marginalize. We say, “good thing I’m here or you’d never figure this out.” Sure, sometimes a question needs a simple, fast answer. But, most of the time, questions should lead to more questions, searches, and analysis. Is it annoying? Sometimes. Is it transformative? Often.

Feed a person a fish and she eats for a day.
Teach her to fish and she eats for a lifetime.

Explain fishing to her and she’ll be really f@#$ing bored.

And she’ll probably hate fishing.

When we
explain things, we diminish curiosity.

Sources:
-"Chalkboard Math" Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/02/26/to-end-the-gender-skill-gap-in-stem-add-competition-to-the-equation/
-Rothman, Lily. "A Cultural History of Mansplaining." http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/a-cultural-history-of-mansplaining/264380/
-Zakanova Natalia, 'Fishing Girl"

3 Comments

Boredom is learned

9/26/2016

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There are no bored three year olds.

They don't exist. Three year olds want to know everything: they explore the worlds through their eyes, hands, and mouths. Have you ever been around a child in the presence of a strong odor, like fresh cookies or dog poo, or a loud sound, like fireworks or bird chatter? They go off like alarm clocks set for "NOW!" The five senses are a party.

The world is a whirling carousel of interesting things to a child, shimmering with possibility and purpose. Three year olds NEED to know everything.

So why don't thirteen year olds? Or thirty or forty or fifty year olds, for that matter?

I don't know. I suspect it has to do with the hidden cost of experience.

We celebrate our ability to see patterns in things; we reward those with the most correct answers.

As we grow and learn, we get energized by what is fresh and novel. Things happen that we don't expect. It's a ride. We experience something, we are thrilled/horrified/seduced/shocked by it, then expect to experience it again. By the very nature of learning, we use past experience to shape our present experiences.

We know the world through the comparison between what happened yesterday and today. We feel wise when we recognize what's about to happen. We celebrate our ability to see the patterns in things; we reward those with the most correct answers.

Our lives become safer and more stable as we become more steeped in the “causes and effects” of the world.

But something happens: as we grow, these expectations begin to erode our ability to experience something on its own terms. We experience fewer things that surprise us. We are constantly predicting what's going to happen-- and, often, we are right.

Life is scary. Predicting what's going to happen makes it bearable. Sometimes, it's the only difference between safety and danger, anxiety and relaxation.

The cost is that we often don't see everything that's there. We begin see ONLY the patterns that we've seen before; we focus on what's predictable and then miss the things that we don't expect.

As Sherlock Holmes as told us, we see what we expect to see.

And then we learn to stop learning.

Here’s my definition of “boredom:” the result of when we displace the wildness of curiosity with the stability of predictability.

Let’s return to the three year old. Driven by curiosity, a child has no room for boredom. She wants to learn everything. As she grows, the preponderance of experience wears down her interest in the world, like the ocean lapping at an enormous stone on the beach. The sharp edges of curiosity, through predictability and experience, become the smooth contours of boredom.

How do we stop this erosion? In a world of accountability and liability, a world of safety and repetition, do we even want to?

We begin to see only the patterns we've seen before.

we learn to stop learning.

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school yourself

7/14/2016

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The Biggest Obstacle Isn't a Reality: It's a Dream
Here's the old model, the time-tested, incredibly persistent concept of "school:"

The teacher teaches the student.

It's simple, easy to understand, and has the ring of truth. We say things like "he taught me so much!" or "I learned so much from her." The teacher is a vending machine, a talking textbook, a knowledge dispenser. We keep the wisdom and dole it out.

what did your favorite teacher actually teach you?

As a teacher, I can tell you: this model works-- less than half of the time. The days it works are sublime: you lecture, digress, and expound. Your students sit in the glow of your brilliance, they eat it up, light bulbs go on, and the music of instruction plays like a street fiddler in the square. You make the magic.

But when that ain't working for you, when the students are bored, lost, or detached-- these are awful teacher moments. Your students loll in the harsh light of your artificial sun, they list in their seats, darkness pervades, and the clatter of the lecture plays like a rusty chain on the pavement.

We love a brilliant genius around whom the STUDENTS orbit.

Anyone can teach anything, we think.
it's a simple transaction.

The Great Teacher Fantasy
Often, teachers of teachers claim to want to debunk this model. The better part of professional development that I have seen in the last 10 years as a teacher seems to be grounded in the idea that the teacher should not be the "Sage On the Stage." But I don't believe we actually want to debunk this at all. When we talk about a great teacher, we often talk about this brilliant genius around whom the classroom orbits.

This old model IS the problem, of course. We love the fantasy that teaching is simply imparting wisdom. The best teachers are ones whose kids learn the most from him, we think.

We live in a "Guru culture." To be a "great teacher," you just have to be a respected resource of knowledge or skills. Anyone can teach, we think, as long as a person has content mastery. Are you a great chef? Then you can teach cooking. Are you a professional baseball player? You'd be a great coach. Are you a great surgeon? You'd be a great science teacher. We've even created our computer models around it. Data is "downloaded" from an original source. It's "copied." Knowledge is not mastered-- it's copied and pasted.

The ramifications are enormous. We have come to think of teachers as simply "info and skill distributers." Our whole student testing and teacher evaluation model is based on this presumption. Our cultural conversation about teaching isn't based on teaching; it's based on a fantasy of teaching.

What Teachers Actually Do
Student teaches herself. Teacher teaches student to teach herself.

Our fantasies about being a great teacher hide what great teachers do. Great teachers don't teach anything; they teach learning. First time parents have no teachers. Nobody could teach Mick Jagger how to sing, Warren Buffet how to invest, Oprah Winfrey how to produce, Michael Phelps how to swim, or you how to do whatever it is YOU are good at. Of course, teachers helped Mick and Warren and Oprah and the rest-- but no one taught them-- at least, not in the traditional sense. They taught themselves. Their mentors/teachers taught them (and you) not WHAT to do but, rather, HOW to do it. As have all the great teachers in your life.

Heck, you taught yourself language. How to walk. Do you ever think about how your brain must worked for that to have happened? For it to happen to everyone, everywhere, in every culture around the world? Great teachers know that students HAVE to teach themselves.

Great teachers don't teach subjects;
they teach learning.

it's true in every field:

your best manager, leader, or boss helped you understand and execute the work on your own.

The fantasy model needs a real challenge, especially as our cultural and political conversations about good teaching begin to gain more and more traction. How can we attract great teachers when we don't even talk about what a great teacher does?

When on the job, the best teachers are barely there. They elegantly and efficiently drop in and out of the learning process. Doing this is complicated and requires extraordinary awareness. It's a profession that is all about "how," not "what."

Great teachers aren't vending machines. They are catalysts, context makers, inspirers, models, and value multipliers.

It's why I say teaching is like entrepreneurship: it's about engaging others in answering a question or solving a problem. It's why it's the most important profession in the world. Teachers impact every market and every other profession. How we think about teachers impacts everything.

This is not a moral argument. It's an economic one.

This article originally appeared in iBlogAmerica on January 20, 2013. Mike Kleba has revised and reprinted his article here.

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You're just hydrating

3/6/2016

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TIP: you can hide so much water in a gin bottle

Hello from SXSWedu2016 in Austin. Everyone calls this the best education conference in the country and yet my crystal ball mostly predicts tacos, beer, and bbq.

I'm here with my good friend Josh Timlin and we're looking for seminars that don't suck. You too?

I'll be posting some of the sessions we'll be attending for the next week-- stuff that looks sexy and yet, sexy, too. And, by that, I mean, "good." I expect it to be a target rich environment.

In the meantime, you looking for a good time?
Try "Unsanctioned Professional Development," our session on Tues 11am at the Hilton, Salon A.

This hilarious commercial will tell you everything about dope teachers doing dope sh*t. Just like Kanye, only as public school teachers who eat school lunch.

Here's the pitch:
Lots of professional development turns teachers off: it’s boring, management-centered, and transactional. It's "paint by numbers" learning, where teachers attend most seminars and meetings because they are required to.

The problem? Teachers, fatigued by "proving" they are learning, lose interest in their own professional development. But most teachers actually want to learn and grow as professionals. Educators must also evolve and to hone their craft in this ever-changing landscape, but how? Join two teachers discussing UPD, a tool kit of techniques that puts teacher curiosity at the center of a teacher's growth. UPD helps equip (& energize) teachers to learn what they want, how they want.

See you on Tuesday and everywhere before and after.
And now? Pork in some form.

Let's get out there and change the world.
@mikekleba

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Was Your Teacher a Fashion Icon?

7/14/2015

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Yesterday, the cozy village of Manhattan witnessed the opening of the first ever New York Men's Fashion Week.

In an age of style-savvy rappers, red-carpet-swagged celebs, and bespoke-suited NBA stars, how is it possible that 2015 is the first year for NYMFW?

Even the men running for president are getting checked for freshness. So how is this first time for Fashion Week to go Dude?

More importantly, what the hell does this have to do with teachers or education?

Tyson Beckford attends the 2015 amfAR Inspiration Gala New York at Spring Studios on June 16, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

like teachers,
designers help others develop a point of view

See the World; See Yourself
Everyone has a style. Each of us has a wardrobe, no matter how casually curated. Even your most fashion-careless friend has a collection.

We all have a point of view.

And while very few of us ever attend a fashion show (let alone fashion week in New York City), we all witness the parade of style around us every day. Again, the most fashionably-tragic people have a sense of this. I know you're probably thinking about your dad, who cynically asserts that he wears the same khakis at least 3 times a week. The man cares about fashion: he just cares about not caring.

And that's the deal. Creating your style is personal. It takes time, experience, and relationships. And, to develop it, you need mentors.

Now take a fashion show like NYMFW. To be clear, a fashion show is a business convention at its very core. This is New York, baby. It's an arena for scrappers, innovators, and startups.

But fashion shows are more than a market place-they serve to direct and instruct. Fashion shows reflect and articulate cultural tastes; designers start trends,
shape trends, and cultivate trends.

Like educators, designers help others create and articulate a point of view.

Many fashion brands are named after people for a reason. In a world where stadiums, stores, and skyscrapers
are named after companies, this is worth noting. The fashion industry knows the power of a personal connection. We want to model ourselves after people we admire.

Teachers know this, too. You can remember the style of your favorite teachers-- whether it was way they dressed, talked, or thought about things. Damn, they were cool, right? They didn't teach you WHAT to think; they taught you HOW to think. The point: we need someone else's point of view to develop our own.

And that's why Fashion Week is also Teacher Week. It's all just teachers and students, son. And, speaking of school...

Public School, you can make it easy for yourself and just tweet my VIP pass to your show to @mikekleba. I mean, we should be hanging anyway, you know what I'm saying? #educatorsunite

Public School designers Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow

We need to know someone
else's style
to develop our
own style

photo credits:
-Albert Einstein, courtesy of Mental Floss. http://www.businessinsider.com/biography-of-albert-einstein-2013-1
-Public School, photo by Public School

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Teachers are Fast Companies

4/10/2015

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Teaching science isn’t just a science. It’s an art.

Everybody knows that science and science education are hot these days. The Oscars (and tons of ticket buying audience members) loved this year's nerdpics The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game. Whether it’s on TV (with PBS's Neil deGrasse Tyson or AMC's Breaking Bad) or on YouTube (with Bozeman Science or AsapSCIENCE), science is dope. Science sells-- and the audience is growing.

Like with a startup in any market, whether it be a taco truck or a new app, being hot can turn into success fast- especially in schools. Teachers who know how to gather, focus, and replicate this kind of interest can build a program that can last for years. It's entrepreneurship at its most fundamental.

This is no small feat in a culture always looking to save money by cutting programming in schools. I often read how difficult it is to launch a winning company.

Try launching a winning (and challenging) program in a school. Especially in the field of science.

BEING HOT CAN TURN INTO SUCCESS FAST IN SCHOOLS

TRY LAUNCHING A WINNING PROGRAM IN A SCHOOL

“Well, we started the year with some kids assuming leadership positions. But they didn’t stay in them,” Steve Peroni tells me. “The students who worked the hardest took over. Which is how it should be. I named a new captain for the national competition the day after we won regionals.”

Peroni, along with Sara LeMar, coaches North Shore High School’s Robotics Team, located on the coast of Long Island, NY. A couple of weeks ago, their team, RoboGym, won the county regional title. It's a first-time championship for a team in only its fourth year in operation.

“A lot of kids want to be involved in Robotics, especially now that the team is having some success. I tell them that nothing matters more than being here and doing the work,” says Peroni, sounding a lot like anybody running a hot new startup.

Peroni and LeMar have one of the toughest jobs in a high school: teaching Physics. Physics isn’t hard to teach because the work is empirically more difficult: it’s harder because it flies against a cultural tide of habits. We want things fast and we want it simple—physics is rarely these things. Physics requires time and repetition to comprehend and employ fundamentals, similar to learning to play the piano or to be a great swimmer. It's not for those who dabble.

Make no mistake: students hunger for these sorts of challenges. It’s just that our culture typically swings toward behavior with a faster payoff.

So, when science gets hot, teachers like Peroni and LeMar jump to capitalize- this time with an after school program. These teachers’ battle lines are the same as those held by any who run a company. It takes leadership, hard work, a propensity for risk, and the desire for big payoff. You have to know your market, develop your team, leverage resources, and struggle through challenges. Running a business is a science, sure. But, like teaching, it's also an art.

If student interest were measured in investment dollars, RoboGym would be a venture capitalist's dream. Watching Peroni, LeMar, and their team, first place medals around their necks, swaggering down the hallway, you don’t just see a program led by kickass teachers.

You see a company led by kickass entrepreneurs.

images from
Focus Features, The Theory of Everything

http://www.murraymitchell.com/2013/01/breaking-bad-split-face-poster/

http://www.northshoreschools.org/15April/hs-robotics-win/index.html

IF STUDENT INTEREST WERE MEASURED in INVESTMENT DOLLARS, ROBOGYM WOULD BE
A VENTURE CAPITALIST'S DREAM

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surf school

3/3/2015

2 Comments

it’s impossible to be cool and complain about how much something weighs.

Surf school starts in the sand.

To be clear: it starts when you hump your 35lb board over half a sandy mile from the surf shop to the surf line. I’m not saying that the board was heavy—it’s impossible to be cool and complain about how much something weighs and, let’s be honest: I’m determined to sound very cool while I describe my first time surfing—but I am saying that the sand was hot.

Crazy hot. Cook an egg hot. Motorcycle muffler hot. Erase all creases in your feet and leave your footprints untraceable by the FBI hot.

“I pray thee, good Mercutio the day is hot” hot.

So, yes: surf school starts in the sand. And, after schlepping my board across the blazing beach in Salyulita, a Mexican town north of Puerto Vallarta, I am ready to be in the water. But first: a tutorial-- in the cool sand, thankfully under the shade of a gathering of palms in the midafternoon sun.

“Put your whole body on the board—just lay down and let your feet hang off the back,” Gary from France tells us. “Feel the board with your body.” He’s the fit, charming instructor who gets immediately down to business, his accent both softening his direct orders while also completely melting girls in our group and, Jesus, me, too. “You’re too far forward,” chirps Dana, our other instructor, a super fox from the Czech Republic who calls a spade a spade. With their deeply bronze tans, white flashing smiles, and ripped physiques, our instructors had us mesmerized. We hung onto every word (why are surfers such hotties? Because they work their bods, I learn later, my whole sore body barking angrily at me during margarita medication time at dinner).

In the dappled shade, we stretch, boards beneath us, practicing our strokes. We are told to pop up on both feet and to be aware of how being too far back on the board will apply the brakes while being too far forward will bury the nose. We get safety tips: Dana tells us to keep the board between us and the beach. Gary warns us to keep the tether from our ankle to the board clear of our other foot. “You don’t want to be under a wave with your legs tied together.” Sounds like good advice.

And, in about 7 minutes, our instruction on land is over.

“Let’s go,” says Dana, not waiting to see if we follow. She and Gary zip up their form fitting wet suits and lead us straight out into the surf—and, the newbs that we are, simply walk behind them. And, within 15 minutes, everyone has gotten up and surfed at least one wave. The whole lesson took fewer than 25 minutes. Announcement: I am a surfer now. A surfer who surfs.

And that’s what I call good game.

These surfing instructors put on a teaching clinic that morning. It was goal oriented, student centered, and teacher led. It had authentic assessment, practical applications, and demanded performance from every pupil.

They didn’t overdo the help because they didn’t offer much. Or, at least, not much help that impeded our own process. Sarah and Molly, for instance, just wanted to do it their own way. Chris had some questions about fine points. Scott wanted to jump straight to pulling off 360s. The point is: the teachers weren’t interested in doing anything other than help each of us in the way we needed to be helped.

“Let’s go,” says Dana, not waiting to see if we follow. She and Gary zip up their form fitting wet suits and lead us straight out into the surf.

They didn't see us as students. They saw us as surfers.

Gary and Dana anticipated our questions but left room for our own discovery. They promised us nothing but believed in our reasonable ability to do anything we tried. They seemed utterly unattached to our respective failures but were the first to yell “you look beautiful up there!” or “lean into it, you’re killing it!”

Our surf instructors were great teachers for the most important reason: they didn’t see us as students.

They saw us as surfers.

And we, seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of our beautiful teachers, believed them.

2 Comments

MAKE SENSE OF WHAT'S HAPPENING

1/3/2015

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<<Previous

Forward>>

NOBODY influences
LIKE A TEACHER

Chief Teachers

there is a surging energy out there

a teacher leadership movement waiting to happen

Farm to Table, Education Style

what the hell does this have to do with education?

A school's quality
ingredients are its
teachers.

Teachersplaining

he didn't want to
understand anything-
he just wanted a
fast answer.

...and teaching has
little to do with
fast answers.

"Explaining" itself
is the problem.

When we
explain things, we diminish curiosity.

Boredom is learned

We celebrate our ability to see patterns in things; we reward those with the most correct answers.

We begin to see only the patterns we've seen before.

we learn to stop learning.

school yourself

what did your favorite teacher actually teach you?

We love a brilliant genius around whom the STUDENTS orbit.

Anyone can teach anything, we think.
it's a simple transaction.

Great teachers don't teach subjects;
they teach learning.

it's true in every field:

your best manager, leader, or boss helped you understand and execute the work on your own.

You're just hydrating

Was Your Teacher a Fashion Icon?

like teachers,
designers help others develop a point of view

We need to know someone
else's style
to develop our
own style

Teachers are Fast Companies

BEING HOT CAN TURN INTO SUCCESS FAST IN SCHOOLS

TRY LAUNCHING A WINNING PROGRAM IN A SCHOOL

IF STUDENT INTEREST WERE MEASURED in INVESTMENT DOLLARS, ROBOGYM WOULD BE
A VENTURE CAPITALIST'S DREAM

surf school

it’s impossible to be cool and complain about how much something weighs.

“Let’s go,” says Dana, not waiting to see if we follow. She and Gary zip up their form fitting wet suits and lead us straight out into the surf.

They didn't see us as students. They saw us as surfers.

MAKE SENSE OF WHAT'S HAPPENING

just a Fact:

Mike kleba

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NOBODY influences LIKE A TEACHER

there is a surging energy out there a teacher leadership movement waiting to happen

what the hell does this have to do with education?

​A school's quality​ingredients are its ​teachers.

he didn't want tounderstand anything-he just wanted afast answer.​​...and teaching haslittle to do withfast answers.

​​"Explaining" itselfis the problem.

﻿When we explain things, we diminish curiosity.

We celebrate our ability to see patterns in things; we reward those with the most correct answers.

We begin to see only the patterns we've seen before.

we learn to stop learning.

what did your favorite teacher actually teach you?

We love a brilliant genius around whom the STUDENTS orbit.

Anyone can teach anything, we think. it's a simple transaction.

Great teachers don't teach subjects; they teach learning.

it's true in every field: your best manager, leader, or boss helped you understand and execute the work on your own.

like teachers, designers help others develop a point of view

We need to know someone else's style to develop our own style

BEING HOT CAN TURN INTO SUCCESS FAST IN SCHOOLS

TRY LAUNCHING A WINNING PROGRAM IN A SCHOOL

IF STUDENT INTEREST WERE MEASURED in INVESTMENT DOLLARS, ROBOGYM WOULD BE A VENTURE CAPITALIST'S DREAM

it’s impossible to be cool and complain about how much something weighs.

“Let’s go,” says Dana, not waiting to see if we follow. She and Gary zip up their form fitting wet suits and lead us straight out into the surf.

They didn't see us as students. They saw us as surfers.

just a Fact:

Mike kleba

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NOBODY influences
LIKE A TEACHER

there is a surging energy out there

a teacher leadership movement waiting to happen

A school's quality
ingredients are its
teachers.

he didn't want to
understand anything-
he just wanted a
fast answer.

...and teaching has
little to do with
fast answers.

"Explaining" itself
is the problem.

When we
explain things, we diminish curiosity.

Anyone can teach anything, we think.
it's a simple transaction.

Great teachers don't teach subjects;
they teach learning.

it's true in every field:

your best manager, leader, or boss helped you understand and execute the work on your own.

like teachers,
designers help others develop a point of view

We need to know someone
else's style
to develop our
own style

IF STUDENT INTEREST WERE MEASURED in INVESTMENT DOLLARS, ROBOGYM WOULD BE
A VENTURE CAPITALIST'S DREAM