Alice’s Restaurant with Dave Cormier
August27
A fantastic conversation with Dave Cormier of Ed Tech Talk on Webcast Academy. I will likely be doing a semi-regular show there on politics and policy.
Show notes:
- I give background to this series on discussions on Education Reform
- I give Dave a choice of topics (notice that we never get to three because he says he’ll fly through the first two, but we spend most of the show on them)
- Dave and I discuss the assumptions and flaws built-in to education research
- We then digress into Direct Instruction and scripted curriculum
- Alice describes Direct Instruction curriculum and her experience actually teaching with it.
- Dave talks about adjusting instruction for the teacher and how it may be more important (or as important) as adjusting for the students.
- We segue into how our expectations as professionals and how we should teach can undermine each other.
- Then we take a turn onto scheduling and the idea of scheduling for periods of much different duration (30 minutes, 1 hour, two and half hours), and adjusting instruction with those constraints.
Conclusion: You can’t anticipate everything about your class and how they will learn, good teachers need to be flexible.
I just finished listening to this. I especially liked the part about how curriculum should be adapted to teaching styles, since teachers are a key component in the implementation scheme. I’m not a “happy clappy” teacher, like Dave, either. In fact, long ago when I taught swimming lessons, I had to decline opportunities to work with the 3-5 year old groups because my cheeks got sore from all the smiling. No kidding.
Alice,
I just wanted to let you know that your blog will be one of five I’ll be highlighting on Blog Day 2007 on August 31st.
Keep up the great work!
Hi Alice,
I enjoyed your show. I think you’re proof that you can innovate your teaching of the Open Court curriculum and I apprreciate your point that if you want to serve low income students you have to go where they’re teaching such programs.
Having just gone to another week of Open Court training, I just want to make the point that teachers are not supposed to read the book as a script. So, in truth, all teachers should be deviating from “the script” and should be doing what you’re saying…monitoring comprehension and asking higher level thinking questions. If teachers aren’t doing that it shouldn’t be blamed on the manual. Teachers need to realize the need for moving to higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and can’t rely on any book for it.
I wonder if what’s needed is improved teacher training.
Mr. Needleman, this is high praise that you liked this even though you disagree with me. I expect we will never see eye-to-eye about the motives of Open Court’s publishers, and lets face it, attribution of motive is fraught with hazards. I could go on all day about my experience being referred to scripts and procedures, and you could make your case too. So, let’s just let that dog lie where it sleeps because I do have to respect that you have definitely moved beyond the script and have really used higher order skills development in your teaching. Thanks for reading my blog!
Wow, I was replying to Matthew, and I missed that comment by Larry! Thanks, I’m honored!