Do You Get the NYT Mag?

We do, but it's also available online. A couple weeks ago, there was an article on how to make a better teacher that I thought was interesting. If you didn't read it, check it out here.

The article basically lays out two different possible ways to improve teachers nationwide. It argues that teaching well is not an innate ability, but a learnable skill that should be taught in schools of education in colleges across the country.

As I read the article, I tired to decide whether I agreed with that idea. Most of the great teachers that I've had seemed to simply have been born that way-- but it's not that they were doing things that normal humans would find impossible. They had simply honed their skills through years of experience-- and had been interested enough in teaching to want to hone their skills in the first place.

Something that the article failed to touch on (and that maybe isn't as true in elementary schools as it seems to be in high schools) is that many bad teachers don't seem to be bad because they don't know how to manage their classes or how to lead or explain activities in a sensible way. A lot of bad teachers are bad teachers because they don't know how to do that, and they don't care. They're burnt out, bored, hopeless, underpaid, overworked, and maybe chose the wrong profession to begin with.

I agree that many teachers can surely be trained to be better, and Lemov's 49 points, and the MKT test seem to be good beginning. But before teachers can get better, the ones who don't want to get better should leave.