Elementary teachers make .7 decisions per minute of teaching, according to research cited recently by Larry Cuban. A teacher has 1200 to 1500 interactions with students per day. The numbers are significant because, as Cuban explains, they show the "astonishing amount of cognitive labor" that goes into both teaching and rebounding, the "cascade of instantaneous micro-decisions" that teachers and successful rebounders make. He concludes "effective teachers, then, like top jazz musicians and basketball rebounders improvise–decide on the spot–as they deal with both the routine and unexpected in the art of teaching." It's a must-read response to postsJohn Merrow and I have written in the Huffington Post about how Duncan is over-focused on a narrow set of statistics and not enough on subtle classroom basics that can
