Improvising is Good Teaching
In Larry Cuban’s recent blog post Jazz, Basketball, and Teacher Decision-Making, he serves up two excellent analogies to help readers understand the complex nature of teaching. In the midst of a jazz improvisation or a sporting event, an individual makes one decision after another, each one a reaction to the moment. On one level, that might sound like a poor approach to teaching; improvising may suggest a lack of planning or uncertainty about how to move a lesson along. However, at our best, I think teachers create the conditions for improvisation – for students and for ourselves.
A jazz composer provides the themes and structure, but the
