TFA Founder Kopp Dodges Questions with “Read my book.”
Larry Cuban (photo by the author)
Larry Cuban wrote a wonderful blog post recently, one that I’ve been planning to discuss in more detail, though now I’m going to bring it up in a way I hadn’t originally intended. In “Jazz, Basketball, and Teacher Decision Making” Cuban offers interesting analogies and scientific studies to illuminate just how complex teaching really is. Teachers make several dozen instructional decisions every hour, hundreds per day. For those decisions to be effective in promoting student learning, teachers need to know the difference between the meaningful information and the meaningless “noise” that we take in every second as we observe a classroom. We need a clear sense of priorities for each student and for each moment – and though this idea will shock some people who barely understand teaching – the top priority is not always to stick to the lesson plan. (More on that idea in