Searching for What Makes an Effective Teacher
March 12, 2010 
In my last post, I mentioned a recent article in the New York Times Magazine about a handful of educators intent on figuring out how to teach effectively.
One of these educators, Doug Lemov, has been studying teachers who are already effective. (There have always been effective teachers, but they haven't been studied!) He has distilled what they do and what they say about what they do, into a forthcoming book, “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.” These techniques are already part of the 16 charter schools he helped found called Uncommon Schools. Uncommon Schools also has a lot in common with other effective charter schools I posted about last year (September 18, 2009).
Another educator trying to figure out how to teach well, Deborah Loewenstein Ball of Michigan State, focuses not on technique, but on knowledge: What does a teacher need to know about math in order to be an effective math teacher? She has come up with Math Knowledge for Teachers. It comprises not only ordinary math, but knowledge of what might be going on in a student’s head with respect to math. The NYT Magazine article quotes Ball as saying, “Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think.” Yet another educator mentioned in the article, Pam Grossman of Stanford, is trying to figure out the best techniques to use to teach literature.
This turn of events in education research heartens me. At last, after an extended, damaging period of inattention, education seems to be attracting quite a few imaginative, spiritually alive investigators. These people seem determined to ferret out or invent excellent, effective teaching methods. They seem devoted to the principle that every single child can learn if only their teachers know how to teach them. And they are proving, with test results, that this is true. What a much more wonderful America we will live in when every child has every opportunity to learn.
Reader Comments (2)
This comment is in response to the last three posts you wrote.
As a soon-to-be college graduate, I have seen myself and many of my peers go through different attitudes regarding education. I started to acknowledge this problem in myself about halfway through my college career. Since then I have realized that it is not only a spiritual challenge for educators but also for students. Most students today do not care about the education they receive (as long as they aren't paying for it) and would rather lose themselves in technology, detrimental social life and in popular gossip. You said, "How could Nature have allowed this situation to evolve?" I don't think Nature alone let it happen; Nurture is the main culprit: our parents, educators and especially society has caused young people to react and behave the way that they do. Kids today are learning and experiencing things at such young ages, things that would normally have been discovered many years later. Our society is evolving at a faster rate than our own brains.
It's mostly not up to the students. Social media of the modern era has, in many ways, brainwashed the young population, and it's only getting worse. There are less and less opportunities for students to find a way out of this folly, mostly because they are no longer clearly provided with the means to do so. This is why I think we need teachers to be taught how to really teach so they can teach students how to think and learn for themselves. Overcoming this spiritual challenge is crucial for both our educators and young people.
Unfortunately, I don't seem much real change coming for a little while. I think my generation was the first one to be hit with the problem fully, and it's for that reason why we will be the ones correcting it, having experienced not only our teacher's mistakes but our own.
What a thoughtful comment. So glad to hear from you.