Legal Commentary

Even though "Building a Better Teacher" is focused on pre-collegiate teachers, I think there's a lot of advice that translates for law school profs as well.  The article focuses in part on the debate at education schools over their curriculum, and that debate sounded fairly familiar. 

Traditionally, education schools divide their curriculums into three parts: regular academic subjects, to make sure teachers know the basics of what they are assigned to teach; ?foundations? courses that give them a sense of the history and philosophy of education; and finally ?methods? courses that are supposed to offer ideas for how to teach particular subjects. . . . A 2006 report found that 12 percent of education-school faculty members never taught in elementary or secondary schools themselves. Even some methods professors have never set foot in a classroom or have not done so recently. . . . [A] 2006 report written by Arthur Levine, the former president of Teachers College, the esteemed institution at Columbia University, assessed the state of teacher education this way: ?Today, the teacher-education curriculum is a confusing patchwork. Academic instruction and clinical instruction are disconnected. Graduates are insufficiently prepared for the classroom.? By emphasizing broad theories of learning rather than the particular work of the teacher, methods classes and the rest of the future teacher?s coursework often become what the historian Diane Ravitch called ?the contentless curriculum.?

The article comes down on the side of more "skills-based" training, personified by Doug Lemov, a one-time principal and now education consultant with Uncommon Schools.  Lemov has a new book coming out called "Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College," and the NYT article does a nice job in selling its core principles.  Among them are "Cold Call," described this way:

In Cold Call, [Technique] No. 22, stolen from Harvard Business School, which Lemov attended, the students don?t raise their hands ? the teacher picks the one who will answer the question. Lemov?s favorite variety has the teacher ask the question first, and then say the student?s name, forcing every single student to do the work of figuring out an answer.

To illustrate cold-calling . . . , [Lemov] showed clips of four very different teachers: Mr. Rector, whose seventh graders stand up next to their chairs as he paces among them, lobbing increasingly difficult geometry problems; Ms. Lofthus, who leans back in a chair, supercasual, and smiles warmly when she surprises one second grader by calling on him twice in a row; Ms. Payne, whose kindergartners jump in their seats, clap and sing along when she introduces ?in-di-vid-u-al tuu-urrns, listen for your na-aame?; and Ms. Driggs, a petite blonde with a high voice who calls the process ?hot calling? and tells her fifth graders that the hardest part will be that they are not allowed to raise their hands.

Apparently, cold-calling has become fairly common in primary and secondary education.  Even the Socratic method appears to be in use.  Here's an example the article provides of an exemplary teacher:

Deborah Loewenberg Ball, an assistant professor who also taught math part time at an East Lansing elementary school . . . started her day by calling on a boy known to the researchers as Sean.

?I was just thinking about six,? Sean began. ?I?m just thinking, it can be an odd number, too.? Ball did not shake her head no. Sean went on, speaking faster. ?Cause there could be two, four, six, and two ? three twos, that?d make six!?

?Uh-huh,? Ball said.

?And two threes,? Sean said, gaining steam. ?It could be an odd and an even number. Both!?

He looked up at Ball, who was sitting in a chair among the students, wearing a black-and-red jumper and oversize eyeglasses. She continued not to contradict him, and he went on not making sense. Then Ball looked to the class. ?Other people?s comments?? she asked calmly.

. . . Ball had a goal for that day?s lesson, and it was not to investigate the special properties of the number six. Yet by entertaining Sean?s odd idea, Ball was able to teach the class far more than if she had stuck to her lesson plan. By the end of the day, a girl from Nigeria had led the class in deriving precise definitions of even and odd; everyone ? even Sean ? had agreed that a number could not be both odd and even; and the class had coined a new, special type of number, one that happens to be the product of an odd number and two. They called them Sean numbers.

The article got me thinking that there's a lot more crossover between teaching math and teaching law than I expected.  Perhaps if we want law professors to be better teachers, maybe they need to study . . . teaching.  Any ed school folks out there with thoughts on this?