educe: bring out or develop (something latent or potential) (math teacher turned lawyer turned math teacher again turned mostly school leader w/ a side of TOK)
Shekou, Shenzen, PRC
Joined July 2009
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1. Clarify what students must know and be able to do
2. Teach well
3. Read and write about the subject a lot
and most important, as much as possible, say "No" to doing everything else unless/until you are happy these are going really well, because of opportunity costs.
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Craig Ortner retweeted
Every time my kids say I’m “cringe” while I’m doing something I enjoy, I tell them, “Oh well. I’m doing what I want. Hope you feel free enough to do the same one day.” 😂😂😂😂
You can’t shame me into being a grownup with no fun!!!!!!
Craig Ortner retweeted
Sometimes math learners wonder what course they should tackle next after calculus.
Learning math through calculus feels like climbing a tree trunk and then reaching the edge where it branches out in all directions.
What branch do you climb next? You've got so many choices that it might feel overwhelming.
Here's my take. What I recommend depends on whether you want to
A) become an academic mathematician, i.e., major in math, do a PhD, and create/prove new mathematical theorems, or
B) build math-heavy systems that solve real-life applied problems, e.g., rocket engineering or any kind of AI/ML/quant/algo-heavy software development.
If your goal is to become an academic mathematician, I would recommend to take "methods of proof" after calculus.
It’s an introduction to what proofs are, how to write them, and common techniques for approaching various kinds of proofs.
Why? Because every year, countless aspiring math majors show up to university without a background in proof-writing, and then get their butt handed to them by proof-based courses because proof-writing is not yet second nature to them.
Coming into a Real Analysis or Abstract Algebra class without fluency in reading/writing proofs being second nature is like coming into a Shakespeare literary analysis class with shaky or nonexistent reading and writing skills.
The content matter is challenging enough that it's overwhelmingly difficult for most learners to pick up supporting skills on the fly.
On the other hand, if your goal is to build math-heavy systems, then after calculus I would recommend linear algebra and then probability / statistics.
Why? Because those are two subjects that show up in basically every hardcore application of math.
Craig Ortner retweeted
If you haven’t read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, you don’t understand what your phone is doing to you. He wrote it in 1985, before the internet, and it is still the best book on the subject. Postman’s point is simple. Nobody has to ban books to make people stop thinking. You just have to give them something more fun to look at. Do that long enough and they lose the ability to pay attention to anything that isn’t entertaining. The news. Politics. Their own lives. He saw it happening with television. Now it is happening in your pocket, every day. Read it and you will finally understand why you can’t focus.
Craig Ortner retweeted
There's a kind of math teaching that is so obsessed with procedures, it basically turns into discovery learning but for concepts: "You'll figure out the concepts on your own later when you have the procedures by heart."
Craig Ortner retweeted
The trickiest thing here is that "direct instruction" is the typical way that teachers in the US teach...but what research supports is a particular brand of direct instruction that is not "just tell them" but more active, fussier, requiring some finesse.
"I first learned about direct instruction when I was first reporting on education. And I learned about it and I definitely learned -- and I would say absorbed -- some of the negative ideas about it and watched some videos of it myself and had little kids at the time and thought, 'I don't think I would want my kids in a school like that.'
And it was really the reading all the research on reading and it kept talking about 'explicit and systematic' and I was like, 'Wait a minute, they're talking about direct teaching. I know about that.' It brought me back to that.
Then I took a second look. And when you take a second look at the evidence, you have to ask, like, 'Okay, wait a minute, there's a real disconnect here.' Huge amount of evidence for it, and not liked by both the education establishment and I would say by much of the journalism establishment."
Craig Ortner retweeted
If you're planning to talk about Sold a Story with your colleagues or friends, you can try out a draft version of our new discussion guides. Give us feedback. We're still working on them. Final version will be out with Ep 7. righttoreadproject.com/sold-…
Craig Ortner retweeted
Today, Modern Classrooms Project is announcing that we have raised $12 million to build a free Tier 1 math curriculum for middle and high school, grounded in cognitive science.
The more time I spend in math education, the more concerned I get. Outcomes have been falling for more than a decade, and the steepest declines are among the lowest-performing students.
Meanwhile, many of the leading cognitive scientists and learning scientists have been sounding the alarm that their research is not being applied at scale in math classrooms. We think they might be right.
So we are building a curriculum that treats cognitive science as its north star. We plan to launch middle school in summer 2027 and high school in summer 2028.
Three things to know about what we are building:
1. It will be free. All lessons and materials, teacher-facing and student-facing, will be publicly available online, printable, and modifiable.
2. It will be built with the researchers. In the coming weeks, we will announce a research advisory committee of leading learning scientists. We will work as hard as we can to make sure the structure, design, and underlying content align with what cognitive science tells us about how students, especially struggling learners, master math.
3. It will work with or without technology. Modern Classrooms Project has spent years at the intersection of technology and classroom instruction. This curriculum will have two clear implementation pathways. One that is completely paper-based, built around whole-group, teacher-facilitated instruction. The other will be designed to leverage technology to enable flexible pacing, mastery-based progressions, and increased 1-1 and small-group support from educators.
Perhaps most importantly, we want to understand what works. While we have conviction that following cognitive science is the right path, we are deeply committed to trying to move the field forward so that students can achieve their full potential in math, particularly students farthest from opportunity.
To learn more about what we are building and explore ways to get involved, go to modernclassrooms.org/curricu….
Craig Ortner retweeted
I built FactFreaks to get all of my students up to speed with their basic math facts. It's been gratifying beyond belief to see it work just as well for students everywhere as it did in my classroom all those years ago. Here's to free and fun fact fluency for all!
Craig Ortner retweeted
It looks like Australia, Northern Ireland and the US are discovering the "Science of Learning."
I have a protip from someone who went through the same thing. It's important, it really is, but knowledge of the science of learning doesn't necessarily make a difference to what people do in the classroom.
Drawing a line from theory to practice is really really hard, but the process can be accelerated, by moving to concrete strategies and training faster. Of course, theory and practice is a "balance" and we "need both", but in a zero sum situation, try and get to the practice as quick as you can. People have worked a lot of this stuff out now, and you don't need to try and figure it out for yourself.
Craig Ortner retweeted
It’s easy to blame the teachers or the schools when you hear bad student experiences, but put yourself in their shoes. What would you do if you were asked to teach “Algebra for All” to kids struggling with basic arithmetic—fail everyone?
The incentives guarantee the outcome.
Craig Ortner retweeted
A few truly egregious choices here, the worst being the suggestion that there are 96 TV programs from the last twenty-six years that are better than Community.
Craig Ortner retweeted
Two things going on here:
1. Students who don’t do the homework they’re assigned are better off NOT being given homework
2. Students who do their homework are better off if you give them homework
Craig Ortner retweeted
The goal of basketball is to win, the point of playing basketball is a bunch of other things that are harder to articulate. Words like "fun" or "exercise" don't easily capture what you can get from the game.
The goal of school is to learn a bunch of skills.
Craig Ortner retweeted
"The great challenge of teaching is not to transmit information—machines do
that cheaply now—but to engineer those moments of genuine understanding
reliably enough that students come to crave them." -- Another great piece by mathematician Dan Rockmore.
As A.I. presses harder on the academic enterprise, we might look to a place where process is its own reward. newyorker.com/culture/the-we…
Craig Ortner retweeted
You can't Rosenshine your way out of a Curriculum problem*
But you also can't Curriculum your way out of a Rosenshine problem**
And you can't ANYTHING your way out of a behaviour problem.
Craig Ortner retweeted
Your new math students don't get fractions.
They aren’t ready to go forward, and you can’t go back. Same problem every year.
But not this year.
This year have them fix the problem themselves with the FREE Fraction Basics Bundle from YouTeachYou on Teachers Pay Teachers:
14 example-filled “See it, Do it, Check it” activities, including -
• Factoring & Multiples
• Fraction Examples & Non-Examples
• Equivalent Fractions
• Simplifying Fractions
• Mixed & Improper Fractions
• Fractions on an Inch Ruler
• Comparing Unlike Fractions
No prep. No work for you. No strings. No kidding.
Sound too good to be true?
There’s an easy way to find out! 👇