It's Not Rocket Science

So if teaching's not rocket science, what is it like? If it's not, in the words of educational psychologist Lee Schulman, "the most complex, most challenging, and most demanding, subtle, nuanced,and frightening activity that our species has ever invented," then what is it like?

The best answer I've heard is that teaching, parenting, and counselling are alot alike. That observation comes from my sister, a homeschool mother of five who also has a master's degree in psychology and extensive experience counselling people with eating disorders. Another excellent description of teaching comes from Norman Atkins in his foreword to Doug Lemov's outstanding new book, "Teach Like a Champion." Atkins describes Lemov's study of outstanding teachers this way:

For the past dozen years, he has been standing in the back of hundreds of classrooms, watching thousands of hours of teachers' game films, analyzing their teaching moves with more enthusiasm and attention to detail than virtually anyone else in the history of American education . . . .

What he discovered is surprising for its simplicity and portends good news for the teaching profession . . . what he repeatedly saw and captured on video,beyond the no-shortcuts preparation and an essential mind-set of high expectations, were highly skilled individuals, working with a common, discrete set of tools, building systems of classroom culture and instruction, brick by brick.

We need to be realistic when we talk about teaching. A false view of teaching leads to unrealistic expectations and is a recipe for failure. When school superintendents and leaders such as Charlotte Danielson compare teaching to rocket science and claim that it is the hardest thing on the planet, bad consequences follow. The "teacher as rocket scientist" view of teaching allows administrators to set unrealistic expectations, to make everything harder and more complex, to disable, make dependent, and micromanage teachers, and to delegitimize common sense and personal experience.

Doug Lemov's new book, "Teach Like a Champion," is must reading for any teacher and is a welcome antidote to those who compare teaching to brain surgery or rocket science.