It’s called a case study.

Simulation will never replace cold hard experience, but any attempt at facsimile is better than yet another list of maxims in my book. I’m interested to see what you come up with.

I am curious as to whether a video or print version of ‘episodes’ (or ‘case studies’) would exists on an initial level, followed by a virtual ‘commenting’ layer of social networking/solution-sharing that allows each example to be immediately engaged by anyone eager to play pre-service teacher or mentor.

I am intrigued enough to sit back quietly at this point, waiting to see what you come up with, Dan.

To be clear, I merely meant that it sounded like Dan was describing something similar to the case study model used in various graduate programs. I take it that most MEd programs don’t use it?

It occurs to me I may have sounded a little uppity.

Also, the problem with a written guide is that knowing with your head, while reflecting, what might be a good solution is one thing. What you can make your emotions, your body do – especially in the short term – is quite another.

“Learning” means such different things. It means acquiring an insight, which takes seconds, and it means changing emotional responses, and shaping behaviors and habits, which take lots of time and are driven by quite different factors, and where the learning curve depends a lot on your personal history. It’s almost strange that we even use one word for describing such different processes. I’m just echoing age-old distinctions between knowing-that and knowing-how, or the concept/skill distinction, I guess, and my point (if there is any) is that more attention to the mechanics of acquiring the latter kind of “knowledge” is what I would need, and where a book does only so much.

I don’t think this will work, Dan.

I’ve been following this series of posts with increasing skepticism, although I doubt neither your brilliance nor your good intent.

Someone wrote the key point in their comment: management solutions depend utterly upon structures, expectations, and reactions that are *cumulative*– that is, that build upon themselves sequentially in space and time. (I’m sitting here feeling reverbs right now of crappy decisions I made three months ago. I could even tell you what moments those were.) A one-time simulation cannot approach that reality at all.

Now, you could certainly argue that *no* grad-school type management simulation, digital or not, can approach that cumulative reality, and that the Holodeck Approach is better by degrees, at least. I’d have to agree. But then I’d wonder about the efficacy of dedicating yourself to something which you can only improve by degrees by definition.

And this is the main thing I am stuck on, actually– something you so rightfully hammer home over and over in your posts: the appropriate, efficient, and effective allocation of your personal resources as a teacher.

There are hundreds of classroom management consultants, tinkering with hundreds of permutations of management. There’s only one of you. I think your resources– at least for now– are better allocated towards helping us do what you, Dan Meyer, do best– and *love* best: making *math content* come alive.

Take it or leave it.

Amazon books on classroom management= 3,596.
Amazon books on secondary math education= 210.

And I apologize for not being clear: I’m not suggesting at all that you should limit yourself to blogging. Nor that you couldn’t contribute something cool to classroom management.

All I’m saying is that I don’t know if a saturated market, limited returns, and a still somewhat green teacher managerially (forgive me. so am I), is an algorithm you want to spend your resources solving.

But you’re a frickin’ rock star in math, dude. We all know that. You should work where you shine.

Beyond this, it occurs to me there’s a fairly global perspective that needs to be considered as well. Math is what’s going to make the O2 atmospheric bubbles work on Mars when global warming does us all in, not digital mentoring. I think there’s a strong argument to be made that math needs to be rendered authentic, interesting and accessible, and teachers trained in how to do that, immediately– dare I say urgently.

I wish someone had done it for me when I was in school.

H,

Math IS that important. Holy crow. And when it takes off its bifocals, pocket protector and bow tie, it’s gorgeous, too.