Jimmy:

We’ve lost another good math teacher, that’s what’s wrong. [..] I know everybody wants to be the big cheese and be the big hero. But what we need is teachers, not more professors, advocates, rabble-rousers, or whatever.

Mathematically, what’s wrong with this schedule? I mean, it trips me up every time I look at it.

So in case you were wondering:

• CS 106A – Programming Methodology. Mehran Sahami. Introductory Java, basically. My program requires me to do a minor and I’d like to get something under my belt to help me articulate theory to classroom teachers who may not have the means or interest to pick up a journal. Incidentally, everything about this class is available online, even to non-students. [Video. Coursework.]
• EDUC 200C – Introduction to Statistics in Education. Kenji Hakuta.
• EDUC 250A – Inquiry and Assessment in Education. Mitchell Stevens, Susanna Loeb. Towards a research proposal.
• EDUC 325A – Proseminar. John Willinsky, Martin Carnoy. Part one of three classes required of all doctoral candidates. They’re trying to get us up to speed on the entire history of schooling, basically. First-week reading included the LA Times value-added kerfuffle. Next week we’re into Adam Smith and Rousseau.
• EDUC 329X – Teacher Professional Development. Hilda Borko. What works and doesn’t work in professional development? How do you move a professional development program from “boutique” (where the person who developed the program also facilitates it) to a scalable, sustainable program that is effective for non-volunteers and can be facilitated by anybody?
• EDUC 465 – Pedagogy of Teacher Education. Pamela Grossman. How do other professions – nurses, rabbis, pilots, etc. – induct new members and what can teacher developers learn from them?

Strays:

1. Maybe my expectations were soft going in but I love every class. We’re doing three-hour blocks and all of the professors, many of whom are known more for publishing than teaching, know what to do with that time.
2. I’m also a big fan of my cohort: fifty-ish people, none of whom seem particularly interested in comparing resumes, undergraduate GPAs, Feedburner subscription numbers, that sort of thing, which is great. Everyone seems well aware of what one of the professors said day one, that “we’re all here by accident.”
3. The iPad is chewing its way through grad school and, with printing fees running ten cents per page, it may well pay for itself before this is over. I’m doing Papers for cataloging PDFs, SimpleNote for notetaking [BTW: SimpleNote scarfed two of my essays, reverting them back to their first saved state. I don’t recommend SimpleNote.], Google Calendar for storing assignments.
4. If the only outcome of these four or five years is a paper and a few letters after my name, somebody please punch me.

Any advice from those who have been here, any questions from those who haven’t yet, you know where to put them.

Avery Pickford. Three reasons.

• He’s a DFW-style expert, the kind of academic whose research is virally accessible to laypeople.
• He composes some relentlessly good rubrics for good math instruction.
• He commutes easily between the two warring math factions. I’m referring both to the evenhandedness of his most recent rubric and also to the grace with which he inserted himself into a debate at a recent math circle meeting concerning calculator use, the sort of debate that usually lures the blustering ideologues out of hiding but which saw the young Pickford articulating a lot of justice and respect between both sides.