Absolutely nothing. As a teacher you only develop core skills ‘to a very high level’ by trying things, taking advice and then tweaking and adapting to what works best for you.

I’m with Chris. The only think I’d add might be: teaching is one of the most difficult forms of human interaction, and there’s no book, class, consultant or PD session that will change that. To be a good teacher, you’ve got to know yourself first–ser, no hacer–and that takes time. Also, don’t take it too seriously.

I know you are going to roll your eyes, but I’d say make a Powerpoint that informs or guides, but doesn’t teach it.

And I concur on the people skills. I mean, I’ve met some mutants in my day.

I believe you have to begin with the desire to learn. I have to reecho the comments of knowing yourself. Sometimes you let the kids teach you about yourself. If you are not comfortable with self, you will have a devil of a time……But keep the desire to learn.

I think it is more than loving kids today that makes you a successful teacher. When I started teaching that was the major requirement. Today that is only part of the equation. Teaching is more than just rocket science. Teachers change lives of their students. It is a profession more in line with a medical doctor. We have to enter our classrooms as professionals and we have to maintain that profession as learners and teachers.

I think every new teacher should know how to relax with their buddies in the pub on a Friday.

Seriously.

I mean, we work SO hard and hardly ever get a chance to chat with our colleagues about we are doing so I’d say new teachers need to know how to relax with their colleagues and not take home the stress from their jobs on the weekends.

Ditto to the idea of learning any skill at a “high level” in any other place but the trenches. I guess the exception to that might be having the mindset of a learner and a risk-taker.

I think that understanding children is so important, too. Teachers that understand how powerful a child’s mind is, and show kids reverence for that, empower students of all ages to think instead of regurgitate. I think this understanding comes from a combination of things: spending time with kids, studying child development, and hearing first-hand accounts from teachers regaling the rich discussions they’ve had with the thinkers in their classrooms.

I teach 2nd grade (and am having a particularly “challenging” year), so maybe I’m biased, but I think classroom discipline is so fundamental to teaching anything in the classroom. Having successful discipline stems back to the aforementioned understanding of who children are.

Ugh. I just about deleted this whole thing because I can’t quite articulate what I want to say, but maybe if I put this up someone else will say it for me :)

Oh & dan’s question asks what teachers need to learn at high-level, not what they have to have mastered. Developing the ability to “pull off” effective questioning takes years. Learning the importance & characteristics of such a pattern doesn’t take much time at all.

Theater. I can’t describe how beneficial it has been to have several years of stage experience (including improv) on hand to help my presentation. More teachers need this.

Loving and caring for kids. I look back at everything I learned as a camp counselor and it has served me well in the classroom the whole time.

Selling the narrative arc between larger units and making it so compelling that it would hurt not to move on to new material.

Classroom management.

Before you can do any “cool” activities you have to have the basic functions of a classroom operating at a high level.

Stuff I wish I knew the first day-

1. Have things for students to start before the bell rings.

2. Have a reasonable discipline plan, focusing on limiting “inappropriate talking” and legitimate consequences.

3. Using objectives- Taking the curriculum guide and making overall objectives for each day, that guides the stuff you want to teach and then answering those objectives as a group.

Bad prompt…the “high level” piece ruins it, as does the overly ed schooly “core practice”. How about: “What habit of mind (blatant theft from Sizer, et al) is most important to nurture, develop, and recruit for in new teachers before they enter the classroom for the first time?”

If that’s the question, then I agree with many other posters that reflection (and the accompanying ability to adapt based on the reflection) is the first among equals…reflection alone won’t get it done, but if you’re awful at some other key things, at least you’ll realize it and either get better or get out.

How to watch videos of other teachers teaching, and comment constructively (both good and bad) on them.

The reasons:
1.) It will expose teachers to a variety of teaching styles – and hopefully show that there are many that work well
2.) It will show a variety of responses to various situations – and hopefully give ideas for some strategies (like we learn from reading blogs or talking with colleagues)
3.) It will make the teacher-in-training aware of what goes on in a real teaching environment, instead of what’s in books.

I just made this idea up now. So I don’t know if it would REALLY be good. But watching a lot of real teachers teach. And talking about it informally in an loosely structured environment.

(Basically, another way to think of it: it puts lots of tools in the toolkit of new teachers… for when they get in the classroom themselves. I can imagine a moment like: “Oh, I remember that one teacher was having trouble with that one student, but she took him aside and talked to him about how she felt she was failing him… He responded well to that. I wonder if that would work for me and this kid.”

Wait, I re-read the prompt and I guess I don’t think this fits. But who the heck knows what a “core practice” is anyway. Ah, grad school. Enjoy!

Sam

Constructivism

Okay, it’s not core practice, but if you’re going to teach in elementary, you must have taken a gr. 12 math.

Here in Ontario, you can’t graduate HS without gr. 12 English and passing a Lit test, but you can opt out of math after gr. 9 or 10. You can then go on to attempt to teach math to little kids. And the gov’t wonders why the math scores don’t seem to be going up . . .

to laugh at oneself. If you can’t have a sense of humour about your foibles and failings then kids (esp high school) will eat you alive. I guarantee you they will laugh at you so why not preempt them.

Cheating with two ideas. Learn how to learn 30 names in 50 minutes – it’s your number one behaviour management tool!

Classroom management, as mentioned by a couple of others as well….

Yeah, you need to know if you like and/or relate to kids in general. Good first step.

But also, you need to be able to manage them in a group. You need to be able to create authority (be it benevolent or otherwise) that the kids respect. If you can’t get students to work with and for you, then no lessons you present, no matter how student-centered, will create any learning.

I’m intrigued by how many of these comments regard teaching in general, rather than teaching mathematics. Then again, the prompt did not refer specifically to mathematics teachers and perhaps my expectations have been skewed by the context of your blog. Furthermore, I am conscious that the majority of the comments refer more to what I would call disposition (Caring, patience, open-mindedness) than core practice. (Is there a true distinction, or am I imagining that?)

I would agree, that the foundation of good teaching lies in the disposition of the teacher, however to focus solely on that belies the complexity of everything that comes after. Furthermore, it perpetuates the notion that teachers are born rather than made and that there is nothing we can do to improve upon what is already innate. I believe that disposition is also important to doctors, but I would never suggest that someone who really cares about patients and has patience and other virtues should be allowed to learn the practical skills of medicine on the job.

The complexity of the classroom experience requires that a teacher be proficient in a number of ‘core practices’. I would agree with previous posters (c.f. Jarrid and Sharon) that assessment, reflection and effective questioning are core practices. I would add problem posing to this list. As you exemplify, a teacher must be able to imagine and phrase problems for their students to solve that are relevant, purposeful and engaging, but also push students to extend their current understanding of mathematics. (Assuming, of course, that a teacher is able to engage in formative assessment to ascertain a students existing understanding of mathematics.)

This requires, but not exclusively, a flexible knowledge of content. A teacher must examine a context or problem and be able to imagine where it could go and what mathematics might emerge for students–both as a classroom community and as individuals. This is not taught in most math classes required of a secondary preservice teacher. A teacher must also be able to carefully plan a lesson around that problem so that there is a high probability that students who encounter mathematics (both intended and not) will have a venue for reflection on that mathematics and relating that encounter to others, including yourself.

Just my two cents. I am enjoying reading the comments as they come in.

Has anyone seen the train wreck that is now showing on the A&E network of Tony Danza in the classroom? Called “Teach”, it’s a reality excursion the purpose of which I can only guess. But passion, caring, energy and instinct DO NOT make a good teacher and they should not be mistaken for the primary practice one should bring to the classroom. If by practice we mean an approach to the task, then it should be professionalism, or a professional attitude to the task of facilitating learning. Notice I did not say ‘teaching’, because learning is an active verb that belongs to the student.
What is lacking in the discussions is the fact that education is a profession, for serious, committed practitioners, NOT for well-meaning, enthusiastic amatuers who believe, “I’ve been to school, I passed, so I know what teachers do.”
If that were the case, then I plan on taking the state medical licensing exam because I’ve been to the doctor and I know what they do.

Highly recommend you check a film I was very lucky to recently watch at the Vancouver International Film Festival and engage in a discussion with the director after the screening.

The film is “Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden” and it explores the premise of education as an universal progressive force by trying to understand if it benefits indigenous groups who lived a sustainable live before missionaries and aid workers came in to import a Western education system there and “help” them get a chance to join the rest of the world. You can check out the film site and its trailer at schoolingtheworld.org

I was highly disturbed by the movie as I saw some of the questions asked in it applicable to many more communities than what indigenous sustainable groups would suggest! The most disturbing part is that it made me question if education is indeed such a progressive force, is it truly value-neutral as we’re led to believe, is there a set of universals that define a baseline that should be expected to work almost everywhere in the world?

I like to believe basic literacy, math and science are those universals, but even the first of these is open for debate as we need to ask “literacy in which language?” so I fear there may be similar weak points with the rest too. :-(

I am hopeful we can find the answer, but it may take some debate and soul searching before we reach there.

Btw, I filmed the Q&A with the director (quite a few teachers and students getting ready to take on teaching jobs asked interesting questions) and posted it on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/user/World4Children#p/c/8561575F4F78F9F4

I also put some of my troubling thoughts at http://mybin.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/while-us-waits-for-superman-kids-in-the-world-are-drafted-as-failures/

Cheers,

Kima

Listen. http://www.mediafire.com/?benefvp6f76u1vs

I’m agreeing with Doug (comment 24.)
Classroom management.

Here’s Malcolm Gladwell on Predicting Success of teachers:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell

I got this while in the Marines: overcome, adapt, improvise and be able to stare down fear. These are the most useful tools I have used in 28 years of teaching. Everything else is gravy.

Learn how to respectfully, non-confrontationally say “no” to a student and then follow through.

This question actually threw me for awhile because I got caught up in “does he mean the ideal classroom or present-day classroom”, which is the popular way to say that testing is stifling creativity.

But the content really shouldn’t matter, and the assessment is only one thing (although I don’t like it), so it comes back to the “core practice”. And I don’t agree that “very high level” ruins the question.

It’s pretty simple really. The core practice that every teacher must have at a very high level is the ability to be flexibly self-aware. Teachers need to realize that:

A: They are each independently super important.
B: They are their own best sources of evaluation based on experiences that take place in the classroom.
C: They exhude confidence and high standards that students will pick on and run with if consistantly applied.
D: What is important is a subjective evaluation of a person’s well-being, and that teachers need to be confident enough that they are doing the right thing.

and finally,

E: all of the above impacts hundreds of students a year, and must be made entirely flexible. Again, the teacher must be self-aware enough to trust the need for change, accept its goodness, or change it again.

Nothing prepares you for the classroom, so all that other credential program stuff might be nice, but it can prepare you at all to face kids. I read a lot of answers previous that answer a piece of the puzzle, but leave lots to be desired otherwise. Classroom management is necessary, but I’m a firm believer that classroom management can’t be taught effectively outside of a real classroom, period. Every teacher learns best by doing and some of the doing will be hard. It’s the confidence and the willingness to change that really matters.

BTW, being strong in content is good, but regardless of the message sent by high end testing, it is far from the most important thing. Knowing everything about American Government doesn’t make you a great teacher, it makes you a history book. Many instructors will have had over a year’s break in their subject matter between college and a permanent job. Most that is needed to teach students (even AP students) can be self-taught.

@Nico #49:

That is a good article. There are plenty of good points to ponder.

Some great responses here. I’ll just add a few of my thoughts…

I live in Sydney Australia and started teaching high school maths at the beginning of the year. Unfortunately I quickly discovered my university studies of Bachelor of Science (Pure Maths) and Bachelor of Education, though required to teach in NSW, were largely irrelevant to teaching high school maths. Only a handful of subjects such as maths method (a course solely based around instruction in high school maths), and classroom management were of use to me. Even practicum’s were nothing compared to having your own class; as you were assessed according to the supervisors perceptions on teaching style (who in this case were very different from my own).

I love all the comments above about spending time with children to be able to relate to them; I couldn’t agree more!
I think having the students respect makes a real difference to the response you get in the classroom.

If there was one other thing that I think teachers need to be taught, it would be to try new things. That it is ok to fail sometimes. As I tell my students, the best way to learn something is to get it wrong.

Love the blog Dan; keep up the good work.

To know that there isn’t just one thing

Teachers must learn how to listen, and engage with each student for who they are and where they are in each moment. Being open to the situation instead of grabbing on to their idea of how the class has to go and how the students have to be and learn. Nonviolent Communication is a sometimes-maddeningly-explicit way to learn this, but having learned it you can streamline it for ordinary non-crisis life.

I’m a barely-trained volunteer teaching English to high school kids in Chile, and my relationships with the kids are the only thing that makes it work. I just don’t have the lesson-making skills, and their educational culture is so broken, to be able to rely on fascinating lesson structure. It ends up being completely about me and them, in this project together.

I’ll cheat and mentioned three things:

1. Training directed to end the insanity of every teacher reinventing the wheel for themselves.

2. Practical training about how to have success with struggling (and certainly special ed) students in my discipline.

3. Some guidance (maybe case-studies?) about how to use assessments to drive future teaching.

Joe

1. All personse learn differently. Fair != Same.

2. Life is a lesson.

3. As a teacher of developers, I need to understand that teaching, coaching, and mentoring are the platform for success.

Whatever you are teaching, you need to learn how to learn. If you are not continually putting yourself in a situation where you don’t know something or can’t do something or are having to struggle to understand concepts just beyond your reach, then you are never going to be able to adjust your communications with your students to help them, or even empathize with them.
Don’t pretend you know something or understand something about your subject when you don’t.

“What should every new teacher should be required to learn at a very high level…?” everything they can about themselves and their weaknesses as human beings, about being honest and having integrity – everything else follows from that.

I’d go with the ability to separate your emotional health from your critical self-reflection. If you aren’t chuckling at how much you suck then teaching is going to be really brutal. Recognize going in that 99% of what you try will need tweaking at best and to be thrown on the funeral pyre of other well-intentioned instructional practices that the field is so good at maintaining at worst.

I think the most important thing is to not take yourself too seriously… take your job seriously but not yourself. This allows you to be more open to change, and also puts you in a better place to center the class around the students and not the teacher. It also allows you to stay calm when students are disrespectuful. But this is not something that lends itself to ‘learning’ before entering a class…

…so I think they should learn how to look at a piece of material from the text, and then make engaging lesson plans from it.

People/Kids Skills
Adaptability
Sense of Humor
Great Work Ethic

Dan, you’re right. It doesn’t ask for the only core practice. And I thought about that when I was posting. I almost included mentioning that I would have bet that your intentions were to gather a collective list of core practices from people whom you respect as educators.

My post is twofold. First, every core practice is not only important but should be learned before entering the classroom as a teacher. I mean seriously, can you imagine the quality of teachers we’d have if each was required to demonstrate mastery (by the completion of their teacher prep program) of the “core practices of a successful teacher”?

And secondly, I love our profession and value it no less than any other. Just last night we were with some friends, one of whom is earning $400 per class to complete someone ELSE’S online work for earning a teaching credential. I have a daughter, and I rest assuredly knowing that the pediatrician we take her to see completed her MD work on her own. Unfortunately I won’t have that comfort when she starts school.

Regardless of the quality of the prompt, I wish I had finished my program having a darn clue about ENGAGEMENT. Things like WCYDWT, anything to wake them up, and get their blood moving. Because I teach a topic I love (science!) I thought it was inherently engaging becasue it was for me. Da, not so with a big fraction of my 8th graders, but get this, they played “Substomic Particle Tic-Tac-Toe” without complaint and they knew the charge, location, and significance of each when they were done. It took me 6 months to learn this lesson. Hard to say if someone could learn it outside the classroom.

I know I am getting in a bit late into the discussion… I think a core part of every education curriculum at any college preparing future teachers is Acting 101. This will help with obvious things like projecting your voice, but when it comes down to it, a lot of teacahing is manipulation. I want you to learn this because I (or the state) thinks it is important for you to learn. There are times when we need to act certain ways to certain students to get an appropriate response.

On a side note, Last week, I started getting sick on Monday. My students notice until Thursday when I lost my voice, because I was acting normal during my classes even though I was exhausted.

A key core practice? Is there any practice of a teacher more key than understanding the power of asking good questions? I believe the heart of teaching is questioning. What makes for a good question? When do we ask them? What do we look for? How can we use students’ answers to our question to pull in the rest of the class? I think young teachers should walk away with a vision that the most powerful tool at their disposal is not a smartboard, new calculators, or set of clickers, but questions that peak student curiosity and intellect.

Ok I admit I didn’t read all the comments yet. I might at a later date because you guys are pretty smart, but I do have a thought I want to share.

I think every student teacher should learn how to do quality research in the classroom.

I’ve been reading “Honoring Diverse Teaching Styles”, by Edward Pajak and it turns out that I am the type of teacher who likes to experiment and use what works for me in my classroom. So perhaps this is just what is most important for me in the classroom. There is the distinct possibility that what I feel is most important is actually not what is most important for a person who has a different “dialect” or personality type.

I have to be honest. I am not a teacher–yet! But I am in a program and will soon graduate! I have spent many days as an intern in various schools. The comments on this page are very interesting and helpful. I love hearing what real teachers have to say.

From the little experience that I have, I will try to put in my two cents. I would say it is hard to choose something specific. While I believe you learn a lot in teaching programs, I strongly believe that you learn the important ‘core skills’ while being a teacher. I think we can learn a lot from books and university classes, but the impacting lessons are learned through actual experiences and interaction with the kids and the other teachers. However, if I absolutely had to pick something, I would think one of the biggest skills you should have is to not walk into a classroom with preconceived notions of children and their culture. Classrooms are becoming more and more diverse and we have to be open-minded, understanding, and fair. As teachers and role models, if we want kids to learn to be open and inviting to other cultures, we need to be as well.

I assume we are talking about math teaching. In this case:

HELPING KIDS NOTICE PATTERNS IN EXAMPLES THEY CREATE.

This requires organizing “smart” example spaces out of wild&wonderful stuff kids make. The skill is topic-specific to some degree, maybe even problem-specific. For example, noticing patterns in river-crossing problems is different from noticing patterns in the decimal extension of 2/7. The skill also assumes active listening, and understanding children’s algorithms, definitions and theorems which aren’t standard OR expressed in standard notation.

Clarity of purpose: the ability to decide what not to teach, what not to respond to, what not to address.

I am overwhelmed with messages from my department about this or that event, this or that social need, this or that assembly coming up. Every faculty meeting brings up targeted content areas, or focii that, by next spring, will have drifted off like dandelion seeds.

Another way: You have one month to visit all of Europe. Where will you visit? What will you attend to? And the harder question: where won’t you visit? And why?