I’m a little confused by your proposal. Are you saying NCTM should operate a Stack Exchange? It would be excellent in practice, but seems like an idea whose time is still to come. I’d be a little pessimistic because
– NCTM is not terribly withit w.r.t. how people share information
– Teachers are not terribly withit w.r.t. how they share information. I mean, the present, limited, company reading this is a drop in the bucket compared to the community at large.
– NCTM will make you login with your current membership number to access it, but this seems like it needs to operate at scale. This kind of barrier is going to be like a lead weight. How effective would Stack Overflow be if there were a pay barrier to even view it?

Here’s hoping somebody from NCTM is reading this and thinking “We’ll show her!”

Thanks for acknowledging my small part in getting you to the conferences. It was a special treat for me to watch you “do your thing.” A couple of my heros are named Kennedy and when I was your age I heard one of them say “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not?” We all “know” that math education will never really change. The conserving forces are too powerful. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue that change. And what gives me hope is that teachers like you individually and in aggregate will make the dreams reality. As another Kennedy said ““The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.”
Thank you.
-Ihor

Hi,

I’m not a teacher, just a fan of StackOverflow. This link should be relevant to your post, not sure if you’re aware of it already:

http://www.edcrowd.com/

Discussed with other education based Stack Exchanges at:

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4/list-of-stackexchange-sites/5#5

Regards,

Bill – Have you checked out BetterLesson? It was my immediate reaction to your “Where would you go…” question. I don’t know if it fits the ‘get constructive criticism’ piece, but I think it’s the best solution for what you seek that we have so far.

Thanks! I’ve bookmarked both EdCrowd and BetterLesson. EdCrowd is much closer to what I’m referring to (if you look at Slashdot, BoingBoing, or Digg you’ll see what I mean). Something that’s community submitted and moderated.
In my view education desperately needs to go from the One->Many model to the Many->Many model both in terms of teacher training, collaboration, and in instruction. I think that the best “leaders” in education will be ones who (like Dan) not only present “This is what I’m doing” but encourage discussion, solicit input, and take feedback. The new and student teachers that I work with seem equally surprised that I know only share my materials, but ask for feedback on how to improve it. In my mind that should be the rule, not the exception.
@michael: In terms of teaching vs. better paying jobs, that’s what destroyed Computer Science education in primary and secondary schools. What I learned in my High School programming classes in the 1980s is now Junior and Senior level CS major material because there is no computer programming begin taught at lower levels. Anyone capable could make far more money (and have a better work environment) in industry.

Great post! As a new math teacher, I’ve been trying to find resources beyond a scattering of blogs and the friends I made while pursuing my degree. I teach at a small school where I am the only advanced math teacher, so we can discuss techniques in vague terms, but can’t focus on specific lessons… our shared experiences are few and far between.

I really enjoyed your posts on the NCTM conference, since low professional development budgets and salaries made attending this year outside of my means. I have this hope that NCTM will continue and that new teachers can eventually take part, because otherwise I have to hope that we can make something work on our own, and that intimidates me.

So far, EdCrowd looks like a great resource, and I’m looking forward to getting some work done there.

— On the question of new teacher leaders: Are mathematicians trained to respect mastery? We revere our elders who have published and expanded mathematics, while many new teachers have not and may never publish. I feel that this, along with the first year of “faking it” while teaching, really set me up to look to be led rather than decide to start leading. What do the first three years of teaching look like right now to new math teachers?

Why are first-time blog comments always so long? Sigh.

@Bill Bradley: You are spot on. K-12 education needs to move to a many-to-many mode especially for ongoing teacher development. In the schools at which I taught, few of the experienced teachers were good mentors. Most of them were only concerned with their own classrooms and had little time to give to a newbie. One could also argue that many of them had few innovative ideas to offer and even less ability to provide good input on how to use new technologies or pedagogical strategies.

How much better would my first years have been if I could have shared what I was doing with the crowd that frequents this blog (or Sam’s or Kate’s, or…) or the twitterers who are on the mathteachers list created by @JackieB? I like the idea of modeling something after the likes of Slashdot. That sort of collegial discussion is really valuable. A repository of ideas is ok, but the discussion and the community are the real special sauces.

–p