All the artsyfarsty philosophizing about "There is no such thing as a
good teacher." What are we talking, Nigerian English or mere
gibberish?
Where is Farooq Kperogi the language analyst when we need him?
Knowing you as I do, I intuit that you mean " There is nothing you
could be more fortunate to have than to have a good teacher", hence,
"There is nothing like a good teacher" – the same way that a good boy
says to a good girl, "There's nothing like the real thing, babe."
Toyin,
Talking about teachers, I think that it was Baba Ram Dass that said
that if the Buddha were your psychotherapist, by the end of the
treatment you would be enlightened.
Nota Bene: There's also an American saying which goes, ""There is no
such thing as a free lunch"
Pleeze, dishonour not Wittgenstein; spare us the philosophy
On Dec 1, 10:39 am, toyin adepoju <toyin.adep...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
> There is nothing like a good teacher.
> toyin
>
> On 30 November 2010 19:11, Funmi Tofowomo Okelola <cafeafrica...@aol.com>wrote:
>
> > *What Makes a Great Teacher?*
>
> > *For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy
> > than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of
> > inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has
> > been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some
> > teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can't.
> > Now, as the Obama administration offers states more than $4 billion to
> > identify and cultivate effective teachers, Teach for America is ready to
> > release its data.*
>
> > By AMANDA RIPLEY
>
> > ON AUGUST 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools
> > in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders.
> > The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math.
>
> > One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr.
> > William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither
> > the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked.
>
> > The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer
> > Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children
> > received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home
> > to the same urban ecosystem, a ZIP code in which almost a quarter of the
> > families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which
> > somebody was murdered every week or so
>
> > At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized
> > test given at all D.C. public schools—not a perfect test of their learning,
> > to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a
> > very hard one).
>
> > After a year in Mr. Taylor's class, the first little boy's scores went
> > up—way up. He had started below grade level and finished above. On average,
> > his classmates' scores rose about 13 points—which is almost 10 points more
> > than fifth-graders with similar incoming test scores achieved in other
> > low-income D.C. schools that year. On that first day of school, only 40
> > percent of Mr. Taylor's students were doing math at grade level. By the end
> > of the year, 90 percent were at or above grade level.
>
> > As for the other boy? Well, he ended the year the same way he'd started
> > it—below grade level. In fact, only a quarter of the fifth-graders at
> > Plummer finished the year at grade level in math—despite having started off
> > at about the same level as Mr. Taylor's class down the road.
>
> > This tale of two boys, and of the millions of kids just like them, embodies
> > the most stunning finding to come out of education research in the past
> > decade: more than any other variable in education—more than schools or
> > curriculum—teachers matter. Put concretely, if Mr. Taylor's student
> > continued to learn at the same level for a few more years, his test scores
> > would be no different from those of his more affluent peers in Northwest
> > D.C. And if these two boys were to keep their respective teachers for three
> > years, their lives would likely diverge forever. By high school, the
> > compounded effects of the strong teacher—or the weak one—would become too
> > great.
>
> > Parents have always worried about where to send their children to school;
> > but the school, statistically speaking, does not matter as much as which
> > adult stands in front of their children. Teacher quality tends to vary more
> > *within *schools—even supposedly good schools—than among schools.
>
> > But we have never identified excellent teachers in any reliable, objective
> > way. Instead, we tend to ascribe their gifts to some mystical quality that
> > we can recognize and revere—but not replicate. The great teacher serves as a
> > hero but never, ironically, as a lesson.
>
> > At last, though, the research about teachers' impact has become too
> > overwhelming to ignore. Over the past year, President Barack Obama and his
> > education secretary, Arne Duncan, have started talking quite a lot about
> > great teaching. They have shifted the conversation from school
> > accountability— the rather worn theme of No Child Left Behind, President
> > George W. Bush's landmark educational reform—to teacher accountability. And
> > they have done it using one very effective conversational gambit: billions
> > of dollars.
>
> > Thanks to the stimulus bonanza, Duncan has lucked into a budget that is
> > more than double what a normal education secretary gets to spend. As a
> > result, he has been able to dedicate $4.3 billion to a program he calls Race
> > to the Top. To be fair, that's still just a tiny fraction of the roughly
> > $100 billion in his budget (much of which the government direct-deposits
> > into the bank accounts of schools, whether they deserve the money or not).
> > But especially in a year when states are projecting $16 billion in
> > school-budget shortfalls, $4.3 billion is real money. "This is the big bang
> > of teacher-effectiveness reform," says Timothy Daly, president of the New
> > Teacher Project, a nonprofit that helps schools recruit good teachers.
> > "It's huge."
>
> > Despite the perky name, Race to the Top is a marathon—and a potentially
> > grueling one; to win, states must take a series of steps that are considered
> > radical in the see-no-evil world of education, where teachers unions have
> > long fought efforts to measure teacher performance based on student test
> > scores and link the data to teacher pay. States must try to identify great
> > teachers, figure out how they got that way, and then create more of them.
> > "This is the wave of the future. This is where we have to go—to look at
> > what's working and what's not," Duncan told me. "It sounds like common
> > sense, but it's revolutionary."
>
> > Based on his students' test scores, Mr. Taylor ranks among the top 5
> > percent of all D.C. math teachers. He's entertaining, but he's not a born
> > performer. He's well prepared, but he's been a teacher for only three years.
> > He cares about his kids, but so do a lot of his underperforming peers.
> > What's he doing differently?
>
> > One outfit in America has been systematically pursuing this mystery for
> > more than a decade—tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and analyzing why
> > some teachers can move those kids three grade levels ahead in one year and
> > others can't. That organization, interestingly, is not a school district.
>
> > Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits college graduates to spend two
> > years teaching in low-income schools, began outside the educational
> > establishment and has largely remained there. For years, it has been
> > whittling away at its own assumptions, testing its hypotheses, and refining
> > its hiring and training. Over time, it has built an unusual laboratory:
> > almost half a million American children are being taught by Teach for
> > America teachers this year, and the organization tracks test-score data,
> > linked to each teacher, for 85 percent to 90 percent of those kids. Almost
> > all of those students are poor and African American or Latino. And Teach for
> > America keeps an unusual amount of data about its 7,300 teachers—a pool
> > almost twice the size of the D.C. system's teacher corps.
>
> > Until now, Teach for America has kept its investigation largely to itself.
> > But for this story, the organization allowed me access to 20 years of
> > experimentation, studded by trial and error. The results are specific and
> > surprising. Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve
> > success in a poor school—like prior experience working in a low-income
> > neighborhood—don't seem to matter. Other things that may sound trifling—like
> > a teacher's extracurricular accomplishments in college—tend to predict
> > greatness.
>
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