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always evolving

We have to keep developing our capabilities and avoid falling behind.

no matter how well prepared people are in their formative years, few can achieve and maintain their best performance on their own.

outside ears, and eyes, are important

For decades, research has confirmed that the big factor in determining how much students learn is not class size or the extent of standardized testing but the quality of their teachers.

California researchers in the early nineteen-eighties conducted a five-year study of teacher-skill development in eighty schools, and noticed something interesting. Workshops led teachers to use new skills in the classroom only ten per cent of the time. Even when a practice session with demonstrations and personal feedback was added, fewer than twenty per cent made the change. But when coaching was introduced—when a colleague watched them try the new skills in their own classroom and provided suggestions—adoption rates passed ninety per cent. A spate of small randomized trials confirmed the effect. Coached teachers were more effective, and their students did better on tests.

they did not necessarily have any special expertise in a content area, like math or science.

The coaches let the teachers choose the direction for coaching. They usually know better than anyone what their difficulties are.

teaches coaches to observe a few specifics: whether the teacher has an effective plan for instruction; how many students are engaged in the material; whether they interact respectfully; whether they engage in high-level conversations; whether they understand how they are progressing, or failing to progress.

must engage in “deliberate practice”—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you’re not good at.

most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.

The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you’re falling short.

So coaches use a variety of approaches—showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject’s performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.

“What worked?”

“How could you help her?”

“What else did you notice?”

something to try.

three colleagues on a lunch break

Good coaches, he said, speak with credibility, make a personal connection, and focus little on themselves.

“listened more than they talked,” Knight said. “They were one hundred per cent present in the conversation.”

coaching has definitely changed how satisfying teaching is

trying to get residents to think—to think like surgeons—and his questions exposed how much we had to learn.

a whole list of observations like this.

one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years.

watch other colleagues operate in order to gather ideas about what I could do.

routine, high-quality video recordings of operations could enable us to figure out why some patients fare better than others.

I know that I’m learning again.

It’s teaching with a trendier name. Coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual.

modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things

coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.

We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion.

successful

destruction

is set

future

poor districts g

Capitol

destroyed

Capitol

punish

battle

fight

whole

mix together

instead

competing

volunteers

upsetting

frightening

experience

Too much

parents

violence

complained

worried

watch

care less

she hopes

make people think

a burst at the start and top-ups through company training—is breaking down. One reason is the need for new, and constantly updated, skills.

The 19th and 20th centuries saw stunning advances in education. That should be the scale of the ambition today

It is easier to learn later in life if you enjoyed the classroom first time around: about 80% of the learners on Coursera already have degrees. Online learning requires some IT literacy, yet one in four adults in the OECD has no or limited experience of computers. Skills atrophy unless they are used, but many low-end jobs give workers little chance to practise them.

WHEN education fails to keep pace with technology, the result is inequality.

Twitter is the undisputed channel for everything from breaking news to political and cultural debates. How long can schools block access to it before they become completely irrelevant? The important thing when deciding school online policies, says Brovey, is that “you have to show that you’re exercising due diligence.”

allow teachers to bypass those filters, and to have a simple, fast whitelisting process, ideally from the page that appears when a user visits a blocked site.

If teachers are supported to set up classrooms to promote success, these students (and other challenging students who have similar behaviors but may not have individualized education plans, or IEPs) can improve their performance in school and in life.

Making positive attention more predictable in the classroom can help break the cycle of negative attention-seeking behaviors. Putting one-on-one time on the student’s personal visual schedule (even if it’s only a couple minutes to read a student’s favorite page in a book) or setting a timer for 10 minutes and telling the student that’s when you will be back are just two strategies that can help.

Teachers who work with challenging students need support from administrators and others in the school. It is very stressful to have a student in class who is constantly disruptive. In order to make the necessary investment, the teacher needs substantive support from administrators to avoid frustration and burnout and to garner the energy to provide effective interventions. When administrators delegate some of the teacher’s responsibilities to other people in the building, the teacher can devote more time to finding solutions. Regularly meeting with consultants (e.g., special educators, mental health professionals, and behavior analysts) can be essential for designing how the student progresses, but it also takes up the teacher’s prep time. If possible, the administrator can arrange coverage so that the teacher can meet with consultants at times other than lunch and prep. Support staff can instruct small groups of children while the teacher works with the student with behavior challenges. And since there are usually so many people involved with a struggling student, delineating a clear coordination plan is also critical. It can be helpful, as a team, to make a list of responsibilities and indicate who is responsible for what.

The more intensely the student is taught the underdeveloped skills, and the more the environment is changed to encourage appropriate behavior, the more quickly the student’s behavior is likely to change.

The agency has also created ads for institutions of higher learning like Michigan State University, Loyola University Maryland and the University of Dayton.

The campaign has a section devoted to it on the U.C.L.A. Web site, ucla.edu/optimists, and is getting shout-outs on the U.C.L.A. fan page on Facebook and on the U.C.L.A. Twitter feed, where those who send messages are asked to use the hashtag #optimists.

The U.C.L.A. campaign has a small budget, estimated at less than $500,000, for a couple of reasons. One is that much of the campaign is appearing online; there is also print advertising, in newspapers.

The video clip can also be watched on YouTube.

The new campaign is meant to celebrate “the optimism that abounds on our campus,” she adds, “even in challenging times,” and shine a spotlight on “the dynamism and vitality” as well as the history and legacy of the university.

The way to do that, Ms. Turteltaub says, is to focus on “the icons” from U.C.L.A. “who made their mark in whatever fields they choose” and describe their “accomplishment, success, barrier-breaking.”

“This is the place that gives you the opportunity to be a game-changer,” Ms. Turteltaub says, “and you’ll choose the game.”