Developing Competent Teaching (Chapter 7)

To start of this chapter's discussion:

I know when I was reading this chapter there were several instances when I thought "this is so unfair!" as I compared the U.S. treatment and preparation of future and current educators to other countries like Finland and Sweden.  What did you think were some of the most shocking (this can be shockingly good or bad) differences between the U.S. development of teachers and other countries' development of teachers?

Another question that arose while reading this chapter is can the United States actually change our current practices and implement Darling-Hammond's suggestions?  This chapter is filled with excellent practices that have proven to work in other countries like the mentoring of beginning teachers and analyzing of videotapes regularly. Which of the ideas presented do you think are the most doable within our school system and could start to be implemented in the near future?

All Men Created Equal?: Responses to "The Anatomy of Inequality" (LDH Ch 2)

So, starting off our first blog discussion: What did anyone find interesting or what questions arose from the reading? For instance, on page 65 near the bottom of the page I wanted to know: How can triggers of low expectations and stereotypes (which is a societal and cultural phenomenon) be explicitly removed and what would that look like in an individual classroom setting?

And to tie back to our best practices thread, what practices in this chapter did you see that were positive? Which practices were less positive and how might we work to change them? Or how might it be done better?

Welcome to our class blog!

We have created this space for discussing several of the chapters from the Linda Darling Hammond text, The Flat World of Education. In class last Wednesday, we discussed how we envision the blog being used and how you will make contributions to it. One suggestion we have for facilitators is to included the chapter number somewhere in the title of your post. For example: What's a Teacher to teach? (LDH, Ch 9)

Here is the Facilitator Schedule:

LDH Ch. 2 Inequality & Opportuity By Sept 18	LDH Ch. 7 Developing Competent teaching By Oct 8	LDH Ch.8 Organizing for Success: From Inequality to Quality By Oct 22	LDH Ch. 9 Policy for Quality & Equality: Toward Genuine School Reform Nov 19
Jennie	Cathy	Monica	Elizabeth
Jazmin	Haley	Alex	Katelyn
	Ulysses		Alyssa

We look forward to exploring this text will you this semester! So let's get started!