Considering that this blog is called Two Teacher Trek, we haven’t really written much about the education world beyond the world of becoming international teachers.

It is not that we aren’t passionate teachers (that’s pretty debatable!) It has just been that there are more important things in our life to write about.

Life-Long Learner

In our minds, the best part of teaching is having the summer off.  This year, we have a whole 10 weeks off!  While much of this time is spent recharging the batteries, a little bit of work does get done over the summer.

Summer is usually the busy time for side hustles.  Much of the exam grading that I do is April-June.  In addition, I try to read at least one education-related book every summer.

Last summer, I read Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School.  I thought it was pretty good and gave me some tips about the meaning of grades in the classroom.

Professional Development (PD) in Education

To be honest, a lot of PD for teachers is a complete waste of time.  Most teachers have anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks of professional development at the start of the year.  Unfortunately, instead of getting the time to organize your classroom and prepare your lessons, you are usually stuck in meetings or having PD led by someone who likes to hear their own voice.

This seems to be a common aspect in education.  Many seem to like to talk in ‘eduspeak’ without any real practical application for teachers in the classroom.

Even if you haven’t been in a classroom since you graduated, there is a good chance that you saw the TED talk from Sir Ken Robinson entitled ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’ As of writing, it was been viewed almost 60 million times.

Now I could focus on the fact that Robinson has never been a classoom teacher yet has no problem telling teachers that what they are doing is bad, but I would rather focus on the takeaways (or lack of)

Robinson spends 20 minutes talking about the problems in education without offering any real viable solution.

This is very similar to the types of PD that teachers face every year.  We are told a lot about the philosophy of education or we sit in meetings and ‘discuss’ inititiatives, but we never actually have have anything actionable to take back to the classroom.

Sir Ken Robinson may inspire me, but does little to help me if I am sitting in a classroom facing 20-25 students!

This trend has continued into the education books that we read.  That is why The Best Class You Never Taught is refreshingly different.

The Best Class You Never Taught

This year, I want to focus on my classroom practice.  I want to try to improve on class discussion and dialog and try to be more student-centered.  That is why The Best Class You Never Taught caught my eye.  The author, Alexis Wiggins, is the daughter of Understanding by Design creator Grant Wiggins, and she uses many UbD principles in this format. I have read a bit about Harkness discussions, but this seems to take it to the next level a bit.

The Best Class You Never Taught focuses on improving class discussion, collaboration, and student inquiry.  The idea is to have students run the discussion without any teacher input until the debrief afterwards.

What I like best about this book is that it is a ‘nuts and bolts’ book.  It does look at the philosophy and provides research that justifies the approach, but it moves beyond that to give a step-by-step guide to introducing it into your class: what to do before starting; how to introduce the process to students; the first few weeks; and how to trobubleshoot common problems that arise.  The book also offers real-world vignettes of teachers from a variety of levels and subjects.

Overall, The Best Class You Never Taught is a good read if you are a teacher and want to introduce or develop student collaboartion and interaction into your class.