recruiting and keeping math teachers...

[kirby urner]

On Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 2:15 PM, Joseph Austin <drtec...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Apr 29, 2016, at 12:40 PM, kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is the core problem that math teachers who do connect the dots

tend to end up in IT themselves?  I don't see anyone besides me

addressing the economics of the situation.  As soon as high school

math teachers are computer literate, they go for the higher paying

job (in aggregate, I'm not saying there aren't exceptions).

[This may be duplicate: I tried replying before but it may have been lost.]

Hi Joseph.  I replied to your earlier version here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mathfuture/eCn2ZS5lry4/Vmvm1aO_KgAJ

I'm heading to the code school (<guild />) this evening and will discuss

the "gift shop" meme more with Sheri, the director.

She's looking for open source projects her students might contribute to, using
the git or other version control process. 

There's

(A) practicing collaboration skills (something Americans may need
to be taught -- this isn't Japan -- a changing picture over time)

and

(B) there's wrapping one's mind around something public, and that
takes time, maybe a lot of time.

What I've argued is that of all industries, the code school is not one to

completely rely on outsourced source code, when it comes to selling the

T-shirts and mugs (should these be available, i.e. the premise is items

for say).

So in the case of <guild />, which centers on Python as a back end

language (there's no shirking on JavaScript though, be assured we

don't shirk it [1]), the question becomes:  what's a good starting point
for a gift shop?" 

I circle some answers in my blog, and will bring those up at the circus
table tonight.[2]

The theme here, in case you were wondering, is "eating one's own

dog food", which is a recognized term of art in business.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/eatyourowndogfood.asp

A school in some sense needs to prove its metal.  Although we

don't talk about it much, mustering a team and hierarchy able to

win or at least make a respectable showing at sporting events is
one of the chief measures that a school has its act together. 

Fielding a debate team might be even more to the point.  It's not
either / or.

What I urge is that schools build capital on their own servers. Not
just recordings of theater productions and sporting events, not
just tapes of visiting speakers, but curriculum movies, talking heads. 

Every delta calculus track should come with at least a hundred
movies of say twelve minutes or less.  Of course it's more about
quality than quantity, but lets at least see the workflow.

If a school has no servers, but has Internet access, then put

the resources in the cloud, and open to the public is fine, as

again, a lot of it is about proving the metal of the school. 

Why do you think Stanford contributes so generously to Coursera?

They're proving they have the right stuff.

Our code school is in a similar position.  If show off the open source
way, we're happy to circle our work on the public Internet as
evidence of our metal. 

My own pioneering of the "lambda track" meme is part of what
brands us as thinking ahead and adding to Portland's reputation
for code school savvy.

Kirby

 

I'd suggest that a solution to the "talent drain" problem may be similar to the solution to reform the

school-work-retirement paradigm, namely, replace a sequential track with parallel tracks.

So young people would not be "student then worker" but "student and worker" concurrently throughout their lives.

Similarly, we could employ professionals as "parallel time" teachers.

This pattern already works at the college level: there is a burgeoning industry of "after-hours" colleges 

offering accredited degree programs in fields such as  Business and IT.

They hire local professionals as teachers. The professionals are motivated as much by a desire to offer "community service" as for extra money,

and also to keep a foot in academia. 

Joe 

 Notes / links:

[1]  http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2016/04/musings-on-javascript.html

[2]  http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2016/04/code-school-gift-shop.html