Everything old is new again

I've figured out a way to make a ton of money as a teacher: come up with a great acronym for an old teaching method, make a snazzy publication, and sell it to a select few administrators who will sell it for me.

I sat in a training that focuses on increasing academic rigor last week. In the training, the focus was basically on how to facilitate a discussion. That one can argue a point with reasonable evidence is the main thrust of rigorous thinking. Hmmmm..... The fact that the sound reasoning must be based on some foundation of knowledge is hinted at, but mostly by-passed given a common piece of text from which students may work.

So these discussions that increase rigorous thinking take place in talking events in the classroom in form of partner discussion, small group discussion, teacher led whole-class discussion, etc. Ten years ago this was called cooperative learning. Now it is called "talking events." And these facilitators of this training are making a ton of money from the district I teach (and live) in.

By the way, I'm pretty sure I'd have a really difficult time passing the 8th grade test from Salina, Kansas.