Craig Ortner

1. Clarify what students must know and be able to do 2. Teach well 3. Read and write about the subject a lot and most important, as much as possible, say "No" to doing everything else unless/until you are happy these are going really well, because of opportunity costs.

Gluing googly eyes on a textbook and seeing if it is "superhuman" at tutoring motivated students

The exercises that develop your strength make you feel weak. The studying that develops your knowledge does not make you feel like a genius. The saving/investing that develops your wealth makes you feel like you can't afford too lavish a lifestyle. That's just how it is.

@DrTozzo @rastokke @tetheredtoed1 credit to a former colleague, Peter Round, who cited a book I have forgotten I believe

@snortner @rastokke @tetheredtoed1 OK, I love this saying. 😂

Early in my career, an associate Dean I admired gave me this advice: don't spend your time trying to change the minds of the ~10% who will never change. We'll turn this math education ship around, but we need to focus our efforts on the educators who are open to changing course.

The way you discover what you're good at and what you love is by working your ass off at various challenges until the signal emerges from the noise.

Most of the learning happens not when you are putting information into your brain, but when you are attempting to pull it out.

#IBTOK 🤣

Thought I'd share a🧵with couple of additional thoughts about this profile of Dusty May by @rustindodd, focusing on some of the work Dusty & I did together. nytimes.com/athletic/71678…

@RichardWh84 @RogersHistory My usual quote is that the essence of effective leadership is stopping people doing good things to give then time to do even better things.

I wrote about a math memorization routine and why I now hate flashcards in 3rd Grade. pershmail.substack.com/p/a-math-memor…

All of these technological moral panics were correct.

@dieworkwear Interesting. This helps me understand why I like the Alden chromexcel LHS because it makes them seem even more casual than calf LHS I guess

Chromexcel often results in "loose grain wrinkling," as you see below. The wrinkles are more pronounced. To my eye, this looks fine on a very casual pair of shoes, such as work boots. I would not want it on a dress shoe. Loafers are an in-between style, so it depends on how the person feels about this kind of wrinkling happening on their shoes.

Seeing a lot of people talk about summer penny loafers and recommending GH Bass. Although iconic, most Bass Weejuns are poorly made. You can see the difference in the two photos below. On the left, we have an old pair of GH Bass Weejuns. On the right, we have a similarly old pair of Aldens. The Weejuns are made from a type of material known as corrected grain leather, which is a lower-quality hide that arrives at the tannery with scars and marks that naturally developed over the animal's lifetime. Since you need an even surface for shoes, tanneries will sand the surface to remove blemishes, then apply a chemical coating. The problem is that the coating will age poorly over time. In the photo here, they've developed cloudy creases. In some cases, the coating can flake off. On the other hand, Alden uses full-grain leather, which means the leather retains its natural surface. They are also careful in how they place the pattern pieces onto the hide and subsequently cut the various pieces to produce a shoe. This way, the creases are finer and less pronounced. Of course, Alden is about 7x more expensive than Weejun, but they are not the only company that uses full-grain leather. A basic Bass Weejun will run you about $175. Meermin's full-grain leather loafers are $230 — just $55 more Why spend this extra money? Because after a year or two, you will grow dissatisfied with how your Weejuns look. Then you will throw them away and buy something new, only to repeat the process. On the other hand, if you buy loafers made from higher-quality materials, you will grow fond of the patina that they've developed. Thus, you will splurge on a resole, allowing you to grow ever fonder of your shoes, repairing them as needed, and keeping the same pair of shoes for many decades. IMO, it's always better to buy less, but buy better. Consider what you really need and then figure out how things are made. Use this information to identify reliable brands and retailers. This is a much better way to shop than to say "The Row is popular right now, so I should buy that" (using the "The Row" here as just a stand-in for whatever seems to be hot at the moment — no shade to them).

@dieworkwear What are the unique properties of Chromexcel?

I should add that Bass doesn't always use corrected grain. A year or so ago, they did a collaboration with Buck Mason, where they used Horween's Chromexcel, a vegetable-tanned, full-grain, pull-up leather. Chromexcel has some unique properties as a full-grain leather, but it will not flake like corrected grain. Always research before you purchase, so you understand what you're getting into.

See Mike Schmoker’s book of the same name

@aDottore @tombennett71 Theory of knowledge. Intl baccalaureate diploma program

@snortner @tombennett71 Please, TOK = ? IBDP = ?

You cannot teach critical thinking. You can teach domain specific expertise, which enables you to think critically about that domain. Brilliant chess players do not make great military commanders. More problematically, people who think they have great critical thinking skills are often the ones who get hoodwinked by any fashionable idea, because they lack the domain expertise to interrogate nonsense.

So good

I’m sorry but the future belongs to those who read widely, who are able to write without the assistance of a machine, who haven’t allowed endless slop to kill their curiosity and cognitive abilities. Excess tech is going to melt many brains. Yours doesn’t need to be one of them.

This, but in schools. Environments that are chaotic are the most exclusive. Environments that are safe and calm are the most inclusive. That requires clear expectations, boundaries, and consequences.

I don’t have data for this but my belief is that the person who gets most out a lesson observation is the observer. And, as this who observe the most lessons tend to teach least, this is probably a bit of a mistake