Chaos Theory

Shortly after I posted about what you do vs. what you say, Scott sent me this collection of videos shot in high school classrooms.

I'm amazed and saddened by this. These teachers have a serious marketing problem and mostly, these kids are actively sabotaging their education... something many in the world would give up almost anything for. The teachers are busy saying, not doing, and the kids are caught in a terrible loop of disrespect.

The blog asks if cell phone cameras are somehow at fault here. I think there's a significantly bigger question: what are great teachers and great parents doing to market education that's clearly not happening in these classrooms? (Skipping over the more important question about what is happening at home that led to this in the first place).

Education is largely handmade, not mass produced. That makes it difficult to share best practices and to figure out how to turn mediocre classrooms into great ones. Maybe, just maybe, video of the best teaching will do as much to encourage some teachers as the cell phone video does to discourage the rest of us.