Ten Strategies for Successful Teaching

[For all teachers and parents]-- Malkin Dare, a lifelong teacher and education reformer, is the founder of the Society for Quality Education in Ontario. She is a big voice for sane education in Canada and throughout the world.

Dare summarized her educational philosophy in an article titled “Ten Keys to Success: Fundamental Principles of Teaching.” That article is condensed here to the main points. Please, parents and teachers, read this material and discuss it.

1. Almost all students can learn: Obviously, there are a few students who, because of a severe disability, are prevented from learning certain things. For the most part, however, students with conditions that affect their learning should be viewed as requiring teaching methods that enable them to overcome their difficulties, and the same high standards and bright future should be held out to them.

2. Almost anything can be learned: There are few, if any, people to whom all learning comes easily. Yet, given expert teaching and plenty of patience, almost everyone can achieve an adequate level of performance in almost any field—from ballet to physics to teaching prowess to drawing. Good teaching and high expectations can produce seeming miracles.

3. There are almost no circumstances under which students can’t learn: Students who are experiencing physical or emotional discomfort can still learn; in fact, instruction can even help to take the students’ minds off their problems for a while. It is an evasion of responsibility to assume that students can’t learn if they are hungry or tired or upset about their parents’ divorce. At Kobi Nazrul school in the slums of London, where the children are overwhelmingly poor and almost all are immigrants, the students score well above the national average and only three per cent of pupils are registered as having special needs.

Malkin Dare is one of the leading education reformers in North America. The more people who know about her and her ideas on education, the better off we all are.

Why would anyone try to disrupt a discussion of Malkin Dare’s ideas?

Examiner.com is not a blog. There are no more viruses on Examiner.com than on NBC.com, YouTube.com, FreeRepublic.com or any other major site.

Malkin Dare’s original article is quite long. That’s why I tried to make a short version so more people would read it. Similarly, her website is quite large and has lots of interesting stuff, but you’re likely to get overwhelmed there. However, everyone is welcome to go directly to the source:

http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog/

So basically you ripped off this "Dare" person's stuff and expect to get hits for it?

Why would anyone try to disrupt a discussion of Malkin Dare’s ideas?

Never heard of her.
If you REALLY want her ideas discussed, why not post them here?

Maybe because you stole the story and stuck it on your Examiner blog and expect hits in return.

Malkin Dare’s original article is quite long.

Odd that you didn't post from that source.

I tried to make a short version so more people would read it.

On your blog. Read it on your Examiner blog.

You can dance like a spastic monkey but it's obvious you ripped off some material and are pimping it for hits.

Well played, pimper.

Interesting that everything you post is stuff you wrote yourself:

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:brucedeitrickprice/index?tab=articles

So you’re pretty much USING Free Republic to advertise your “writing”.

Not to add content, not to further discussion.. but to get you some blog hits.

You suck, you know?

From #10:

Learning essentials are physical comfort, paper and pencil,(what do you do when 25% of a class regularly show up without paper and/or pencil?) freedom from distraction, reasonably homogeneous classrooms, manageable students, (what do you do when your non-honors classes comprise high percentages of students that do not want to learn, cannot sit still, cannot be quiet, will not do homework, are disrespectful, are defiant, perceive disciplinary referral to be a badge of honor, and have parent(s) that cannot be contacted?), access to a library, and good teaching. Everything else is a luxury.

Here are some things you should factor in:

First, if you want a lot of traffic, you have to write about popular things, like the NFL, Lebron James, Hollywood, the latest scandal, Jay-Z and his wife. Some big traffic sites publish lists of things they want you to write about, e.g., that week’s gossip. Personally I’ve never written about any of these things. I write serious articles about education. This is the last thing you would write about if you were trying to get traffic.

Second, writers on big article sites, if there’s any money at all, don’t get paid dollars, they get paid pennies. Advertisers pay about $10 for 1000 reads. Perhaps five dollars is given to the writer. So you spend half a day writing an article that, if it’s lucky, earns five dollars. That’s a dollar an hour. This is not wages. It’s not even a tip. It’s little gold stars that make things interesting. At the end of the month you can say you made $11.82, up from $9.93, and this might be for three or four articles.The idea that there is some business plan or business model in play is silly. No matter how you add it up, a dollar an hour does not constitute a business, not in the United States.

Third, Examiner is one of the couple hundred biggest sites in America. 1 million people go there a day. If there were any problem with viruses, that would balloon into a huge multitude of discontented people and the site would’ve disappeared long ago. Tell people the truth. Most viruses arrive in emails and spam. And, Examiner is not a blog. I have three or four blogs, for example educationimproved.blogspot.com. They have very limited graphic features. When you add something new, it always pushes down the thing before. Examiner is a news and article site. Each article—and there are probably 75 million of them by now—has its own page and its own graphic features, such as a video. That’s very appealing for a writer.

What I’m doing is not a business but a labor of love. Anyone can see that by looking at my work. I’m trying to save America’s public schools. If you cared about the country, you would be helping me.

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