- The best coaches are, at heart, excellent teachers. They have to impart tactics and skills to their players, along with universal values like teamwork, leadership, and effort. The U.S. Soccer Federation acknowledged the necessity of sound teaching when it contacted superstar educator Doug Lemov to help train its youth league coaches. The former teacher and administrator (and college soccer walk-on) gained fame for his meticulous research into the methods of successful instructors, which he has explored in a series of bestselling manuals. Now he’s helping professionals construct drills and improve communication with their young charges. Lemov has written about his fascination with the game before (check out his notes on a practice conducted by European juggernaut Bayern Munich), and we can only hope that his contributions help lift young American athletes higher. Because seriously, there’s something humiliating about losing to Belgium—whether on test scores or the beautiful game.
- Even if they’re stupefied by the content, history teachers probably long for the inarguable authority of mathematical theories and proofs. With a few exceptions, math and science teachers seldom have to bat away charges of imperialism or cultural misrepresentation. In California, where educators are mulling a newly issued framework for the teaching of history and social studies, curriculum is now implicated in long-running debates over memory and identity. The decision to include a brief segment on Korean “comfort women” (sex slaves who were forced into brothels by the Japanese during the Second World War) has won the approval of Korean-American families—and the frenzied opposition of Japanese-American parents, who see greater complexity in the story. Other communities hope to influence teaching as well, with families of Persian ancestry pushing for a more nuanced view of the empires of old. Parents are right to invest themselves in what their kids are learning, and there’s certainly no quadratic equation for world history. But let’s hope that, no matter what changes are put in place, fact prevails over everything else.
- If you’re looking for bad news in education, it ain’t hard to find. Our rising high school graduation rates increasingly look like hollow symbols. Our most promising low-income kids are struggling to win attention and resources. And the release of national assessment scores has become an occasion of dread. But there are still cheerful stories to be found, as this Atlantic article on U.S. math competition makes clear. Astute readers may remember the happy tale of last year’s American representatives to the International Math Olympiad, who won first place for the United States for the first time in twenty-five years. According to the team’s coaches, though, the once-in-a-generation victory was more a sign of things to come than a one-off triumph. Lower-level international competitions like Math Kangaroo, along with rigorous math circles in places like New York City and Silicon Valley, are seeing a huge spike in interest. “The bench of American teens who can do world-class math is significantly wider and stronger than it used to be,” claims Po-Shen Loh, the head coach of last year’s Olympiad team. Good news is always welcome.
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