One of the particular joys of working at BYU-Idaho is that I can speak in unfiltered language: education isn't about career or job or income, it's about our nature as eternal beings. And what is the purpose of BYU-Idaho's education programs? To help us teach in the Savior's way. This is one of the primary documents we use in the course, a manual on teaching published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In every class, I try to find a good podcast or movie to watch. In this class, it's Waiting for Superman. What is good teaching? Why does education matter? It's a fantastic opener to the whole set of questions swirling around public education debates today. 

In this class, we spend a lot of time talking about educational philosophy--what do you really think school is for? This is the video that sparks that particular conversation, which we refine throughout the semester. 

All of my classes have a heavy dose of evidence-based practice, and this class is no different. When I was in college, I remember a teacher writing up several interventions on the board: small class sizes, increased teacher pay, better professional development, etc. Then he took an eraser and got rid of all of them except "teacher quality." That was my economics of education course, and it's stayed with me all that time. 

Then we watched Waiting for Superman. We watch that movie in both my ED 200 class (to ask questions about philosophy) and also ED 449 (to focus on what kind of teacher we want to become). It's a great movie.

I've adapted that teacher's presentation for my classes, which you can see above. Note, however, that the evidence has changed at least five times since I started teaching, and will keep changing--so let me know if this is outdated so I can fix it!