The Huffington Post – Stuart Rhoden
“How people introduce themselves is always interesting. When I was living in Washington DC, people introduced themselves as “hi my name is ____, and I work for ____.” As an educator, people often introduce themselves as “hi my name is _____, and I’ve been teaching for ____ number of years.” While I find it admirable in this era that people have persisted in one profession for a number of years, I’m always curious as to why we quantify that specific characteristic, oftentimes over all others. Does the number of years in a particular profession always equal proficiency? Back in 2008, Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers: The Story of Success introduced the concept that it takes 10,000 hours to be considered an “expert” in a particular field, sport, or skill. I’d like to try to deconstruct and apply that concept to the discourse surrounding public education. Imagine if instead of introducing ourselves by the number of years we have taught, we introduced ourselves as the number of students we have helped educate and prepare for life? How would the discourse surrounding public education change if we focused on these outcomes as opposed to simply a matter of attrition or number of years in the classroom? While there is a significant value to experience (I would argue both inside and outside the classroom), simply adding up the number of years performing a particular task does not always equal proficiency. I could spend 20,000 hours practicing basketball, but I would never be Michael Jordan.”(more)