The Excellent Conversation (with Wes & Amie‪)‬ Wes Carroll & Amie Dorsey

WATEC is taking a summer break. Looking forward to seeing you next month!

Wes and Ted debate individual vs group instruction. Why is individual instruction so much better? The person you're teaching is always more complicated than the subject you're discussing.
https://tutorted.com​ | https://wescarroll.com

00:37 Casual introduction of Wes and Ted and what has been going on lately
06:15 How can I tell if Ted's class would be the best option for me?
09:00 Chaos's role in creativity
10:20 Choosing your own methods of organization and learning styles
19:50 WC: A teacher's ability to go wherever the student wants is limited only by the teacher's ability to follow
20:45 Personal responsibility of the student and the ways in which either encouraged or discouraged at the systemic level
22:40 Embodied cognition vs. our reinforced cultural model that all thinking happens in the brain
30:44 WC: Individual variation means maybe I use it as my go-to and maybe someone else uses it like once in a blue moon - it exists but used in different frequencies
32:05 WC: When the stars align, we learn like sponges.
33:35 Advantages of being the only learner in the room
34:26 TD: Is an effective teacher essentially the same as an effective pastor/faith leader?
38:45 Ineffective teachers
47:07 A teacher's role: building the systems and the incentives that lead to good student outcomes
51:10 The extreme value of feedback, especially negative
55:20 "Narrate your thought process."
56:50 Metathinking - awareness of one's own thinking
58:25 Jeremy Wolfe (and the McCullough effect)
1:02:51 Why did that lecture matter?

"Plato scratched things in the dirt." Wes and Ted unpack that very cryptic quote that's been sitting on our planning spreadsheet since the beginning.
https://tutorted.com​ | https://wescarroll.com

Wes and Ted don't parent their students, do they?
Tutor Ted knows that he connects with students in a way that a parent typically cannot. Wes, both a tutor and a parent, weighs the similarities between tutoring and parenting... and the differences that everyone can learn from.
What can parents do that tutors can't... and vice-versa?
https://tutorted.com​  |  https://wescarroll.com

Wes and Ted have been thinking about how changes to the traditional school structure affects students—in bad ways and in good. Today they venture (eventually!) into a chat about what specific aspects of school under pandemic might help us as we exit our quarantine—and hope these changes make education even better.
https://tutorted.com​  |  https://wescarroll.com

Wes and Ted answer deeper questions about excellence.
If we agree that excellence should not be an end goal, what should be? Does excellence represent craftsmanship rather than artistry? Is Bill Gates excellent? Is Mark Zuckerberg excellent, or something else? If excellence travels along a linear path (from, say, inept-to-adequate-to-good-to-excellent), what does that imply about the flexibility and utility of it? Is excellence an end-state or a waypoint?
https://tutorted.com​​  |  https://wescarroll.com​

00:01​ Random discussion about excellence and introduction of Wes and Ted
03:45​ There's a lot of nuance in the word excellence
04:22​ Excellence is an artful juggling of different mental frameworks
07:15​ Excellence is being an accomplished or skilled craftsperson
10:55​ Comfort being the enemy of fulfillment
12:32​ Is excellence built to your psyche a helpful tool?
16:53​ We're behaving as though we live in a one-dimensional world
21:39​ Excellence is between 2 or 3 standard deviations above the mean
24:44​ You shouldn't make excellence your stopping point
27:00​ Move into a realm where you are defining what a better direction is
35:10​ Attempting to achieve excellence in a certain stage of cultural human development
38:00​ What is the thing that you want to get?
42:14​ Situated Cognition
48:40​ Mark Zuckerberg aimed for excellence and kept going in that direction even after achieving it instead of noting that there's a pivot point
50:35​ Excellence is achievable and after achieving it, take a pivot
54:30​ Excellence earns you a seat at the table and what you do with the seat at the table is up to you
58:36​ Part of what makes it beautiful is that you recognize it's a path along a presumably twisty path