Daniel Coyle's Blog, page 25

Greatest Teachers: Who Would You Choose?

If you could gather six of the planet's best teachers in one place for three days, who would you choose?

Would you pick:

Rafe Esquith, who teaches Los Angeles inner-city fifth-graders to perform Shakespeare?
Hans Jensen, the world's best cello teacher?
Michael Sandel, whose Harvard class is so life-changing it was just turned into a public-television special?
How about Idan Ravin, basketball's Hoops Whisperer, who ignites NBA players to new levels of performance?

It's not a hypothetical...

The (Hidden) Genius of Editing

Pattern of genius: Dickens's original manuscript

Editing has a bad name.

To many of us, the word evokes fussy red pens, nitpicking, stilted progress. Editing — which we can define as locating mistakes and fixing them — seems in every way to be the precise opposite of genius. After all, geniuses are fluid, perfect. Geniuses nail it the first time — that's what makes them geniuses, right?

Uh, no.

In fact, when you peel back genius, you usually reveal editing. Lots and lots of editing. Ridiculous

Thanksgiving

Mozgala at work

Back when I was reporting the book I went to see  neurologist George Bartzokis of UCLA. We were sitting in his tiny office, talking about myelin and how the brain can learn new behaviors, and Bartzokis said something that got my attention.

He said, "In a most basic sense, myelin is hope."

Myelin is hope, I remember thinking. Could that possibly sound any more cornball?

I've found myself thinking about his words more than a few times — especially while reading Neil Genzlinger's...

Good Reads, Links, Tunes

Tis the season and all, so here are a few things I've been enjoying lately, in no particular order:

Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon: Okay, I'm a huge Chabon fan and would probably love anything he scribbled, but this collection of nonfiction essays is uniquely great for its insights into parenting, kid freedom, and the cultural power of Wacky-Packs.The Weepies: My friend Dave got me into this Brooklyn singing/songwriting duo during a long drive to Denali National Park. We listened to...

Tina Fey's Transformation

Check out this video of Tina Fey in her early days, back when she was growing her skills doing improv at Chicago's Second City. A few things leap out:

Young Tina's not all that funny.Young Tina takes LOTS of risks (as evidenced by the sketch).Young Tina sees the direct connection between taking smart risks and getting better.  Listen to her at the 1:45 mark: "There's a huge amount of risk but there's a really fun freefall once you've done it a bunch of times and had it go really, really...