Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

When reality contradicts intuition, humans make bad decisions.

“Why do things go smoothly for a while, and then suddenly they don’t?” asked George Dyson

“Progress” is bandied as if we all accept what it will look like. #leadership

“I’m not here to give you a happy story... I’m here to give you the truth” when historians speak.

Question your own lenses.

Overheard wisdom: “When you parcel the good in your past, you ignore the reality.”

Theories are not guesses. They are “the logical, mathematical consequences of a set of observable, measurable physical relationships,” according to Niles Eldredge. #science

Carlo Araceli observed, “The physical world is not a set of self-absorbed entities that do their selfish things.” The same cannot be said of the social world.

When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown. -Stephen Jay Gould

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty. - Stephen Jay Gould

Teaching: “deliberate assistance provided us facilitate learning.” Yup, that seems accurate... and indicates the ambiguous nature of our work. #education

Learning can result because of teaching or despite teaching.

It is sad to hear and see the first response that education leaders give to include “the data.” For almost every situation you face, neither the problem nor the solution is “in the data.” #education #schools #highschool #highered #leadership

Observation leads to inference; inference to conjecture. Conjecture to observation.

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. -Stephen Jay Gould

If you say, “this is how all students should be taught,” I will stop listening. #teaching

Variation and persistence produce culture.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. - Albert Einstein

Scientific theories are not arbitrary. They reflect reality of nature and human interaction with nature. #science

When does “think, pair, share” stop becoming innovative instruction?