Practical UbD

This will be brief, but I just want to express a hope (Prof. Goldstein are you reading?) that we will do some work with really practical applications of UbD. As I reflect on how my coursework here at MSU will help me as an administrator, I can think of only one course (Clinical Supervision, in which we watched tape of teachers working, wrote observations complete with pre and post interviews and them discussed them) in which there was a practical application. It's wonderful to study curriculum or educational theory, but we all know what the job is once we're in the big chair. If someone asked me to rewrite curriculum at this exact moment, I feel as though I would be no better prepared to do that than I was before my coursework began. This shouldn't surprise me, I suppose. I recall one course as an undergradute - Methods of Teaching English - in which there was any useful practical application. Where my other professors would say "Rousseau would agree" "Freire believes..." "Dewey's idea was..." Prof. Becker would say "Try that in a high school classroom and kids will eat you alive." Now that's useful advice. Ed. Psych, Philosophical Orientation to Education, Teacher, School, and Society - all worthy classes, but nothing in them even remotely prepared me for that first day I faced kids. I have this vague fear that history is repeating itself as I prepare to move into administration.