I appreciate your enthusiasm for developing outstanding employees. I'm not sure I agree with the implications of some of your points. It seems reasonable that everyone wants to work with the best people. But if the best won't have anything to do with those who fail to meet their high standards, how can you develop an organization composed of high performers? Does all the work fall to the leader? Would you want to have your student body modeled on your employee model, segregated into A+ students in one group and everybody else in another? Is the "I only work with the best people" the way to build collaboration and teamwork? I'm also bothered by your implication that anything under A+ is "substandard." I've heard about grade inflation, but that strikes me as ridiculous.

Perhaps an entirely different PD model is needed. My sister re-careered after 20 years in education to become a physician assistant. To get into the PA program, she had to document 1,000 hours of patient contact as a basis for learning how to apply medical knowledge. Now she has to take a specified number of hours of professional development each year on her own time and at her own expense. She gets to select what she wants to take from a list of approved courses, most of which are available online. She also has to pay a fee to have a record of her work prepared. Every few years she has to take a test to retain her credentials as a physician assistant. Spending nights and her 2 free weekends a month doing PD after seeing 30-40 seriously ill patients a day is not exactly fun, buy on the whole, she prefers the medical PD model to the education model.

To have a chair who is such a good teacher and mentor almost makes migraines worthwhile. Few people would have taken the time to follow up on the session with a blow-by-blow that you can use to improve your teaching. Thanks for sharing. Linda Aragoni http://www.you-can-teach-writing.com http://twitter.com/LindaAragoni http://GreatPenformances.Wordpress.com