A new movement has started among educators and education philosophers. They call it a "21st Century" revolution, advocating for reforms that help educate our youth to be prepared to succeed in the new century. But the skills they are pushing are just the same that progressive educators have been pushing for over a hundred years. John Dewey from 1898 to the 1920s was advocating for teachers to facilitate classrooms of guided student-constructed learning, incorporating collaboration, communication, and authentic assessments. 21st Century learning wants to address all the same skills, with the addition of technology. People are recognizing the similarities, but, frankly, progressives are happy to push their agenda under a different name.
But some still do not recognize the importance of constructivist learning, inquiry-based curricula, and the teacher as a facilitator of learning. In the quarterly teacher union (AFT) magazine, Diana Senechal expresses her dissent with advancing into the 21st Century. She does not believe in projects, or group work, or even "social studies." She believes that "a complementary purpose of education is to prepare us for solitude, which is part of every life." Maybe she hasn't noticed that no longer is there solitude in our world - 21st Century technologies have changed that and we need to prepare our students for that. She believes that listening is key in education and that students need to be able to tolerate stillness. While I agree with both points, I'm not sure that curriculum and teaching styles should be molded to advance solitude, listening, and stillness.
Senechal does, however, raise some very valid points. She is quite concerned that the project-based curricula that typically accompanies 21st Century learning is devoid of content and perhaps is introduced without any content knowledge. If progressive education is done correctly, content can be learned through the experiences that students have. Unfortunately, though, aspects of progressive pedagogy are taken by schools not rooted in (or misunderstanding) this educational philosophy and completely ruin many students' education. Conducting inquiry-based learning without assuring that students are coming out with content knowledge and understanding is doing them a disservice. But many schools, as Senechal points out, promote the illusion of "engagement" - students hard at work. In many schools, the students are "engaged," they are physically and actively doing something related to the subject, but they are not learning.
In order for 21st Century learning (and progressive education) to succeed, schools cannot pick and choose the hallmarks of the pedagogy (project-based, student interest driven, collaborative, technology integration) without ensuring content understanding. It most certainly can be done, and in all settings, if done well. But, to ignore the skills and the changing environment in which we live, work, and learn, we would be doing a disservice to our children, to their parents, to employers, and to the nation.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Mothers as Teachers... no more.
In a time when more families have two working parents and many children are being brought up in single-parent homes, it seems odd that school schedules still reflect the agrarian society that once dominated our landscape. I know some will contest this fact, citing that many farms and farmers would not agree to a nine-month calendar, 8am-3pm each day, because it is completely out of sync with the farming schedule. But it came from somewhere and my bet is that it has something to do with milking cows in the morning before school, picking cotton after school, planting in the late spring, and harvesting in the late summer. Then it just became ingrained into our culture that school would run during these days and hours. This was a perfect fit for a mother who wanted or needed a job. Mothers became a readily available workforce as educators that allowed them to balance the needs of their family with the ability to earn a couple extra dollars. The nuclear family has changed, and education has remained stagnant. But now teachers want to be taken seriously, myself included. No longer is education a place solely for mothers or even second-wage earners. Teaching has, and should continue to, evolve into a profession that is highly respected in our society.
Teaching is a cushy job... my personal experience would tell otherwise, but seriously, a 6-hour and 50-minute day, 185 days a year. Long vacations, ten sick days, two months off in the summer? I agree that perhaps teachers need time off to plan, assess, evaluate, self-reflect, etc. but who is holding us accountable to doing that? No one. In what other profession do they trust all of the employees to be doing all these things unsupervised, undirected, and on their own time? I'm not arguing for more demanding supervision, nor am I saying that teachers should teach more classes. I believe that teachers should work normals hours, normal days, and be treated "normally," and, of course, should be paid accordingly. Oh, and then teachers should also be held accountable for actually teaching their students.
Our nation's teachers are no long just mothers. They are mothers first, and fathers, and grandparents, and recent graduates, and career changes, etc. It's time we start structuring education so that teachers put in the time to gain the respect they so much deserve.
...list of questions that I will not provide the answers for (right now, but expect me to!):
1) How much time should students spend in school? And is it all in traditional-style classes?
2) How should teachers be held accountable for planning and reflecting?
3) How do we retain teachers who do not want to become a principal or AP?
4) What should be the necessary training to become a teacher?
5) Professional development - what is this? It's not professional, nor is it developing anything.
6) Teaching for a new economy - what needs to be taught to a generation who has all the information at their fingertips (see Eric Schmidt on GPS)?
7) How does student learning figure into calculating teacher success? And how do we assess student learning?
Teaching is a cushy job... my personal experience would tell otherwise, but seriously, a 6-hour and 50-minute day, 185 days a year. Long vacations, ten sick days, two months off in the summer? I agree that perhaps teachers need time off to plan, assess, evaluate, self-reflect, etc. but who is holding us accountable to doing that? No one. In what other profession do they trust all of the employees to be doing all these things unsupervised, undirected, and on their own time? I'm not arguing for more demanding supervision, nor am I saying that teachers should teach more classes. I believe that teachers should work normals hours, normal days, and be treated "normally," and, of course, should be paid accordingly. Oh, and then teachers should also be held accountable for actually teaching their students.
Our nation's teachers are no long just mothers. They are mothers first, and fathers, and grandparents, and recent graduates, and career changes, etc. It's time we start structuring education so that teachers put in the time to gain the respect they so much deserve.
...list of questions that I will not provide the answers for (right now, but expect me to!):
1) How much time should students spend in school? And is it all in traditional-style classes?
2) How should teachers be held accountable for planning and reflecting?
3) How do we retain teachers who do not want to become a principal or AP?
4) What should be the necessary training to become a teacher?
5) Professional development - what is this? It's not professional, nor is it developing anything.
6) Teaching for a new economy - what needs to be taught to a generation who has all the information at their fingertips (see Eric Schmidt on GPS)?
7) How does student learning figure into calculating teacher success? And how do we assess student learning?
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Education vs. Environment Gap - which came first?
A wise man once said "you don't have thoughts if you don't blog." A wiser man said "if you don't post, you don't have a blog."
We often talk about an academic achievement gap in our nation. Higher socioeconomic students are outperforming their lower "class" counterparts significantly. These lower classes tend to be composed more highly of minorities, especially Black Americans and Hispanic Americans. Because of this, many, including organizations like Teach for America, believe there is a racial or ethnic achievement gap. This gap, they believe, reproduces the inequities that led to the differences in achievement and so the cycle continues. TFA and other similar organizations then think that the solution to this problem is to "fix" or reform education by a variety of means - increasing teacher quality and preparation, creating structure and procedures in schools, extending the day or school year, create highly rigorous standards-based curricula, to name a few. However, I present a different angle to review - these students' environments.
While I have not done an extensive literature review and I am not even going to cite particular studies, it has been well noted that there are other things correlated to academic achievement, other than race, schools, and poverty. Single parent families, a mother's lower level of education, fewer numbers of books in the home, availability of and participation in extracurricular activities, and more all negatively correlate with academic achievement. Why don't we focus on some of these issues? Minority students in wealthy suburban schools still do not achieve as highly as their white counterparts, even when controlling for socioeconomic status. But they also tend to be from an environment that is less "supportive" of achievement (as listed above).
The CDC reports that one-third of females become pregnant before the age of 20. 81% of them are unmarried. There you go, two factors already - mother's level of education and parental marital status. And how about economies-of-scale? If a mother and father divorce (or were never even married), they now must have two of everything - homes, cars, even blenders. This leaves fewer resources for their children. The combined income of a two-parent home (or income from one parent and care-taking from the other) provide for significant increases in financial capabilities.
And now my favorite topic of all - out of school experiences. Even though suburban students and city students attend school for approximately the same number of hours a year, suburban students typically have access to a lot more outside of school. From athletics and arts to tutoring and camp, these students are involved with enriching, fulfilling, stimulating, supportive activities that promote social, cognitive, physical, and emotional development. While some urban schools try to recreate those settings, they cannot come close to the scope and scale that are available in the suburban communities. Children spend 6:50 a day, 182 days a year in school, or 14% of their year. Even if they spend 40% sleeping, what are they doing the other 46% of the time? How can we create communities that build programs for their youth that engage them during that extra 7.5 hours on school days and 15 hours on non-school days? How can we use assets that already exist within the community to do this so that we don't create extra burdens on schools, taxpayers, and already burned out community leaders? (Beware, I plan to write about this often...)
This is clearly a very quick, brief, and dirty pontification of environmental factors that influence student achievement. But hopefully it has sparked thought and interest into looking beyond the schools to solve social inequities.
We often talk about an academic achievement gap in our nation. Higher socioeconomic students are outperforming their lower "class" counterparts significantly. These lower classes tend to be composed more highly of minorities, especially Black Americans and Hispanic Americans. Because of this, many, including organizations like Teach for America, believe there is a racial or ethnic achievement gap. This gap, they believe, reproduces the inequities that led to the differences in achievement and so the cycle continues. TFA and other similar organizations then think that the solution to this problem is to "fix" or reform education by a variety of means - increasing teacher quality and preparation, creating structure and procedures in schools, extending the day or school year, create highly rigorous standards-based curricula, to name a few. However, I present a different angle to review - these students' environments.
While I have not done an extensive literature review and I am not even going to cite particular studies, it has been well noted that there are other things correlated to academic achievement, other than race, schools, and poverty. Single parent families, a mother's lower level of education, fewer numbers of books in the home, availability of and participation in extracurricular activities, and more all negatively correlate with academic achievement. Why don't we focus on some of these issues? Minority students in wealthy suburban schools still do not achieve as highly as their white counterparts, even when controlling for socioeconomic status. But they also tend to be from an environment that is less "supportive" of achievement (as listed above).
The CDC reports that one-third of females become pregnant before the age of 20. 81% of them are unmarried. There you go, two factors already - mother's level of education and parental marital status. And how about economies-of-scale? If a mother and father divorce (or were never even married), they now must have two of everything - homes, cars, even blenders. This leaves fewer resources for their children. The combined income of a two-parent home (or income from one parent and care-taking from the other) provide for significant increases in financial capabilities.
And now my favorite topic of all - out of school experiences. Even though suburban students and city students attend school for approximately the same number of hours a year, suburban students typically have access to a lot more outside of school. From athletics and arts to tutoring and camp, these students are involved with enriching, fulfilling, stimulating, supportive activities that promote social, cognitive, physical, and emotional development. While some urban schools try to recreate those settings, they cannot come close to the scope and scale that are available in the suburban communities. Children spend 6:50 a day, 182 days a year in school, or 14% of their year. Even if they spend 40% sleeping, what are they doing the other 46% of the time? How can we create communities that build programs for their youth that engage them during that extra 7.5 hours on school days and 15 hours on non-school days? How can we use assets that already exist within the community to do this so that we don't create extra burdens on schools, taxpayers, and already burned out community leaders? (Beware, I plan to write about this often...)
This is clearly a very quick, brief, and dirty pontification of environmental factors that influence student achievement. But hopefully it has sparked thought and interest into looking beyond the schools to solve social inequities.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Building a Useful Science Curriculum - Part 1
Two important scientific findings have been made in the past few months - one in archeology and the other in astronomy. Frankly, there have been hundreds of scientific advances recently, but the two that I have encountered this weekend alone that would insight interest and curiosity in every student.
1) Scientists are trying to reverse bio-engineer dinosaurs from chicken embryos.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/12/60minutes/main5629962.shtml?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
2) Scientists found water on the moon.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111301986.html
HOLY COW! Think of the richness of a curriculum that could be developed around either or both of these topics. Think of how interesting, engaging, and exciting these topics would be for children. Think of the depth and breadth of the skills and content that a student can gain from just exploring these two current science topics. But how can a single teacher dedicate the time to develop such a course, ensuring that there are valid learning outcomes and reliable ways to measure student achievement? It's impossible.
I propose a national curriculum development group who is charged with immediately developing progressive curricula based on what is actually currently going on in the world. It should integrate literacy, science, social studies, mathematics, and the arts on all grade levels. This is no Obama back-to-school address lesson plan. These curricula would be all-inclusive - multi-directional lesson plans, learning intentions, multiple assessment opportunities - in a sort-of "choose-your-own-ending" unit of study based on how the children receive the topic. This group would have to act quick, releasing curricula very shortly after the development in the field. Perhaps they can even have an emergency response team that puts out teaser-lessons just to spark interest among the students and get them excited as they wait for the full thing.
As a rookie teacher and novice curriculum designer, I lack the confidence in my own teaching. I can go rogue and just scrap what I'm doing and build a curriculum around dinosaurs or the moon or even the H1N1 vaccine on the fly. But am I doing my children a disservice by deviating from the NYC pacing guide that ends with the 8th grade science test? How can I measure the success of my curriculum? And, most basically, when will I sit down to actually plan out this humongous undertaking.
Students are constantly saying that what they're learning in school is boring. And educators respond with something like "well, you have to know it to move on to the next grade." Well, I'm not too fond of this answer (even though I've used it myself). If students are bored, then teachers are really, really bored - teaching the same content over and over in the same ways in order to achieve results on a standardized test. Maybe new and interesting curricula will spark excitement among our educators. And they, in turn, will pass on their enthusiasm to the children.
Soon the day will come when teachers can say "...I'm sorry class; we cannot continue memorizing the parts of a cell today. Instead, we have to discuss colonizing the moon [bringing dinosaurs back to life]." I wonder how students will respond.
1) Scientists are trying to reverse bio-engineer dinosaurs from chicken embryos.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/12/60minutes/main5629962.shtml?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
2) Scientists found water on the moon.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111301986.html
HOLY COW! Think of the richness of a curriculum that could be developed around either or both of these topics. Think of how interesting, engaging, and exciting these topics would be for children. Think of the depth and breadth of the skills and content that a student can gain from just exploring these two current science topics. But how can a single teacher dedicate the time to develop such a course, ensuring that there are valid learning outcomes and reliable ways to measure student achievement? It's impossible.
I propose a national curriculum development group who is charged with immediately developing progressive curricula based on what is actually currently going on in the world. It should integrate literacy, science, social studies, mathematics, and the arts on all grade levels. This is no Obama back-to-school address lesson plan. These curricula would be all-inclusive - multi-directional lesson plans, learning intentions, multiple assessment opportunities - in a sort-of "choose-your-own-ending" unit of study based on how the children receive the topic. This group would have to act quick, releasing curricula very shortly after the development in the field. Perhaps they can even have an emergency response team that puts out teaser-lessons just to spark interest among the students and get them excited as they wait for the full thing.
As a rookie teacher and novice curriculum designer, I lack the confidence in my own teaching. I can go rogue and just scrap what I'm doing and build a curriculum around dinosaurs or the moon or even the H1N1 vaccine on the fly. But am I doing my children a disservice by deviating from the NYC pacing guide that ends with the 8th grade science test? How can I measure the success of my curriculum? And, most basically, when will I sit down to actually plan out this humongous undertaking.
Students are constantly saying that what they're learning in school is boring. And educators respond with something like "well, you have to know it to move on to the next grade." Well, I'm not too fond of this answer (even though I've used it myself). If students are bored, then teachers are really, really bored - teaching the same content over and over in the same ways in order to achieve results on a standardized test. Maybe new and interesting curricula will spark excitement among our educators. And they, in turn, will pass on their enthusiasm to the children.
Soon the day will come when teachers can say "...I'm sorry class; we cannot continue memorizing the parts of a cell today. Instead, we have to discuss colonizing the moon [bringing dinosaurs back to life]." I wonder how students will respond.
Friday, November 13, 2009
My first real blog
Everyone knows that I hate to write, especially when I have to use the first person singular. It's almost as much as I hate to read... It also feels incredibly stupid sitting here and typing my thoughts into words on a computer. But alas, if you don't have thoughts if you don't have a blog.
Why do I need a blog?
It seems that the most thoughtful people have a blog. Perhaps their brains are overwhelmed by the amount of thoughts they have and so they need a blog to let some out. Or perhaps in our society, we overvalue the written word as opposed to verbal speech and true relationships. Or, looking at the world in a very negative light, people just don't care to listen to anyone else; and without anyone to listen, we turn to a blog to preach en mass and hope someone reads...
...Myself included. And, of course, my thoughts are too much for even my large head to contain.
How personal can one get on a blog?
Do I just pontificate on abstract concepts citing only specific examples when I can ensure anonymity? Or can I really truly deeply delve into my life and the people who influence it? Do I stick to purely professional life or personal life? Do I get into my daily actions, like I used to do with my away messages in high school (eg: ZBGMAN: I cannot answer your IM b/c I am on the toilet right now). I think I'll start safe and begin with the former.
Who will read my blog?
When do I send this out to other people to read? And who do I invite to read it? Maybe I'll just start with myself for now and quietly share this among my close circle. And maybe if the content becomes something a little more substantial, they will share it with others. Or maybe this will just be a journal for me to write about my frustrations on a weekly or monthly (er... hopefully regular) basis.
Mom, Dad... I have a blog.
So, do I have to tell my mom and dad about my blog and thus share with them the address and my inner musings? Well, they've always been my biggest advocates, so perhaps they will end up sharing it with people to build my readership. But I think I'll tell them to wait until I have more content up on here before they share it with the world.
I'm kind of ready to finish this post...
Do I need a signature line? Or a ending that I use on a consistent basis? Is that tacky or will it help get me noticed? All I know is that all this introspective thought is hurting my head... and Chinese food is sounding like a very tasty dinner.
I blog, therefore, I think.
(I now have a signature.)
Why do I need a blog?
It seems that the most thoughtful people have a blog. Perhaps their brains are overwhelmed by the amount of thoughts they have and so they need a blog to let some out. Or perhaps in our society, we overvalue the written word as opposed to verbal speech and true relationships. Or, looking at the world in a very negative light, people just don't care to listen to anyone else; and without anyone to listen, we turn to a blog to preach en mass and hope someone reads...
...Myself included. And, of course, my thoughts are too much for even my large head to contain.
How personal can one get on a blog?
Do I just pontificate on abstract concepts citing only specific examples when I can ensure anonymity? Or can I really truly deeply delve into my life and the people who influence it? Do I stick to purely professional life or personal life? Do I get into my daily actions, like I used to do with my away messages in high school (eg: ZBGMAN: I cannot answer your IM b/c I am on the toilet right now). I think I'll start safe and begin with the former.
Who will read my blog?
When do I send this out to other people to read? And who do I invite to read it? Maybe I'll just start with myself for now and quietly share this among my close circle. And maybe if the content becomes something a little more substantial, they will share it with others. Or maybe this will just be a journal for me to write about my frustrations on a weekly or monthly (er... hopefully regular) basis.
Mom, Dad... I have a blog.
So, do I have to tell my mom and dad about my blog and thus share with them the address and my inner musings? Well, they've always been my biggest advocates, so perhaps they will end up sharing it with people to build my readership. But I think I'll tell them to wait until I have more content up on here before they share it with the world.
I'm kind of ready to finish this post...
Do I need a signature line? Or a ending that I use on a consistent basis? Is that tacky or will it help get me noticed? All I know is that all this introspective thought is hurting my head... and Chinese food is sounding like a very tasty dinner.
I blog, therefore, I think.
(I now have a signature.)
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)