The video above first appeared in a Huffington Post article last week titled The Independent Project – High School Allows Teens To Decide Their Own Curriculum. The clip gives an overview of a progressive program at Monument Mountain High School in Great Barrington, MA that allows students to design their own course of studies.
I can’t help wondering how many of our students would jump at the opportunity to do something similar…
“I prefer teaching with the limitations of no class sets, because it means we’re constantly reflecting on the merits of each tool for the given purpose.”
As I think about the skills that our students will need most, I am sure that flexibility and adaptability will be at the top of the list. I think the best option for students would be a buffet of options where they can choose which option is best for them and the task at hand. I am worried that we will be handicapped by traditional thinking and forget that the question of which device is best or which tool is best to perform a particular task will never again have a static answer.
This whole thing is a moving target that I don’t ever see stopping. We need to make sure that we are helping our students see beyond the device or resource of the day and keep their eyes open for what comes next.
In case you missed it, Apple posted a great video on it’s Education page yesterday highlighting Burlington High School. Seeing it made me prouder than ever to be part of a community that is willing to take a risk and be a leader in providing the most modern classroom resources to help prepare our students.
We are quite fortunate to have a community that supports its schools financially and a teaching staff that is dedicated, talented, and willing to take risks! Having all of these factors supporting ours schools is something that has led met to say the following on more than one occasion:
“If it can be done, then it can be done in Burlington.”
Here is the link if you are interested in watching the Apple video.
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One of the fun parts of my new position this year has been the opportunity to visit all of the other schools in Burlington. Each time I have the chance to see what students and teachers are up to I am left with an extremely positive feeling. It is so great to be able to see all of the wonderful things happening across the district! In fact, I have set a goal for the remainder of the school year to try to spend a full day in an elementary school each week.
This past week, I spent a day at Fox Hill and had the opportunity to sit in with a number of classes. Check out some of the pictures below. Thanks to Principal Johnson and the staff and students for their warm welcome!
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| Students working on “sight words” in Kindergarten |
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| Student working on the egg drop in science class. |
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| Students making their Rainbow Fishes |
The video above appeared on Education Week’s Digital Directions Website back at the beginning of February. We are certainly fortunate to be gaining this type of recognition nationally for the phenomenal efforts that staff members have made to integrate technological resources into their classrooms.
As a parent of three, I am amazed at the role social media plays in the lives of my three children. While doing my best to keep tabs on my son Timothy who is a 9th grader and recently started a Facebook account and my daughter Bryn, a 7th grader who is an Instagram lover, I wonder sometimes whether I am doing enough to guide them in the appropriate use of these communication tools. It can certainly be overwhelming! I can’t even imagine what is coming down the road for my first-grader (pictured above) who is taking it all in
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| (Photo credit: MrSchuReads) |
As I read through Marion Brady’s great article in The Answer Sheet titled A REAL Paradigm Shift, I can’t help thinking about how difficult it is to create an educational experience for our students that is vastly different than the one we experienced ourselves. When we talk about redesigning our curriculum, we have to first consider origin of the word curriculum.
“Curriculum came from the Latin word ‘Currere’ which means race course/ to run/ run way, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults (via Wikipedia).“
This is where we hit our biggest obstacle in changing the way we do school in our country. The folks leading the way, the educators, have a tremendous hurdle to overcome in the fact that for most of us the “deeds and experiences” we have had do not mirror the experiences that we need to lead our current crop of students through. As I make a disclaimer that I am one of those educators trying to unlearn my own formal education, I am not saying that this is an impossible task.
The rub here is that while I believe in teachers and know that they would be up to the challenge of creating a new reality in our schools, we cannot begin to tackle this work in places where our present and future judges educators, students, schools, and communities on their latest round of standardized test scores. For educators, this is a never-ending rat race that typically evolves into an environment of “test prep” that is equally unfulfilling for them and their students. As our state begins a redesigned teacher evaluation process that links teachers to the test scores of their students, I can’t help thinking we are headed towards an infinite loop…
As Brady points out, as long as education reform efforts in our country continue to define accountability so narrowly, we are perpetuating a myth that there is something significant is happening or will happen.
“Standardized tests are to accountability what a finger in the wind is to a weather station. What they measure — information stored in memory — is useful, but for kids facing an unknown future, that’s not nearly enough. They need to know how to create new knowledge. That knowledge will be original, and standardized tests can’t evaluate original, non-standard thought.”
In this model, we may be able to ensure that certain things are being taught, but even this will not guarantee that significant learning is taking place.
Anyone disagree?
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| (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Over the weekend, an interesting article titled A warning to college profs from a high school teacher ran in The Washington Post’s Answer Sheet Column. The article, which has generated well over 1,000 comments already, was written by award-winning high school teacher Kenneth Bernstein from Washington, D.C. Despite the article’s title, Bernstein is really sending a warning to all of us about the current reality concerning our students and the climate of testing that has overtaken our educational system.
His concluding paragraph sums up his thoughts:
“Now you are seeing the results in the students arriving at your institutions. They may be very bright. But we have not been able to prepare them for the kind of intellectual work that you have every right to expect of them. It is for this that I apologize, even as I know in my heart that there was little more I could have done. Which is one reason I am no longer in the classroom.”
While Bernstein’s conclusion is very general, he also cites some concrete reasons for the state of the current crop of students heading out of our public high schools being ill-prepared for what is ahead of them.
“…most of the tests being used consist primarily or solely of multiple-choice items, which are cheaper to develop, administer, and score than are tests that include constructed responses such as essays. Even when a state has tests that include writing, the level of writing required for such tests often does not demand that higher-level thinking be demonstrated, nor does it require proper grammar, usage, syntax, and structure.“
According to Bernstein, these problems also carry over into Advanced Placement courses due to the nature of the AP Exams. As a teacher who spent time scoring the writing portion on the exams, he saw limitations in the scoring mechanism.
“If a student hits the points on the rubric, he or she gets the points for that rubric. There is no consideration of grammar or rhetoric, nor is credit given or a score reduced based on the format of the answer. A student who takes time to construct a clear topic sentence and a proper conclusion gets no credit for those words.”
Unfortunately, with PARCC testing due to commence in 2015 for our students, we are looking ahead to even more time spent on standardized testing and not less.
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| (Photo credit: Ken Whytock) |
In the short video below, Chaltain describes schools in other nations where a student’s teachers “the ones who know a student best” design the most meaningful tests a student will take. He advocates for school communities to answer the following questions:
What are our measures of success for our students? How do we know we are being successful?
http://www.hlntv.com/embed/57819
While many are skeptical that anything dramatic will take place to change our nation’s plans to test students more often than any other country in the world, Chaltain notes some blips on the radar screen that he hopes will lead to more action for this important cause.
“Consider three separate data points as evidence: Maryland, where the superintendent of the state’s largest district of schools has called for a three-year moratorium on standardized tests; Washington, where one school’s decision to boycott its state tests has spread to other schools and communities; and Texas, where a proposed Senate bill would significantly reduce the number of state standardized tests students must pass to graduate.”
It would be interesting to see how a moratorium on testing would impact our students. I will continue to pray that we have an opportunity to see the day it happens!
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My Un-Learning Journey 