It is amazing how much things have changed in the last twenty years in the world around me. I currently live in an area I used to go to desert parties … I mean gatherings in, which is now filled with houses and businesses. When I was in high school I could practically fill my tank for $10, now it costs $80. Heck I used to have hair, now … well you get the point. However one thing that has not changed very much in my opinion is education. Teachers are still grossly underpaid, the sage on the stage approach is still pervasive if not worse, math instruction resembles that of the Kahn Academy, teachers are not held in high regard. The only real change in education has come with high stakes testing and labels. Before schools could get by with relative anonymity as long as students could read and do basic math when they left school.
Since high stakes testing has come into play we now make sure we “cover” material for the test. We rarely extend learning opportunities in fear we will miss the next standard we are to teach. Here a five steps towards a solution.
1. Stop trying to find a fix rather than a solution.
There is always a new trend to follow just to change it in a year or two when things do not work out. Over the years some good things have come around and have some staying power, a la PLC. However they are often simply the same idea reimaged and placed in a slick package. New programs are not always the solution. Get back to student needs, think of an IEP approach to teaching. Every student is an individual. Plan according to their learning modalities.
2. Explain to Arnie Duncan that the Kahn Academy is not innovative, in relation to the art of teaching.
Is this what we believe innovation really is, the only thing “different” was filming it. Even then there are plenty of other sites that do that. This is not transforming education it is simply trivializing what real teachers do. Can there be some uses for these videos as resources? Sure, at home for the kid that needs some assistance on a concept, they were taught by a trained teacher. However there are schools that are now promoting using this in the classroom as part of instruction.
3. Empower great leaders!
True change across classroom, buildings, districts, systems will only occur from the top down. Currently we have tons of incredible teachers that rise above the stress to make sure instruction is meaningful, challenging and relevant. Unfortunately widespread change to first best instruction will not occur until Administrators are allowed to guide teachers to make decisions based on student need rather than the page in the pacing guide they need to be at by Friday.
4. Empower great teachers!
The high stakes/label-making machine has handcuffed teachers. Consider this if you have been an educator for 3 years or less all you know is assessment and standards that have to be covered by High Stakes testing time. Teaching is a high performance job where expert decisions are made by the second. These decisions become difficult when you have to “get through” the standards. Allow teachers to work as units (PLC component), and plan projects and lessons across themes that encompass multiple standards.
5. Focus!
I had the privilege of listening to Mike Schmoker speak in my district precipitated by the reading of his book Focus. Mr. Schmoker’s message is relatively simple Focus on a few key high leverage skills that cross curriculum and do nothing else until these skills have been mastered. As the leadership team in my district read this book many though I would be pushing back, as it says technology will not “save” education. They were wrong as the Instructional Technology Leader in my District I see first hand educators that mask their instructional shortcomings with technology. Technology will not save education but if teachers master sound lessons with “ authentic literacy (Schmoker, Focus, 2011, p. 11)” first then integrating technology or any other initiative will occur with ease.
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Hi, my name is Sara Kinney and I'm a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I have been assigned your blog to comment on as an assignment for the next two weeks.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to my class blog: http://edm310.blogspot.com/
Here is a link to my personal blog:http://KinneySaraedm310.blogspot.com/
As your post indicates, steps need to be taken to improve the education system in our country. I like the idea of coming up with a few easy steps as a starting point for real comprehensive change. The step that jumped out at me the most in your list was empowering great leaders. Without a top down change in the educational system, comprehensive reform cannot happen. Administrators need to be involved in the process and should communicate with teachers and parents to come up with the best course of action for educating today's students. Without Administrator support, systemwide reforms will be impossible, and students will be forced to suffer the consequences of actions taken by the decision makers of an educational system that will have failed them.
The challenge is in every school there are great teachers, but the leader needs to identify the needs of the teachers to assist them in becoming the most proficient. If you get a chance read the book Focus by Schmoker it really has some great implications for teachers, administrators and school districts to reform educational practice.
DeleteHi. My name is Maria and I am also a student at University of South Alabama in EDM 310. I am studying to be an elementary teacher. I agree with the points you make about changing the educational system. I especially liked point 3 about empowering the administrators. I feel that administrators get painted as the bad guys especially with the standardized tests. Although I am not a teacher yet, I agree that working together with other teachers would be beneficial not only to the teachers but the students. It helps to reinforce the information.
ReplyDeleteMaria
http://eschbachmariaedm310.blogspot.com/
The challenge is finding administrators that are empowered to lead through learning themselves
DeleteI agree with all that you said, but be forewarned that:
ReplyDelete1. educational reform is incredibly difficult to do well (even at one school)
2. there are huge dollars at stake, which means that helping students is not the top priority.
JDF
Both of your point are unfortunately all too correct.
DeleteChad,
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. You did a good job covering many of the bases. There are pockets of good things, too. For instance, in Massachusetts, each student has an ISSP (Individualized Student Success Plan) that helps teachers make sure that student is getting what they need.
And the idea about empowering administrators also varies widely, even within a single school district. Not sure how to handle that one.
But, the thing that comes through in a few of your points is that we have to stop re-labeling what we do well and treating it as something new. We need to continue to do what we do well, no matter what fancy new label is attached to it. And, as you stated in your last point, we have to focus! (Thanks for the info on the book, too. It's now on my list.)
Kathy
The book is an easy read with that geez of course this is what we should be doing. It really will take leaders willing to buck the preverbal system. Thanks for sharing the Massachusetts piece, I have heard people using it but not at a large scale. Will you be at CUE this year?
Deletethe way you proposed to change education herarchy is really a great and innovative way... New York University Ranking | New York University Rank
ReplyDeleteIs it possible to return to a basic approach to instruction in a widespread way? Thanks for the response.
DeleteChad,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. It is becoming ever apparent that students will need to process huge amounts of information, much of it in the written form to be truly college and career ready. With this being said, how come so few of our students engage in authentic literacy in our classrooms? Increased reading and writing with interaction and discussion is different than assigning students huge amounts of independent work and something I believe we need to spend more time on.
Agreed as you know success on standardized test would come with authentic literacy and having students discuss and defend their opinions and answers. A lot of change needs to occur is this truly possible in any widespread approach?
DeleteMy recent experience at the ECOO (Ontario, Canada) conference is echoed in your "easy" steps. While I still have my hair, I am a wee bit older than you, and while listening to presentations discussing "new" trends and such, I was reminded how similar these were to things I was working on and with in the late 1990's and I am sure others were also doing much earlier than that. Great teaching is further enabled by new tools, not supplanted by them.
ReplyDeleteAnother great quote I heard was that "teachers are not afraid of change, they are afraid of ill-conceived change." (I will share this Ontario educator's name in an update soon."
I also remember a few good ones from Michael Fullan. First, "A fool with a tool is still a fool." and "Change of leadership is not the problem its discontinuity of ideas that is." This is especially salient here in San Diego where we have gone through I don't know how many superintendents in the last five years as well as passed a bond that will put iPads in the hands of 8th grade students in classes with 41 of their friends and an educational technology/training department that has been drastically slashed over the past few years.
I also heard about numerous Ontario districts have made significant positive change happen in just a few years by really focusing on just a few big priorities. For example, check out the great mission at Park Manor School - Global critical thinkers collaborating to change the world! http://pkm.wrdsb.ca/technology-for-learning/
That sounds like a place students, teachers, and families want to be!
I agree wholeheartedly with the quote by Fullan "A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool." The district I work at has been blessed with the PLC model, and have made great educational gains. The keys to our next step is getting children to defend their learning and views with the evidence to back it up. We need to continue with the tenants of PLC and push towards authentic learning and we will be unstoppable with most of our students college bound.
ReplyDeleteDo you guys use Share for digital portfolios? This might easily develop into student-led conferences...
DeleteWhile I originally said that the tools listed above couldn't and shouldn't be used as a "teacher in a box", I do have to emphasize again that this should only apply to compulsory education. I shouldn't, if I have the willpower, the curiosity, and the ability, pay $150,000 on a college education (Oh, but of course, I am. We're a long way away from growing out of "Hurr-durr, my parents paid for me to attend x university to obtain this piece of paper that means I am by default qualified") when I could've just spent $1.50 on late fees at my local library and used their wi-fi, <-- slight play on"Good Will Hunting". If you really, really, truly have the motivation, despite words of "Oh, but a human presence is necessary to really understand" and all these underpinnings of having to be physically present, trust me, you can do it. You can. If you know how to use Boolean Operators in a search engine and how/where to look for information, you can learn it. If it's not up online, by some bizarre chance, you can almost certainly find ways to contact people who do know about the subject who will give information on it out of good will. Another important thing which I think meshes with your idea of teaching based on learning modalities is the fact that, while not necessarily intentionally, the sheer amount of semi-redundant learning content (i.e. video lectures on the EXACT same subject simply done by different professors, graphical/numerical/artistic displays of information, etc.), allows students to be taught the same concepts in totally different ways, which is definitely how you can nab a concept and pretty much guarantee that someone understands it. If you take enough varied approaches, the chances of them not getting it is tremendously small.
ReplyDeleteIn general, I think we're slowly (as in, hundreds of years, if we don't run into an electronics crisis with the depletion of Silicon, Coltan, and other elements needed for computers), asymptotically approaching a point where the issue of money in education becomes negligible. Money is no longer an issue. That may sound like a threat to the teaching profession as a paid profession, and it might be, but I still cast an overwhelmingly big doubt on that.
Maybe this will allow us to have more engineers, researchers, and functioning intellectuals who have the opportunity to contribute to the world in a very concrete fashion of actually developing things and getting to satiate their own curiosity rather than be confined to having to unfortunately teach a classroom full of some curious, aspiring individuals, as well as plenty who could care less. And, hey, if they want to, they can also tutor. They can also help on a human level, and charge for it, that would still definitely be extant as an industry. It's just the fact that there might be a day where if people don't really need help, they won't get it unless they ask for it, and won't have to pay for it unless they actually need to.
I think that all of the software and learning services I stated above are actually, to the contrary, a huge vehicle towards something we both want, an emphasis on IEP's. The reason I say this is, based on the assumption that self-teaching could become extremely successful in the long-term future, the need for "teachers" in the traditional sense could diminish, and the need for something much more personal, efficient, and meaningful, i.e. real "mentors and masters" could rise.
This comment was supposed to follow the first comment:
ReplyDeleteThis, obviously, despite being logically reasonable, is terribly idealistic. In the same way that big oil holds alternative energy developers by the throat due to the worry that their outdated industry might *gasp* actually diminish in importance due to new technologies (despite the fact that they could solve all of their woes by changing their model for how to operate as an industry), privatized-or public, too, unfortunately-education might hypothetically do everything in its power to refuse to adapt to a changing world despite being able to prosper, again, if it changes how it operates as an industry. Don't be the Thomas Edison of education and publicly electrocute animals with AC and go, "Tesla's bad, see, his invention is dangerous! This is totally what would happen if we made this happen! If you don't agree with me, you'll all die! *insert generic scare tactic*". Don't strangle innovation for your own worry of becoming irrelevant or not as prosperous. If a good people and a legitimate desire to make the world better prevail, this hopefully won't be the case.
If anyone would like to contact me, you can get a hold of me at znaso001@odu.edu I wish whoever may be reading this the best, and i'm glad you took the time to trudge through my great wall of text. We're all trying to do better. Thank you for caring.
"To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. " - Charlie Chaplin, 'The Great Dictator'
Pardon any typos. I had to do a bunch of copy/pasting in and out of Notepad and a character counter to find out how much text I could shove in a single comment and, in addition to my own carelessness, it might've slightly reformatted some things :P.
ReplyDeleteNevermind. I give up. There was supposed to be another comment chronologically preceding the first comment, but for whatever reason my attempts to post more than two comments are becoming a total clusterf*ck. Certain versions of this webpage show different sets of comments, along with different ones missing. Well, I can say I had a pretty logically consistent/sensible post that got butchered by character restraints. Too bad.
ReplyDeleteTutors are still disgustingly poorly paid the sage on the phase come up to is still enveloping if not as good as need term paper writing!!!
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ReplyDeleteAll the work gives the quality of the subject is really a difficult task, but this tutorial, it was easy for me to deal with without any problems.
ReplyDeleteIt is becoming ever apparent that students will need to process huge amounts of information, much of it in the written form to be truly college and career ready. With this being said, how come so few of our students engage in authentic literacy in our classrooms?custom written papers Increased reading and writing with interaction and discussion is different than assigning students huge amounts of independent work.
ReplyDelete