Sam Chaltain: Education's Blockbuster Moment

"The Superman Syndrome -- Despite the myriad public pleas to stop waiting for Superman to fix our public schools, we remain entranced with the idea of the superhero figure, who singularly wills a recalcitrant community into a new era of better, more high-achieving schools. Yet as previous studies point out, the only real path toward systemic reform is building the collective capacity of a community, which means tending to both technical expertise and emotional commitment. As the recent DC election pointed out, the superhero leadership style is great for media attention -- and lousy for long-term change efforts. The problem is, like Blockbuster, we have a lot invested in this particular myth, and we will be slow to let it go."

Sam Chaltain: Education's Blockbuster Moment

Where do You Stand?

Where Do I Stand? is an amazing movie about 7 youths' response to the anti-foreigner riots in South America. Amazing. Would you just stand by as people are being attacked?

Where Do I Stand? Trailer from Molly Blank on Vimeo.

Unethical Practices in Education

Are educators indirectly and unethically damaging students?

Gloria Ladson-Billings, in a speech to the National Wriitng Project on unethical education:

"I do spend a fair amount of my time in schools. I get to hear many things about what's quote "wrong with our students." And one of the things I hear is that children lack exposure or experiences. I hear this really at the early level a lot. So as a consequence, many of their classroom days are filled with day after day after day of experiences, but little, if any, teaching. Now I do believe that schools can and should offer students some interesting and new experiences, but those experiences have to be tied to student learning. . . . To take kids to the zoo or to the amusement park without some learning link to it, particularly when none of these high-stakes tests are going to ask them or hold them accountable for whether or not they've been to Six Flags, it's not only unfair, it's unethical."

Let's talk more about what is wrong with the teachers. Most of us, work hard. We get to school early, we stay later than we should. There is the daily lugging of a notoriously heavy bag of work home with us in the evening. We are educators because our strengths and passions fuel us to teach. We are all fallible in more than a few ways, our innate humanness make us so. We all have off-days and moments we'd rather the world not see, but the students entrusted to us in our classrooms see it all.

What regular practices are we continuing in our classrooms just because we have always done it that way?

What damage are we doing to our students?

What amount of time, not including that for community building such as in a Responsive Classroom model and social curriculum are we wasting on any given day?

What is the difference in your classroom between busy work and productive engagement leading to skill acquisition?

Looking with a critical eye, what are the unethical practices you could let go of?

Check-out more of Gloria Ladson-Billings speech to the National Writing Project:

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2513n practices

Districts Take Bigger Role in Preparing New School Leaders

A great article that looks at changing how principals are prepared to be administers in low performing schools. Wouldn't it make sense that this is done for teachers too?

"The federal drive to improve the nation's lowest-performing schools has created a surge in demand for principals trained and experienced in leading long-struggling schools to success. The scarcity of the so-called 'turnaround principal' has led more urban districts to get involved directly with local colleges of education and other training programs, according to a study released Wednesday by the Wallace Foundation.

Researchers from the Boston-based Education Development Center, Inc. analyzed leadership training in eight cities which had received Wallace Foundation grants to experiment with principal preparation: Boston; Chicago; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Jefferson County, Ky.; Providence, R.I.; St. Louis; Springfield, Ill.; and Springfield, Mass.

At minimum, most of the districts changed their hiring criteria for school leaders assigned to work in struggling schools. Districts required these principals to have more explicit understanding of school and district systems and procedures, as well as internships in difficult schools.

'I don't think districts realized how big a contribution they make just by having those positions become transparent,' said Cheryl L. King, a co-author and the EDC's director of leadership for learning innovation. 'The more we can know about that job and what it entails, the better we will be at preparing candidates to step into those shoes.'

Districts Take Bigger Role in Preparing New School Leaders

Macrowikinomics : Beyond Superman to a New Model of Education

"But it's wrong to blame teachers, who overall are a) underpaid, and b) striving to do the best with the limited resources they are given. Nor does the research show that charter schools achieve better outcomes.

The root of the malaise in our schools is the outmoded model of pedagogy. Teachers and text books are assumed to be the source of knowledge. Teachers 'teach' -- they impart knowledge to their students, who through practice and assignments learn how to perform well on tests.

This is the very best model of pedagogy that 18th century technology can provide. It's teacher-centered model that is one way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. It's time for a rethinking of the entire model of learning. We need to move to a customized and collaborative model that embraces 21st century learning technology and techniques. This is not about technology per se -- it's about a change in the relationship between the student and teacher in the learning process."

Don Tapscott is a writer of a book called Macrowikinomics and has written a series of articles that hit home with the issues facing education. Every time people complain about poor education and then blame teachers don't realize that teachers can only work with the materials at hand. I taught in a Chicago Public School with excellent teachers, but we had terrible resources. The reading curriculum in particular was strikingly bad, and did nothing to develop a love of reading.

Now that my job is to be the tech trainer in St. Louis Park Public Schools, it's my job to train the teachers to move beyond the 18th century pedagogy that we have traditionally used.

Don Tapscott: Macrowikinomics : Beyond Superman to a New Model of Education

Videos

All of the SLP Tech Videos will be uploaded to youtube from now on, for ease of use. Click the link below to see videos created by William Stenross

SLP Tech Videos: Created By William Stenross

Mike Green: National Crisis: Black boys failing

An interesting article from the Huffington Post:

"Despite the tragic circumstances that cripple so many of our potentially productive youth, the academic failures of millions of our Black boys isn't the core problem. The core problem is the failure of the adult Black population to effectively address underlying issues that have led to an overwhelming crisis situation. Dr. Ferguson alludes to it when he says we need to have conversations we don't want to have. And without actively engaging in those conversations, we watch millions of Black children arrive on their first day at the gates of public schools ill-prepared for a system of education, which they experience as foreign to the environment in which they are raised.

Were it not for the insightful wisdom of my mother, I, too, would've been added to the statistical data that have continued to tell the story of a national tragedy long ignored.

...

Heretofore, we have held symposiums, conferences, summits and academic conventions that have resulted in the multiple crises we face today. We cannot afford more of the same. We need something altogether different. But that requires us to come together and discuss this issue honestly. It requires that we work together. And if we cannot, we must clearly identify the divergence in thoughts, ideals and paths. "

It is a very long article and interesting, written from the perspective of a black man and his own personal struggles and the struggles of black boys in general. His point about symposiums is absolutely correct. We have to stop talking about it, we need to start doing something about it.


Mike Green: National Crisis: Black boys failing