Digital Portfolios

I did some reading this week on digital portfolios. It was inspiring as well as frustrating (as are most things regarding curriculum). The inspiring part comes from my wanting to take on such a project for my students. The frustrating part is the complete lack of technology in my school. Without the proper technology a molehill can certainly become a mountain. Let me just explain how tricky it is. I have one computer in my room that is about 4 or 5 years old. It mirrors the ones in our lab too. I do not have access to a laptop unless I bring my own from home. There is one digital projector in our wing (to share with four teachers) and one teacher has commandeered it. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I love my job and I think that we have the potential to improve our situation, but for now? Digital portfolios are not in my realm.

On a more positive note, I will pretend that all my students had access to internet in their houses and computers in the classroom. Digital portfolios would be a phenomenal way to keep track of student progress and growth. I can also see using them as a tool to help with student led conferences. What a powerful tool to have students share their own work digitally with their parents. A girl can dream, right?

For now, it is just that, a dream. I will not let go of it though, and eventually, I might be able to make it a reality.

Action Verbs: Educating for a Sustainable Future

I just enjoyed Chapter 10 in Heidi Hayes Jacobs' book, Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. The chapter was written by Jamie P. Cloud and dealt with the idea that our world and the way we are living now is unsustainable. According to the author, "A practice (or a set of practices) is unsustainable when it undermines the health of the very systems upon which it depends and therefore cannot be continued or sustained over time (p. 168)"

Thinking about sustainability in terms of education is an interesting concept to me. I knew that we were doing our students a disservice by teaching them in the same old way we always have, but I hadn't thought about how it is effecting the world as a whole. Our current students are going to have to deal with a planet that is sick from misuse and abuse and they are going to be the ones to have to come up with solutions. The way we are educating them now is not giving them the practice and the skills to be able to rise to this task. According to the chapter, 70% of students feel hopeless about the future and "disempowered" in their lives. My answer to this is, we need to provide them with choices and opportunities to get that power and hope back!

The Cloud Institute for Sustainable Education is a program that inspires educators to teach meaningful content to create a sustainable future. On page 181, the author makes several statements about what students will do in a service learning project following their program. The statements all started with an action verb: develop, explore, discover, investigate, envision, document, research, and scan. What powerful words!

Up until now it is almost like we have had our heads in the sand. We keep telling kids that since they are our future, they will have to help us fix the mess our planet and its inhabitants are in, but we never give them the skills or opportunities to do so. We need to take action and tap into our resource of the young!

My Ideal School

I have always operated under the assumption that all kids can learn and it is my job as an educator to find a way to reach them and their potential. My school would be a place where every student is expected to learn and perform at their own pace while still meeting standards and improving themselves in order to become successful and productive citizens. I envision teachers and students working together collaboratively instead of teachers being the “keepers of knowledge”. I see students being engaged in their learning and having ultimate choice over what they focus on. My school would focus on making our students happy, well adjusted individuals who are confident and motivated to be lifelong learners.
The curriculum would be based on skills students would need to know for the ultimate goal of being successful and productive citizens. Instead of focusing on specific facts they need to know, I would instead focus on teaching them how to find out new information and delve deeper into things that interest them and things that come up as they year progresses. I have experienced several times when current events have come up that I wanted to share with my students, but I couldn’t teach them because it didn’t fit into my curriculum plan. If the curriculum is open like this, it allows for changes based on student interest and new things that are introduced frequently into our lives.
My school would be structured using flexible grouping based on the need of students. I would like them to be responsible for their own learning and be able to see their own progress, so I would have them be in groups until they mastered a specific skill. These groups, by nature, would be multiage and not limited by time. Students could move as fast or as slow as they needed in order to really grasp a concept. Graduation and commencement would not be limited by age so students that needed to move on faster or slower would not be limited by social norms.
In my school I would keep student to teacher ratios low so that student would get more individualized attention and instruction. In addition to employing people trained as teachers, I would also contract the help of experts in various fields to provide authentic learning experiences for my students out in the community. Adults would be seen as resources for more knowledge instead of someone that either knows everything or spends their time forcing kids to sit down and be quiet.
I see all students and adults working both collaboratively and independently, based on the task at hand. All learning would be project based or internships with students creatively showing their learning in a way that works for them instead of a high stakes assessment with the ultimate goal being a “meaningful diploma”.
Physically my school might not look too different from a current school layout. The classroom sizes would vary depending on what the room is being used for. I would repurpose spaces so that students would have more opportunity to engage with technology and different forms of learning. I would have rooms set up with tables so that work could be spread out and looked at by groups of people. My one school would house grades K-5 in a traditional elementary school setting but the actual students would not be divided as such. I think that having the school divided by departments/subjects would be best for collaborative working among students and staff. For example, I would have a wing just for science labs, where students could work on experiments and scientific research, regardless of their “level” and have access to all the materials my building has to offer.
In terms of virtual space, this is a question I have a hard time answering. I know that I would ultimately like to have access to the latest technology and allow students to explore it and use it to both help them and display their learning. I could say that currently I would like them to make use of global learning by connecting with students across the world and that they would be exposed to publishing via blogs and podcasts. Beyond that, I would hope to stay up to date with budding technologies and make them available to students to work with in creative ways.
I wonder when I can start building...

Antiques

Reading Heidi Hayes Jacobs' new book, "Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World" has been interesting so far. One thing that struck me while reading was the idea that curriculum has pretty much looked the same for the past hundred years. We all have them, the dreaded three ring binder chock full of papers with the dictated curriculum typed on them in the order you are recommended to teach them in. No one likes them, the teachers hate storing them, the curriculum coordinator hates typing them, and the secretaries hate copying and collating them. WHY then, do we still maintain this antiquated form or curriculum planning and reporting?

In Jacobs' book, she talks about curriculum mapping, something that can be done online through a computer in a more user friendly way. It takes up no space, it is more friendly to use, and people can revise it at the drop of a hat without having to create a new document and distribute it to everyone. I like also how an online curriculum map would be visible to a lot of people and there could be more opportunity for collaboration.

So, long story short, I hope that in the near future out dreaded curriculum binders will become a thing of the past and we will be seeing them hit the shelves of antique shops. I'll give anyone interested a really good deal on one if you're in the market. It's been hardly used, but I at least keep it dusted :)

Food for Thought

Just read an article entitled "WHy High Schools Must Go". I have to say it was a mind blowing 10 minute read for me. When I think about my own high school experience, there was nothing of note that stood out to me. There are the same traditional benchmarks, prom, graduation, and the parties on the weekends, but educationally? Not a whole lot there. The man being interviewed, Leon Botstein, holds the opinion that high schools are hurting rather than helping older adolescents.

His view point is that by keeping these teens in a traditional high school setting, we are holding them back and even hurting their emotional development. They are ready to be on their own and be in charge of their own learning and instead we are holding their hands and giving out detentions for misbehaving. Botstein maintains that we should not have high school as it is now, but instead have teens attending college at an earlier age. I would have loved a system like that when I was 16!

College, especially freshman year was such an incredibly liberating experience, one that I will treasure for the rest of my life. It was a time to connect to people, to explore who I was, and to develop a self image that fit the person I am today. College was a teenage playground and if given the opportunity to experience it earlier in my life would have been a blessing. Instead I was stuck in a stuffy old lab learning things that I would have to relearn in college because I didn't retain them the first time. It all comes down to choice. High school was not a choice and college was. There is a huge amount of power in providing choices.

More Than Just Hormone Driven Balls of Attitude

This week in EDC 533, I was reminded of how tough and important middle school is. In my own personal experience, it was the most painful of all my years in school. I was uncomfortable in my own skin and I thought that I was all alone in this feeling (little did I know). I listened to a powerpoint presentation that reminded me that although I prefer not to teach middle school, the people that do need a whole bag of tricks for dealing with this special time in a child's development and education.

When I see the middle schoolers roaming the halls, I frequently think "Look at these young adults." Some of them are already taller than me and could buy cigarettes without being carded (even though they are only 13). I know I am among the guilty for thinking that these KIDS are adults. They are closer to being a kid than a grownup, regardless of how they look. Their brains and bodies are still developing (at a rapid pace) and their hormones are kicking into high gear, effecting how they act and what they say. They are all dealing with their own self-image and how they fit into the dynamic of their relationships with their peers.

The biggest thing that struck me was the point the presentation made about the development of their prefrontal cortex. Their hormones and emotions are on overdrive and their prefrontal cortex is unable to rein in their emotional responses. It's not that they want to be dramatic and cry all the time, it's what their brain is telling them to do!

The lesson for me and maybe you too is that the next time I see a hulking 8th grader wandering the halls, remember that they need reassurance and acceptance just like any other kid, in addition to a hefty dose of compassion and understanding. Go hug a middle-schooler today!

Current Trends

After reading the article at www.answers.com/topic/elementary-education-current-trends a few things stuck out to me. One is that is says that curriculum and current trends in education are a "focus of concern and disagreement." I think that just about sums it up. Everyone has an opinion, but what are we really doing about it? We are all concerned about it because ultimately we are all effected by it in one way or another and yet we tend to sit back and think that it is someone else's problem (even teachers)! It reminds me of the people that don't go out and vote and then spend the next 4 years complaining about who the president is. We need to earn the right to complain and disagree by putting ourselves out there!

The article takes education in several countries and talks about the similarities and differences. I liked part of the Japan section where it talked about the focus of their education being to "work together to become healthy in mind, body, and spirit." In the United States we sometimes focus so much on the test scores and where we are compared to other countries that we forget to work together and we forget that we are educating PEOPLE. We don't always take into account the whole child when we are teaching them. I am forced to think about some of my students that come to school worrying about where their next meal will come from and I am asking them to focus on spelling? Fat chance!

Just some interesting ideas and of course, more questions to ponder!