Tracking

My school is taking on the bear of standards based education. In having conversations with several people, the idea that we are "reinventing the wheel" and just tracking kids has come up. Tracking is such a tricky subject. Most teachers I talk to are against it, saying that kids are forced into groups and not allowed to move up or down based on need. According to what I have heard and read so far about standards based education, this is not the case, and the groupings will be fluid. Even so, tracking is an interesting controversial subject in education.

I did some online research to read more about the two sides of tracking, pro and con. The first article I read was from a blog hosted on Education Week http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2009/06/the_problem_of_tracking_in_mid.html. The author, Mary Ann Zehr refers to tracking is the harsh terms of "malpractice". She cites a study done where a previously tracked school was reformed into a school with heterogeneous classes. The classes that were considered low before made great progress when they were integrated with more accomplished students. The author was obviously against the practice of tracking and supported it with this study.

To get a balanced view, I looked at a site that my sister-in-law had recommended to mehttp://www.geniusdenied.com/articles.aspx?articleid=14&NavID=3_5. She recently read the book Genius Denied by Jan and Bob Davison. I have not read the book, but I did look into the educator section and have had conversations about it. Overall, the premise of the book is that we are doing a disservice to the gifted students in America by not challenging them. In the educator section of their website, they talk about some of the things we can do in the classroom to make sure that gifted students receive the education they deserve. The authors go on to say "Highly gifted learners need to be grouped with their intellectual peers in more rigorous self-contained academic classes." They take the approach that students with high intellectual abilities need to be challenged and cannot be appropriately taught in a class where there are students with high needs.

An article from education.com took the idea of tracking even further and looked at the long term effects of tracking on students in terms of their professional adult roles. The article states, "The labeling system, beginning at an early age, determines who will wear a stethoscope, who will carry a laptop computer, and who will become a low-wage laborer." http://www.education.com/reference/article/Ref_Other_Side_Tracks/

After reading and thinking about these three articles and what I already know about tracking in schools, I have to say that it is an unfair practice. I am of the opinion that teachers can make their curriculum differentiated enough in the classroom to benefit all students without the stigma of some students being in the "dumb" class. With effective differentiation, all students are working up to their own potential, making progress, and still getting the benefit of working with students at all levels. As a dedicated educator, I would hate to think that I was responsible for picking a students' future job without an honest input from them based on their interests. It is my job to provide all students with a valuable education that allows them to grow and develop to the best of their abilities.

Digital Farming

The term "digital farm" makes me think of one thing, Farmville on Facebook. I must confess that I was once a Farmville addict, rushing home to harvest my plants and earn gold coins to progress in level. I have gone through a recovery program and no longer feel the need to plan my day around activities involving finding new homes for lost black sheep. I do however feel a slight twinge whenever I see a status update touting a friend's upward progress on the Farmville scale.

The idea of the digital age and the impact it is having on education has sent many teachers scurrying and hiding in the closet with their overhead projectors. Chapter 11 in Heidi Hayes Jacobs' book, Curriculum 21, is about losing control to technology in our very own classrooms.

The chapter's author, Alan November, talks about how many schools have banned new technologies because there is no way to completely monitor how students are using them. In the past, children were needed to contribute to the family farms to make sure that the family was successful. In short, children were needed. With the advent of many farm machines, children's value and ability to contribute decreased. We are now faced with a new role for students, "students making contributions to their learning communities (p.188)". We need a digital farm where students can contribute!

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.