Educational Buzzwords...E: Educational Paradigm Shifts

About Sir Ken Robinson

Of note in the video (find the whole transcript here):

1. There are two reasons for the current reform in public education. One is economic (how do we educate children so they are prepared for tomorrow when we have no idea what tomorrow is going to be about?) and the other is cultural (how do we make sure that children have a cultural identity while still being a part of globalization?). 
2. It's better to have a college degree over not having a degree, but it is no longer a guarantee that you will get a stable job because of that degree.
3. Everyone agrees we should raise our educational standards, but the problem is that we can't do this using the same educational ideas we've always used. Our current system of education 'was designed and conceived and constructed for a different age'. 
4. Public education, as we know it, is a relatively new concept.
5. Public education is steeped in academic ability, the idea that there are two kinds of people: smart people and not-so-smart people. The problem with that is that there are many people who are brilliant, who, based on the standards of education, are not seen as being brilliant. It's also steeped in the fact that everyone can/should/will be educated regardless of economic or social standing.
6. Public education can be compared to the plague of ADHD, not because ADHD isn't real, but because it is no longer valuable that kids learn, they are just factories for standardized testing.
7. In many ways the Arts are the answer because they are the most victimized due to their aesthetic nature. 'We are getting our kids through education by anesthetizing them.'
8. Schools are built for the Industrial age and they are mostly about conformity and standardization.
9. We need to educate kids to be divergent thinkers. We need to educate kids to have a capacity for creativity. Read the book: Break Point and Beyond and you'll find that schooling and education kills the idea of divergent thinking.
10. Most teachers understand this and don't want to kill a child's ability to be divergent, but it's part of the outdated educational process. We must stop this. We must quit putting people into categories and groups. We must collaborate. We must address our institutes of learning.

Educational Buzzwords...D: Differentiated Instruction

I am a member of the PD (professional development) committee. The summer before last, three of us and our principal went to the SDE National DI Conference it was in Chicago at the time (now it's in Las Vegas) and we spent a wonderful time eating, and learning, and discussing the awesomeness that is differentiated instruction.

What is DI?

1. Differentiated instruction is a way to reach students with different learning styles, different abilities to absorb information and different ways of expressing what they have learned.

Ways to differentiate...

[Source]

We went to the conference to gather ideas about how to incorporate differentiation in our school and we spent quite a bit of time breaking down what we learned into presentations during faculty meetings throughout the school year. We then had four in-depth after-school sessions to fill in the gaps.

Faculty Meeting PDFs
DI #1
DI #2
DI #3
DI #4
DI #5
DI #6
DI #7

Below you will find short explanations of each session with links to PDFs of the slides. If you would like to learn more or would like those slides, just give me a holler at smj274@gmail.com and I can email full size flipcharts or PDFs...it just wouldn't feel right selling them as most of the graphics and none of the ideas are originally ours. Enjoy!

Session 1

Learning and the Learning Environment. Who are you as a learner? How do you learn? Use these as a basis for our to differentiation.

Session 2

Tiered Lessons and their use in the workshop model. We use Cris Tovani's Catch and Release model and catch and release through entrance and exit slips.

Session 3

What is the flow of instruction in a DI classroom? How do you incorporate all of the...stuff? How does one go about adjusting assignments? How does one use flexible grouping effectively?

Session 4

Homework and Assessment...can I can use DI during my assessments? If so, how? What is your grading philosophy?

Educational Buzzwords...C: "Can Skateboarding Save Our Schools?"

C: "Can Skateboarding Save Our Schools?"

Anybody who knows me knows how much I absolutely love this video it touches on my personal philosophy as a human-being and as a teacher...we have to be willing to learn even when we fail.

I think this video speaks for itself, but here are some highlights...

What a learning experience in skateboarding is all about...it's different than at most schools...
1] Failure is normal.
2] Nobody knows ahead of time how long it takes anyone to learn anything.
3] Work your ass off until you figure it out.
4] Learning is NOT fun.
5] [It is] FLOW...finding 'Goldielocks challenges'.
6] No grades.
7] No cheating.
8] No teacher.
9] Real-time meaningful feedback.

And, Dr. Tae is right...we haven't done a very good job of looking outside of schools to look at how broad the spectrum of learning really is.

Oh, and skateboarding is friggin' cool!

Educational Buzzwords...B: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Social Media in the Classroom

So, I'm spending the month of April digging into the world of education. These are not just buzzwords, but they are educational concepts that have helped me perfect myself as a teacher.

I am coming a little late to the party, to be honest, I totally forgot about the A to Z Challenge and am hoping to get caught up this week.

[There's a great article that goes with this graphic and it can be found by clicking on this caption]

B: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Social Media in the Classroom

Social Media is...everywhere.

As a teacher of Scholastic Journalism, I've never understood the fear that schools/parents/humans have of students, teachers and their interactions via blogs, Google Drive, email and social media.

I like the idea of BYODs, which makes it easy for schools to go 1:1 as it helps schools bridge the gaps for those that don't have the means to incorporate technology in their homes or the ability to bring that technology to school.

BYODs and 1:1 schools address so much, if we let them.

A school that is preparing their students for the 21st century trust their teachers and trust their students to a] make responsible decisions on social media and b] have the proper consequences when they--both--don't. A school that wants to truly wants students to learn about the power of social media has a social media policy that enables everyone to learn and it doesn't punish the process.

Too often though, we get bent out of shape when students use social media to bad-mouth the school, its teachers and its policies (forgetting all about free speech and the old adage 'Sticks and stones make break my bones...'). We forget that we've got a responsibility to educate students about time and place and the ins and outs of what constitutes good criticism. We also forget to listen when students speak. Too often we take what one student or teacher does has a reason to stop the learning of the rest of the masses.

We have to stop being afraid of technology and social media communication between parents and teachers and students in and out of the classroom.

We have to understand that good teachers make the right choices, good teachers understand the value of social media in the classroom and good teachers love communicating with their students...we don't even mind doing it 24/7.

Honestly, and this is a sobering thought, those 'bad' teachers/students will manipulate the situation no matter what and imposing regulations that limit the ability of students to achieve and prepare for the 21st century only hurts the classroom. It only hurts the learning.

So, anyway, BYODs and 1:1 schools are a great place to start...unlocking FB on school devices wouldn't be a bad place to go either. Of course, having social media lessons in place to teach all that proper conduct that most grown-ups understand wouldn't be bad either.

GREAT PLACES TO START:
Common Sense Media
Social Media at School
Students Want Social Media in Schools
Bring Your Own Technology/Device (BYOT/D)

Educational Buzzwords...A: Article of the Week

So, I'm spending the month of April digging into the world of education. These are not just buzzwords, but they are educational concepts that have helped me perfect myself as a teacher.

I am coming a little late to the party, to be honest, I totally forgot about the A to Z Challenge and am hoping to get caught up this week.

So, on to my first letter.

A: Article of the Week

As you know, er, as many/some of you know I teach high school English. Over the years this job as been equal parts rewarding, inspiring, challenging, enlightening and a pain in my...er...you know what.

One of the major challenges I've had is creating the perfect environment where kids want to read books. A book that helped me understand kids today and their struggle with reading was this little gem Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher. At the time he was teaching in a print poor school and he realized that students didn't/don't even have the cultural literacy to want to be better at reading. He gives strategies for students to increase their background knowledge and their knowledge of the world around them.

A major strategy and paradigm shift in my classroom been incorporating the Article of the Week (AoW) into my class.

His strategy is simple and can be found here.

Dave Stuart Jr., a blogging/teacher friend of mine, goes even more in-depth and breaks it down on his website and that can be found here.

Both of these sites give a list of articles to use and both have formats that can be easily adapted to what you are doing with AoWs in your classroom with your situation.

Here's how this strategy functions in my classroom:

1] I introduce the AoW with a whole class discussion using a Veronica Roth blog post called "Likeable Schmikable". That blog post, written pre-Divergent (and pre that disaster Allegiant), is about whether you have to like characters to like a book and the kids always have opinions about it.
2]Once we start, first semester we do an article every week. Each is current, some are news, some are features all have to do with what is happening in the world around us.
3] Over the course of time we've added several different concepts to our articles based on what we know kids are deficient in knowing...um, we do the usual by addressing audience and purpose and marking up the text, but we've added a section for text features, a holistic way at looking at the 20 point score, and when Dave Stuart added a section for argumentation using the book (They Say, I Say), we added that template as well.
4] I also like Dave's breakdown of the article. Pass it out, read it, argue about it in class (you could have a class debate or Think/Pair/Share is a quick way to get this done) and then it's due the same day a new one is introduced.

As a PLC, we do about 10 articles in the Fall and 5 in the Spring. We're not up to that ideal 35-40 a year and personally I'm not up to 20 a year, but I'm getting there.

What do you think? What are some ways you've used AoW?

Finally, if you are interested in any articles we've done this year, or want to see our template, it's an MSDoc and I would love to send it or the articles to you via my email: smj274@gmail.com

50 Books in a Year Book #7: Come Be With Me

My friends and I used to while away our time in the Walden books on the Mall by reading Nimoy poetry aloud to each other in our most dramatic of poetic voices. It was really fun as I'm a firm believer that something can be so bad that it's good, and these poems are so deliciously awful I want to read them out loud to everyone. So, I joined a poetry challenge for 2014 just so I could read as much Nimoy as I could!

Thank-you Open Library for having this book to loan.

And, instead of a careful review, I thought I'd let the book speak for itself.

 Look at these delicious poem titles. "Rocket Ships" is by far my favorite, but the poem that follows comes in at a close second.

I also enjoy this one. What I love, love, love about Nimoy poetry is that there are gems lines in every one. In "I Love You" that line comes at the end, "I miss what I am/When you are here...". True right!?

And, here it is MY favorite. This one also seems to be all the rage on the interwebs. Read it and you can see why, the whole thing is so darned fun and I absolutely adore the last stanza, "I guess I'm just/An old-fashioned/Space-man". I can imagine Nimoy reading this whole poem book out loud. 

I think it would be great if Zach Quinto also read Nimoy poetry out loud, maybe they can work that into the next Star Trek movie.

A Challenge...of sorts...

My friend Sara and I love a good challenge. We've challenged one another to learn all the states and their capitals in order of how they came into the union, to learn the continents and oceans and presidents. We've challenged one another to watch movies and listen to music (above or below our usual taste) and we've challenged one another to read books out of comfort zone by creating long lists of books we think every human should read.

Buzzfeed has helped us with our latest challenge:

1. GREAT EXPECTATIONS Charles Dickens
2. THE HOBBIT JRR Tolkien
3. THE BIBLE
4. MOBY DICK Herman Melville
5. THE FOUNTAINHEAD Ayn Rand
6. THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA Ernest Hemingway
7. LOLITA Vladmire Nabakov
8. CATCH-22 Joseph Heller
9. 1984 George Orwell
10. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD Harper Lee
11. WAR AND PEACE Leo Tolstoy
12. TREASURE ISLAND Robert Louis Stevenson
13. MADAME BOVARY Gustave Flaubert
14. THE ODYSSEY Homer
15. ULYSSEUS James Joyce
16. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE Jane Austen
17. JANE EYRE Charlotte Bronte
18. OF MICE AND MEN John Steinbeck
19. THE BELL JAR Sylvia Plath
20. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE JD Salinger
21. THE SCARLET LETTER Ernest Hemingway
22. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT Fyodor Dostoevsky

I'm not going to talk about the ones that I've read, the ones that I've sorta read, the ones that I should read again because...we're going to make sure THAT WE'VE READ THEM ALL!

Starting with...*drum roll please*

Crime and Punishment (a book that neither of us have even pretended to read)

What Buzzfeed says about it:

What you think it’s about: Law and Order SVU set in the 19th century.

Why you should actually read it: Dostoevsky addresses the concept of morality and causes readers to wonder whether the end really does justify the means.

What Goodreads says about the audio version, narrated by Alex Jennings (my fav!):

The talented Alex Jennings creates an atmosphere of gripping psychological tension and brings a variety of characters to life in this new audio edition of a crime classic. When the student Raskolnikov puts his philosophical theory to the ultimate test of murder, a tragic tale of suffering and redemption unfolds in the dismal setting of the slums of czarist, prerevolutionary St. Petersburg. While Jennings's adept repertoire of British accents works to demonstrate the varying classes of characters, it occasionally distracts the listener from the Russian setting. However, Dostoyevsky's rendering of 18th-century Russia emerges unscathed, bringing the dark pathos (such as wretched poverty and rampant suffering) to life. 

Through the story of the brilliant but conflicted young Raskolnikov and the murder he commits, Fyodor Dostoevsky explores the theme of redemption through suffering. Crime and Punishment put Dostoevsky at the forefront of Russian writers when it appeared in 1866 and is now one of the most famous and influential novels in world literature. 

The poverty-stricken Raskolnikov, a talented student, devises a theory about extraordinary men being above the law, since in their brilliance they think “new thoughts” and so contribute to society. He then sets out to prove his theory by murdering a vile, cynical old pawnbroker and her sister. The act brings Raskolnikov into contact with his own buried conscience and with two characters — the deeply religious Sonia, who has endured great suffering, and Porfiry, the intelligent and discerning official who is charged with investigating the murder — both of whom compel Raskolnikov to feel the split in his nature. Dostoevsky provides readers with a suspenseful, penetrating psychological analysis that goes beyond the crime — which in the course of the novel demands drastic punishment — to reveal something about the human condition: The more we intellectualize, the more imprisoned we become.

Our reading schedule

We're starting today, follow along with us here.

If you'd like to join the read with us, find it online for free here.