Saturday, March 13, 2010

Linda Darling-Hammond on what other countries are actually doing.

I was trying to think of something to write, but in going back through the mass of stuff I starred in the last three weeks on Google Reader, I found this video. Darling-Hammond's latest book is sitting on my bedside table, and I am looking forward to reading it.
This video really strikes to the heart of so much of what we are doing in education. The solutions we are implementing to our real problems are not based on the solutions that systems we hope to compete with are using. That seems such a huge flaw in our thinking that I am at a loss as to what to say about it, so I'll just let the video speak for itself. The original is at Edutopia.
-F. Scott









Monday, March 8, 2010

Freire beyond the classroom

I drew heavily on Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed in my dissertation, and his thinking continues to influence how I think about my classroom. His description of the banking model of teaching (where the teacher deposits information into students' passive brains and then asks for it back on exams) so describes much of what I have experienced myself as a student. I work every day to offer something different to my students.

I came across today (thanks to Alfie Kohn's Twitter stream) this piece, which talks about Freire's reign as the superintendent of schools in Sao Paolo in the late 80's and early 90's. When Freire took over the school district, it was in great need of reform, and he organized this reform around a democratizing process with four goals:

1) Democratization of access to schooling through construction of new schools and renovation of existing ones.
2) A massive literacy campaign for youth and adults.
3) Democratization of the administration of schools from top to bottom, redefining relationships of power.
4) Reorientation of the entire curriculum.

His approach was deliberately not about the kinds of top-down reforms that we typically see now that hinge on standardized tests and test scores as the measure of how well things are working. His approach was about local control, involvement of parents, true understanding of a community's needs, and giving teachers more autonomy and freedom to design interdisciplinary curriculum to best meet their students' needs.

It is item number 4 on the list above that most grabs my attention: reorientation of the entire curriculum. This included three steps: the study of reality, the organization of knowledge, and the application and assessment of that knowledge.

In the first step, the teaching faculty would essentially study their students to get a clearer sense of what they were up against in their day to day lives. From this, they would "organize" what they had learned, figuring out what big themes existed in the students' lives. Then they would create curriculum surrounding these big themes, approaching them through interdisciplinary inquiry-based teaching centered on students and using a dialogue-based pedagogy. Finally, teachers would develop authentic assessments to see how well students were achieving the learning goals.

Now think about this--curriculum goals come from the themes and needs of the community, not some set of standards. The benefit? What students experience in schools is actually relevant to their lives and their futures. Teachers are passionate and have intense buy-in to what they're doing because they built it. The drawbacks? If you come from a standards-based, centralized curriculum, high stakes testing as the only way to ensure educational equity position, I'm sure you see all kinds of drawbacks.

Paradigm shift is not easy, but some times it's necessary. Now is one of those times.
M. Shelley

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Now that IS a U-turn

The New York Times is reporting on Dr. Diane Ravitch's recent u-turn on No Child Left Behind.

I'm glad to see she's finally caught up with what many of us have known for a while.

And now I wonder, Dr. Ravitch, HOW do we fix it? I worry that the train is moving far too quickly down the tracks for us to redirect it. I've never disagreed with high standards and seeking quality teachers. The issue I've had from the start of the NCLB legislation is the high stakes attached to the tests.

And after spending three excrutiating hours today walking around a quiet classroom while 24 sophomores took our state's annual test, I certainly am ready for something different. Even if I can't articulate it very well right now.

Signing off.
M. Shelley