Learning That Endures

I’ve written a lot about how teaching needs to change dramatically to stay relevant.  But here are some things we’ll always need to teach:

1.  Reading: We must teach students how to read, how to comprehend, and how to discern fact from fiction in what they have read.

2.  Communicating: We must teach students to write and speak with clarity and power.  They must be able to do this for a variety of audiences and purposes, in a variety of genres and styles.

3.  Working With Others: Kindness, empathy, and compassion will never go out of style.

4.  Technology: Although the specifics change rapidly, teaching our students to utilize and embrace technology remains important.

5.  How To Learn: We must help students to develop the attitudes and behaviors that will enable them to be self-sustaining, lifelong learners.

The Purpose of Education

What is the purpose of education? 

I personally see three possible answers to this question:

1.  The School-To-Work Theory: Education’s value stems from what it enables you to do in the future.  From this viewpoint, if you never use algebra in your life outside school, learning algebra was of absolutely no value to you.

2.  The Culture Theory: Education’s value stems from how it affects your thinking.  Enlightenment is the primary goal.  The value of any topic of study can be best measured in how it has advanced your thinking in that area.

3.  The Compromise Theory: Education has value in both of the ways described above.  This was the position of Martin Luther King, Jr, as he expressed eloquently in a 1948 speech: “It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture.”

In the nearly 60 years since King spoke these words, I think we as a society have come to almost fully accept the School-To-Work Theory.

This is a huge mistake.

Many of our students will work jobs that don’t exist yet; many will work 20+ jobs and have 6+ careers in their lifetimes.  Beyond the very basics, which the vast majority of people will need and use (such as reading, writing, and arithmetic), we have no way of knowing what our students will actually need to know in another 10, 25, or 50 years.  In fact, the knowledge they’ll need likely isn’t known by anyone yet!

Following the School-To-Work theory dooms us to preparing students for the present world, which will be of little use to them anyway. 

In my next post, I’ll say more about what kinds of learning will always be valuable.

“Definitely”

Here is a site with an incredibly singular purpose — to promote the proper spelling of “definitely.”  Think no one cares?  It’s been dugg five thousand times already.  Many of the comments are hilarious as well.

Some of my favorites:

“I’ll bet alot of people could use this.”

“I vote ridiculous.  Spelled too often as ‘rediculous’ for when one diculous isn’t enough, re-diculous. “

“Someone else won the spelling bee… I was the looser.”

 When your students try to tell you that no one cares about spelling, particularly in an online world, show them all of this.

How To Be a Perfect Parent

From a teacher’s perspective, here are the top 10 things parents can and should do to support their child’s school and class:

 1.  Never speak negatively of the teacher in your child’s presence. 

2.  Set up a spot at home where your child can work on homework.

3.  Be organized: sign school forms promptly and read our newsletters when they come out.

4.  If you have concerns about your child’s academics (or behavior), don’t share these issues with the teacher in your child’s presence.  You might not realize how hurtful those words can be, but in that moment your child is hanging on your every word.

5.  If your child’s teacher does something great, let her know!

6.  When you have a concern with a teacher, speak directly and respectfully to that teacher.  Talking to the principal (or other admin figures) first is never a good plan.  Gossiping to other parents about the issue isn’t a good plan, either.

7.  Do stand up for your child — don’t just accept bad teaching!

8.  If at all possible, volunteer at some point each school year.

9.  Don’t give your child extrinsic rewards (money, toys) for things like good report cards.  Instead, talk about the intrinsic value of learning and developing a good work ethic, and tell your child how proud you are of him.  Have a family celebration and go out to eat instead.

10.  Challenge your child to do well academically, but allow your child to still be a kid and have fun.  Your seven-year-old daughter shouldn’t be worrying about outlearning her Chinese counterparts.

Head Start Funding

During the past month, the Improving Head Start Act of 2007 has gained some solid bipartisan support.  Saveheadstart.org has issued a press release about this bill, calling it a “major positive step forward.” 

I’m heartened by this.  If we really wanted to improve American schools without spending more money, the first thing we need to do is shift our existing education dollars more toward the younger students.  Birth to age five is the most important time frame in the education of a child, and dollars spent on students at those ages can reduce the need for additional spending when that child is older.

You can voice your support for Head Start here.

The Teaching of Ethics

The Josephson Institute conducts a survey about teen ethics every two years.  The 2006 survey includes the following tidbits of information:

• 60% of the students surveyed admitted that they have cheated on a school test
• 28% of the students admitted that they have shoplifted
• 81% of the students surveyed admitted that they have lied to a parent about something significant; 62% admitted lying to a teacher about something significant in the past year

But here’s the kicker, in light of the above: 92% of the students surveyed said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character.

That means that at least one-fifth of the 36,122 students surveyed have shoplifted and still feel great about themselves.

Concerning stuff.  Then we get the insanity at Virginia Tech earlier this week.

It’s enough to make us wonder: Do schools need to be even more intentional regarding the teaching of ethics?  If so, what should we focus on?  Compassion?  Tolerance?  Honesty?  How to still act like a normal, decent human being when you have a substitute teacher?

The Josephson Institute offers free materials for any teachers who are interested in discussing the importance of character with their students. 

I know that we can’t prevent all random acts of senseless violence, and I know that we can’t divert too much attention from the academic needs of our students, but I can’t help but wonder if this might be worthwhile. 

After all, what good is a smart but heartless student?

More on School 2.0

Steve Hargadon points us to classroom20.ning.com.

A great PowerPoint explaining the main web tools that can be used in using Web 2.0 to impact your students can also be found here.

Lifeless Teaching

Back in 2002, TheOnion.com ran a satirical piece about a teacher who took the fun and excitement out of science.

The fictitious Mr. Randalls declared, “I have a lot of information I’m required to impart to these children before they complete this grade and move on to dedicated physics, biology, or chemistry,” Randalls said. “If I tried to illustrate each and every aspect of science with an experiment or anecdote, we would never complete the necessary coursework by year’s end.”

As teachers, we all find this type of comment laughable… and then we rationalize similar behaviors under the guise of budget constraints, back-to-basics teaching, and NCLB.

School 2.0

Tim O’Reilly first coined the term Web 2.0 in 2004 to describe, as Wikipedia puts it, ”a second generation of Web-based services… that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.”  More simply put, nowadays, the typical internet user doesn’t want to just read something on the internet; he wants to interact with it!

All blogs, Google, and Wikipedia are obvious examples of Web 2.0 thinking. 

There were 865,979 blogs listed on WordPress.com when I began typing this.  Earlier this week that number was a few thousand less.  Are there really thousands of unique people out there (on this site alone) who, each week, come up with ideas so important they deserve their own website?  Probably not.  But try telling that to the owners of those new blogs.  They are positive that what they want to say is deserving of an audience.

I think it’s time for School 2.0. 

Think about traditional schooling (School 1.0): students read materials written by an outside expert that they cannot interact with.  They write essays designed solely to prove that they can, in fact, write an essay.  They independently solve out-of-context math problems with bare numbers that have no meaning.  They view history as a bunch of names, dates, and places that must be memorized for a test.  Students do what they are told because they are told to do it, whether or not the task at hand has any relevance to their lives, now or in the future.

Students aren’t putting up with this anymore, and I don’t blame them.  They’ve been spoiled.  Outside of school, where those students turn into consumers, they’ve been in 2.0 mode for years.  Like it or not, those experiences don’t just fade away during the school day.

We can bemoan this fact, or we can accept it and use it to our advantage.

Do you want your students to read something and then respond to it?  Set up a new blog and have them enter their responses there.  Then ask each student to comment on two other people’s comments as well.  When you’re ready to begin a classroom discussion on what they’ve written, the conversation will already be well underway, and the obvious points will have already been discussed at length.  You can focus on the good stuff.

Do your younger students still need to learn their basic math facts?  Forget flash cards.  Have them play an interactive multiplication game against other people across the world by going here.  Then put them in small groups and have them try using their math skills in context by working with sample problems from an international math competition found here.

To become a School 2.0 type of teacher, before you teach something, ask yourself this: How can my students genuinely interact with the material being presented?

*Edit: Hmmm… looks like a few other people have coined the term “School 2.0″ as well; I wrote without checking for that.  A good summary of another definition of School 2.0 comes from David Warlick’s blog.  So much for my book deal.

The Admiration of Beauty

Last Sunday, Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post wrote a compelling story about one of the world’s best classical musicians, Joshua Bell, playing the violin in a subway station, and virtually no one stopping to listen.

Apparently thousands of people emailed Mr. Weingarten after reading this feature, and the content of some of those emails, along with Gene’s responses, are found here.

Many readers were dismayed, even heartbroken, to hear that the vast majority of people go through life with blinders on, somehow missing the beauty around them each day.  In Weingarten’s story, he notes that there was one demographic that consistently tried to stop and enjoy the music of Joshua Bell: children. 

This is exactly why I teach. 

Kids miss nothing.  They are fully and wholly alive.  They giggle.  They genuinely accept compliments.  They mean what they say.  They aren’t afraid to be wrong. 

May we, as teachers, always work diligently to help our students maintain (or reclaim)  their wide-eyed, joy-filled outlook toward life.