The educational themes of Flipped Learning and Challenge Based Learning are very interesting, indeed. I think they both have important implications for student motivation and learning. Let's start with the flipped model of education. Pre-loading information in order to reduce cognitive load feels like a very important idea for second language learners. Over the years of my teaching I have learned how important it is to "pre-load" information for my second language learners. If I can explain a concept to kids face to face, in colloquial language, as in, (ok, here's what we are going to learn...), prior to a formal, text based lesson presentation, the learning and retention improve. It always seems kids remember what we talk about much more than what we read about. Flipping the curriculum gives students more to talk about. If I were to guess why this model works for second language learners, I would have to refer to pedagogy on second language acquisition. In this area, prior knowledge of the content and context of any given language interaction is vital to language learning. It creates a bolstered language context. MEANINGFUL language interactions sustain themselves on prior knowledge. The front loading of concepts as seen in the flipped model offers this more meaningful and language rich language environment. It's a way to make the classroom a more authentic and familiar environment. Front loading info. makes so much sense because it gives kids the power to actually discuss information in class with their peers, which increases language development. Flipped learning fits in perfectly with the "flipped school" proposal I am promoting through my research. An important part of my action research addresses the increasing amount of time children are spending indoors on screens. If teachers adopt a flipped model, then much of the in home screen time, (I hope), will shift from entertainment to classroom assignments. Since kids are going outdoors less and going on screens more as the studies show, we may as well ask them to use that screen time to complete school assignments. By doing so we will also be helping their language acquisition by front loading language and allowing them to use it in class. CBL also makes a lot of sense. We know how powerful motivation is to learning. If we use real world problem solutions as a focus for learning, motivation is increased. There are many social and environmental problems in the world to solve. Minority students who grow up in poor communities have plenty of problems to solve. Their education should be focused on helping them find solutions to the very real problems that face them. The biggest perceived problem I have encountered in Calistoga has been the lack of outdoor spaces for children to play in and the increasing amount of indoor screen time children are engaged in. I have learned this through conversations with parents during conferences, and through participation in the local Spanish speaking parent committee. This group of parents has identified as their main focus the creation of more outdoor spaces for children in Calistoga. I can see how getting kids involved in this effort could be very motivating, indeed. Last year my students wrote letters to the local school board and town government to ask them for playgrounds, soccer fields, skate parks, etc. This was a start, but more can be done. I'd love for all schools to be more focused on solving the environmental problems we face. I always trusted the "higher-ups" would recognize this and reform our educational system accordingly. After reading Darling-Hammond, I'm starting to have serious doubts that this will happen. The motto "be the change you want to see happen" is having more meaning for me while I study in this program. In my "flipped school" dream, in school kids would be engaged in much more outdoor, environmentally based education, while the indoor screen time happens at home. I'm starting to figure out how to make this work in my own teaching, since it does not seem it will come from any large scale school reform any time soon. One thing getting in the way of this now is the lack of universal home access to Internet and devices.
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“We get the most out of an experience (like reading a book or watching a seminar) when we set an intention before we start or if we have a few clear goals around what we hope to learn.” -Zaretta Hammond
With this quote in mind I started reading the material on Culturally Responsive Teaching, or CRT. My goal was to reflect on how I attempt to do this in my classroom, in order to look for opportunities to improve my practice. If anyone reads this, I’d appreciate feedback/constructive criticism/tips on how I might improve. I try to use culturally responsive strategies in my classroom. I think a few of the methods I use in math, for example, are reflected in Hammond’s ideas.To begin, I try to establish a safe, supportive background context. We talk a lot about growth mindset and how I love it when kids ask questions and make mistakes because it shows they are learning. In our community circles, we build trust and respect so that we all feel safe and willing to say when we don’t get something. To begin math lesson, I first introduce concepts to the kids in my own way, up front, on the board with written visuals. When possible, I use manipulatives and encourage them to do so also. I try to stimulate prior knowledge in culturally sensitive ways that link the math lesson to my students past experiences in school and at home. By presenting things in my own way and not straight from the book in the beginning of the lesson, I find it easier to make sure their attention is focused and to interact with them through questions and answers. From time to time I’ll also find “Brain Pop” videos on YouTube that explain the concepts in different, interesting, and orally and visually stimulating ways. I use name sticks to call on random students, after I give “think, pair, share” time for them to talk to each other about the new concepts. We often use student whiteboards for them to work out problems together and then show their answers. I seat my newcomer students next to friends who can explain the teaching to them in Spanish. Sometimes I give key information in Spanish, which 90% of my students understand. I’m conflicted about this because as a bilingual educator I was taught that you should NEVER translate. They say this makes language learners “turn off” when you teach in the target language and only pay attention when they hear their home language. But in the English only context I’m now teaching in, where newcomers just won’t get math concepts in the L2, I do this. It has lead to many “aha” moments. After the introduction, we go to the lessons in the workbooks. Again, we do a few problems from the book together, collaboratively, in an inclusive, whole group setting. When we transition to small group work, where I let students pick their partners in groups of 2 or 3, I bring the newcomers to my table along with other students who need additional support. The group work is effective because many students learn a lot through interaction with their peers. Sometimes I find that it’s hard to explain to third graders the difference between helping another student and letting them copy the answers. Any tricks out there on how to improve this aspect? Another weak point in my teaching may also be how the instruction and students expressions of their understanding is still primarily centered around the workbooks and on getting the answers right there. I think I could focus more on giving multiple forms for students to express their understanding. Any ideas? Another good practice has been to integrate games whenever possible. What we are doing now to support memorization of multiplication facts are flash cards. In groups of three, students test and teach each other the facts. One student shows the cards, and the other two, or sometimes three, compete to say the fact first. They really love it. Then, on their computers, I ask students to practice math facts on Freckle. They earn coins with which they buy clothes to dress their avatars. This is also motivating to the kids. Early finishers get to do this more often, as this is what I ask them to do if they do not want to help anybody else out when they finish. CRT strategies are also in place school wide. Even though we are an English only school, our school has been hiring Spanish speakers. This helps to increase the cultural responsiveness of our school. 85% of our parents speak Spanish at home. Having teachers who are able to communicate with them is important. While I am not latino, I’ve lived in Spanish speaking countries for a total of eight years, and am married to a Paraguayan. I feel like I understand the points that Zaretta Hammond makes about knowing a culture’s values and social patterns. I am able to build authentic relationships with students and their parents. I get their jokes, their education experiences, (which includes the parent-teacher relationship), their music, and their world outlook. Our school has also been very responsive to our English language learners through intervention classes, after school tutoring, and a class for newcomer students. Ironically, it feels like because several of my students are pulled so often to other classes, when they come back to my class they are lost because they come in mid lesson. Depending on the situation, I’ll sometimes ask them to get onto their computers and do self paced learning on programs such as Lexia, Freckle, or Rosetta Stone. But it’s still disjointed from the core learning we are doing in the class. I just hope that what they are doing in their intervention classes are helping them more than if they were to dive into the core instruction happening in my classroom. I suppose this is the biggest question I have after reading and watching this class’ content. In a twist, the minority students in the class this year are actually the two who do NOT speak Spanish. I had an experience a few years back where one family complained that I was using Spanish in the classroom because it made their daughter feel isolated. Due to this pressure, I stopped using Spanish during instruction time. The parents were highly educated and very involved in the school. Their advocacy for their daughter’s feelings carried a lot of weight, and my administrators suggested I cool it on the Spanish. This made sense since we are, after all, an English curriculum school. Still, it did not feel fair in a way since their daughter was extremely high performing academically and had many social and economic advantages. Just one powerful voice had a big impact on the class’ feel that year. What would you have done? I find myself feeling like I’m on the defensive after reading and watching this content on creativity and the creative mind. I feel like so much of what I do in the classroom is not asking kids to be creative, but presenting and practicing basic skills. I feel like as a school we are focused on the “wax on, wax off” part of the Karate Kid movie where the protagonist has to repeat over and over again a forced, rote skill practice.
I find myself thinking about what a professor said to us in a Native American Lit class in college. He stressed the importance for minorities, like Native Americans, to master correct grammar and writing conventions, or “the code”, if they are to ever be taken seriously by the establishment. I feel we are trying to do this with the minority language learners in our school. We are trying to get them “up to speed” on internalizing and mastering this new code they are confronted with. They do need these basic skill sets in order to thrive in our society. Don’t they? Then I think about technology’s role in this. Is anybody else being bombarded with Grammarly ads on YouTube? This program edits people’s writing. It looks like there is a big interest in this, judging by the number of ads that are being given. It would seem that many people are learning these kinds of grammar skills not as a precursor to producing creative works, but while they do them. My kids also get instant editing in Google Docs while they work on their creative writing. Maybe we should trust the technology to teach many of these skills this while we focus primarily on setting up the context in the classroom that leads to creative collaboration, and creative, pbl projects. The motivating activities create the desire for learning the skills, and the skills are learned “on the fly” as students do creative work. I’m wondering if I should scrap my grammar lessons. Do kids need to know what a subject and predicate are, explicitly? Could I be using our time more wisely if they learn what they are intuitively through their need to communicate their thinking? The technology will increasingly take care of the mistakes in writing. What technology can’t do is be creative in the human sense where we get into that synthesizing and creative mindset that Howard Gardener talks about. Our country has been such a leader in the world up to this point because we have inculcated irreverence in a creative sense. The tech is freeing us up, it would seem, to do even more of this creative work. The tech also cannot teach ethics. In fact, as the Enron and MIT examples show, people can hide behind technology to justify unethical behavior. So a big part of schools should be on teaching this, as well. I’m also glad to report that our school is attempting to do this through our focus on restorative justice and restorative circles. A big part of this ethical discussion revolves around respect. When we teach respect, we bolster self identity and individualism. Sir Ken Robinson talks about the importance of this in creating the kind of school environment that gets away from the “one size fits all” production line, industrial model of education. When kids feel like their voices are heard, they can better find their own particular strengths and focus on those. Perhaps a shift of balance is in order. We need to include into every day’s lessons the opportunity for kids to use their new skills to perform open ended, collaborative, and challenging tasks. This is like the kind of learning community that John Seely Brown talks about, I think. We can only create social constructs of knowledge, where learning can be exponential, if people’s passion and playfulness are involved in a collaborative, “deep tinkering” context. I love how he discusses the importance of making mistakes is to this kind of learning. Luckily, we have started doing this in our school through a new focus on growth mindset. Mistakes are encouraged and supported as indicators of learning and growth. Where I fall short in my teaching is on the intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards argument that Dan Pink discusses. I feel a lot of pressure in our school to provide extrinsic rewards. I have adopted these in two cases out of pressure from other teachers. We are using Class Dojo points to reinforce “positive classroom behaviors”. We have also started using “brag tags” to do this. Our school also uses “tickets” to reinforce behaviors. In addition, I use a “marble jar” to reward the whole class on “quick transitions” and “acceptable classroom behavior”. I feel like we are teaching kids through these extrinsic rewards that it is ok to do what you don’t love with the promise of getting a reward that has little to do with the actual behavior. I feel like we are teaching kids to do the jobs they are not interested in, so that they get a reward that is actually a bit meaningless. This teaches people to do the jobs they are unhappy in just to get a paycheck. Intrinsic motivation actually increases productivity and satisfaction. If we set up our classroom context where kids are motivated to work together through their own questions and passions, then the need for these extrinsic rewards disappears. This is also what the Mobley article gets at. Instead of focusing on lecturing and memorizing, we should be focusing on questioning in non-linear and creative ways. When kids don’t tap into their questions and individual passions, it’s easy to fall into Mobley’s final pitfall: “Don’t ever quit.” Our kids are quitting because they are not tapping into their strengths. This is why I love Ryan and Evrim’s topic on strength based learning for their continuation high school, which has a high dropout rate. But I think many of our topics are pointed in this direction in this class. I feel we are all focused on creating rich learning environments that can lead to greater creativity through student collaboration, questioning, and intrinsic motivation. Linda Darling-Hammond’s The Flat World and Education is an excellent guide to create the kind of paradigm shifts we need in this country that might improve our quality of education for ALL students.
Her key areas to focus on are:
For me, her key point is that by emphasizing equity for ALL students, we bring up all students. It is very shortsighted to allow a system that favors investment in the rich over the poor. What the rich don’t get is that they will be even better off if they try to help everybody to improve. A good example is Finland, where by ensuring equitable funding in all schools, all students benefited. The John Dewey quote shows how our founding forefathers knew this. When we know the vision of the original architects of our educational system, and can see how other countries have benefited from these ideas, why can’t we get it together to advance a national plan? What has happened? Education has been de funded. Darling-Hammond repeats over and over again in her book how increased investment is needed in order to implement the changes she proposes. But the national trend has been in the opposite direction. Prop 13 favors businesses and homeowners over education, for example. Not only that, but our national head of education, Betsy DeVos, is interested in turning schools into a for profit, privatized system. Here is a direct quote from the NEA website on Betsy DeVos: “As President Donald Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos has worked to subvert public education. She has promoted the privatization of public schools through vouchers, called for deep cuts to federal funding, rolled back protections for vulnerable children, and shilled for the for-profit college industry that has defrauded countless students.” Rather than investing in kids and teachers, our leaders seem more interested in how they might profit from them. To me it feel Machiavellian when I think that our nation’s education secretary, who wants to privatize education, is the sister of Eric Prince, the owner of the infamous Blackwater private mercenary group that fought in Iraq and got into a lot of trouble there for killing civilians. The school to prison pipeline could also turn into a for profit school to for profit mercenary group pipeline. Could it? Has it? We are a nation divided. In my opinion, the small minority with most of the money does not seem to feel identified with the increasing number of minority students in our schools. Rather than trying to help them, they ignore them or see them as another opportunity to profit. When I see our cohort’s thoughts and comments, I see us as really struggling to find meaning and direction in this broken system we have been working in. It’s so frustrating to see that the ideas are there and a way forward is clear, but that we are at the same time so far from reaching these goals. It has always seemed to me that I am not teaching the way I should be. I’ve always been trying to do my best with limited training and support in semi-cohesive programs. It feels like the collective political will has not fermented long enough for people to finally say “Enough!” There has to be some kind of “wake up” experience or renaissance in education and in a broader sense for us to refocus our values away from profiting off of each other, which brings everybody down, and back to investing into each other, which brings everyone up. I like the idea of 21st Century learning objectives, which revolve around critical thinking, problem solving, and technology. We are learning so much about the brain and what kind of “brainsets” we need for creative learning to occur. We have the technological tools that can help all voices be heard and level the playing field for minority students. But it also scares me to think how easy it is to allow this tool in schools to become what it has become in the social media world. Facebook started as a great platform to communicate with friends. It’s become another way to direct advertisements at people. I had to stop using it because I was getting more ads than news about my friends. Are there laws that prevent digital educational curriculum to contain advertisements? OK, here is my new and perhaps more interesting pondering that came out of my original ponderings on environmental education:
Minority students, specifically Latino and Black, make up only 10% of the kids who are attending outdoor kindergartens so far (Wait. In Washington? Where did I read that? Maybe it was in the latest REI catalog, or maybe not.) IF this is, in fact, a trend, then why? And if it becomes one, then how can we reverse it? Because, the latino student population is BY FAR, (about 80% in my experience teaching in Northern California), the biggest student population in the upcoming ranks of students. We need to direct our educational efforts at Latino students, here, AND internationally, students abroad. They will be the majority of future leaders who will work on environmental education, awareness, and action. SO, how do we design internationally available, digital, “2.0” 5G? outdoor curriculum to fit with their languages, social contexts, environments, and cultural values? Of course, I’m also thinking about how to get parents involved in this. (They own the cell phones in the family.) The other question is: How many of these apps designed to get kids in touch with/out into nature are already multilingual? I imagine iNaturalist is, since it is used internationally. Is iNaturalist doing this on crowd source based platforms like Wikipedia? Are other countries doing similar projects? Time to ask Google. (I bet this has already been thought about and worked on a hundred times but I enjoy thinking about it nevertheless.) Sometimes I think that my frustration with tech is that it's moving too slow. It feels like we are having growing pains. (Will it ever stop?) As a teacher, I think this can translate into tech tools, such as on-line reading and math programs, not being aligned to our more traditional paper book and workbook (Common Core aligned) curriculum. I'm using a patchwork of materials where the computer based programs are typically used to enrich our more traditional curriculum. The programs I use, such as Freckle, Lexia, Epic, Prodigy, and Xtra Math, for example, are supplementary. What we really focus on in our grade level scope and sequence planning meetings is still the textbook based learning. And this is ok. I think it's really good for there to be a balance between screen time and book/activity time. It just that sometimes I wish it were all integrated and planned out ahead of time so that I don't spend so much of my time figuring out what to use. So much of my job involves managing 22 kids and all the rest that goes along with it, I don't have time to be a curriculum designer. Sure, I'll plan how to deliver it and differentiate it, but to design lessons takes, for me at least, a huge amount of time. Also, we are expected to enter all grades into Illuminate, but this takes additional steps to integrate our paper tests into the digital system, such as filling out bubble sheets and taking pictures of them with our laptops. And then, the Smarter Balanced assessment never seems to really reflect what we are teaching anyway. The curriculum is still catching up with the test. Sometimes I think wouldn't it be great if, and this may sound a bit big-brothery, everything were streamlined into one big package? (Probably Pearson or McGraw Hill)... Our online, learner centered and instant feedback giving curriculum, that has all the 6C's figured out already across all curricular areas, would feed grades directly into Illuminate for parents to see, and would also automatically populate our report cards.... and ALSO be aligned in a smarter way to the Smarter Balanced Assessment? Some company could make a killing off of this idea. But then, of course, where would this leave us teachers? Would we turn into tech support? How would we teach kids about passion through our passions? How would we teach them how to search through our searching? How would we teach them it's ok to make mistakes through our mistakes? And then what would happen when a bigger company comes along with a better idea and makes everyone re-learn the entire system? Maybe this experience of fumbling through these technological changes is not such a bad thing after all. I think the very nature of education requires a constant dis-satisfaction with current ideas and practices and a constant striving for the next better thing. That's learning. Look how far we have come. The more diversity and freedom that happens here, the better. But, that other way would probably make my job a lot easier. The other reason the tech is moving too slow is because when I see the use for it, I want it now. For example, in relation to my big question, I want all my students to have cell phones. Now. And they don't. And they won't. But they neeeed them because I discovered this app called iNaturalist and played around with it last weekend down by the creek in downtown Santa Rosa. You point your camera at a plant or animal and in a few seconds it tells you what it is! Isn't that crazy? It knows what a mallard duck is. It knows what blackberries are. If it doesn't know exactly, then it gives you a few suggestions. If you want, you can pin the plant or animal onto the internationally used map/database of biodiversity around the world. Someone pinned one of the plants growing in my front yard! (Which I did not plant.) If my kids could use this tool they could create a database of some of the local flora and fauna in Calistoga, and then present on it. We can also do something like this on our field trips to Pepperwood. I think we can still do it, but it will be a bit different. Maybe I can get iPads and upload photos from those. Today, I took them down to the creek in Calistoga (headwaters of the Napa River) with their nature journals. They were so busy and excited looking for bugs under rocks that most of them didn't have/take the time to draw. We'll have to do it tomorrow morning, based on their memories of what they saw. But if they did have cameras, they could have captured those images quickly and find out with more accuracy, what the bug, or plant, was. After taking this nature journaling class I had this big idea that if kids observed nature carefully and slowly, they might appreciate it more. I still think this is true, but in today's context at least, it was not going to happen, with a few exceptions. I can better see how the use of tech might enhance this experience for all kids. https://docs.google.com/presentdocs.google.com/presentation/d/1QQCABajnmAFW5yZTGDV8uP04bNgg0BZWEw5KvCPBk50/edit?usp=sharing
Specific Case Study Analysis Round 1: Examples of 21st Century Learning
Nature Journaling (lesson links at bottom of page)
Link to the Lawrence Hall of Science “Beetles” Nature Journal Project: http://beetlesproject.org/resources/for-program-leaders/field-journaling-with-students/#1447702870437-ba804ab5-cb15 YouTube Video of Nature Journaling Class by John Muir Laws and Emily “Dipper” Lygren https://youtu.be/EonfR2V1SJ4 I'm happy to say that I got a return email from Holland Gistelli, Education Specialist at Pepperwood Preserve, who directed me to some interesting resources for 21st Century learning as it relates to the increasingly important skill of environmental awareness. Here's the response! Hi Jeremy, Apologies for my delayed response - I found myself wanting to include a lot of info in my response here, and it took me a few tries to bring it all together! First of all, I am thrilled to hear how inspired you are by nature journaling!! It is so awesome that you have already brought your class outdoors to get started. There are clearly so many reasons this practice can be a crucial learning tool for your students, and I can't wait to hear more about how it progresses through the year. You are always welcome to tap into the education team here at Pepperwood for support. Beyond the academic learning that can come from the practice of noticing, wondering about, and recording nature - I would speak strongly for the social and emotional growth it can help facilitate for students. And this goes for experiences connecting to nature in general - like you said about your trips with 5th and 6th graders through NatureBridge, they are having a "great time"...but what exactly is that? There is a lot of room to develop self-awareness and self-management skills, as well as interpersonal communication and empathy. There are folks currently doing some great research around the connection between Social Emotional Learning and Environmental Education - trying to answer that question of yours! This includes the folks at NatureBridge and BEETLES (Lawrence Hall of Science). I attached here a presentation from a conference I went to where they discussed these connections - you might find it interesting. NatureBridge C&NN REEP Pres 5.16.19.pdf I'd also highly recommend checking out BEETLES - (Better Environmental Education Teaching, Learning, & Expertise Sharing) These folks are incredible leaders creating field tested methods, lessons, and tools for outdoor educators and classroom teachers alike. Pepperwood's Jesse and Nicole did an institute training with them, and we heavily base our teaching techniques on the BEETLES approach. They have very helpful videos to demonstrate how these practices work in the field with students http://beetlesproject.org/about/ These practices can help you facilitate time outdoors nature journaling with your students. As for technology - what a struggle to balance using tech as a tool and keeping it from taking over completely. I love your plan of letting kids share their nature discoveries using a google slides presentation. This gives the outdoor time its due space, with the structured tech time after. They could also make observations and write their questions in their journals, and then have time to research their questions with a few carefully pre-chosen websites (for quality control). Another idea is doing some citizen science using online tools/platforms - kids make observations in the field, and then upload their gathered data to the online tool. Examples of this are iNaturalist, Nature's Notebook, and Project Budburst:
In the end, I think keeping the nature journal practice consistent will be a big step for success. With ongoing time to develop those skills, and then couple that with extension research projects, art projects, or special topic focuses - I think you'll be able to capture their engagement. If your students are doing these things at school, they'll get much more out of the Pepperwood experience and vice versa. Journaling allows room for individual choice which can increase engagement versus having everyone journal about the same thing - you can have general themes, or specific areas of the garden/schoolyard, but they get to pick their subject matter. Also stressing for kids that it is about adding details they notice, labels, and color - rather than trying to make beautiful perfect art - some kids (or anyone, really) can get caught up on how it looks, so letting them know it can be "messy" can be helpful. Keep up the great work, and we look forward to seeing you and you students in November! Holland Gistelli, Education Specialist Pepperwood Preserve 2130 Pepperwood Preserve Rd. Santa Rosa, CA 95404 (707)591-9310 x124 www.pepperwoodpreserve.org Looks like Holland did my job for me on this first case study analysis. The links she included in this email are excellent. I have checked them all out and plan to use them to prepare my students for their visit to Pepperwood and the 21st Century. She opened my eyes with the first several resources related to the social emotional benefits of children being in nature. Social emotional wellbeing is the foundation upon which all other learning must be built, and it is something missing in so many of our children today. The number of students qualifying for special services such as counseling, reading and math intervention, and medication to control ADHD, continues to grow. Here's a link to an article that explores the link between an excess of screen time to ADHD: https://learningbreakthrough.com/learning-breakthrough-blog/screen-time-adhd/ The social-emotional benefits that being in nature has for children is something I have really felt when on overnight trips to Yosemite and Marin Headlands. NatureBridge does an excellent job of bringing this out in kids through their cooperative learning activities and student centered learning. The reason I consider nature journaling to be a 21st Century skill is because it relies on students' direct observation and critical, questioning interaction with the world. In an environment where technology is advancing exponentially and requiring very quick reactions from citizens in order to realize what is going on and adapt to it, I think we really need to teach students how to closely observe and learn from their own observations. The 21st Century, I'm feeling, will need people who can see what is going on and teach themselves to adapt and benefit from it. I think traditional forms of education will be increasingly pressed to catch up with the quick changes. People really need to be able to observe what is happening and educate themselves to be prepared for it. Being able to observe and ask questions is essential to self-guided education. I have to flesh this idea out quite a bit more, (any tips?), but right now I'm seeing this return to and appreciation of nature, coupled with an integration with media technology as a form of environmental activism, as a magic formula to prepare students for the future, and ensure a viable future for them to prepare for. Here's the link again to Marty Peifer's talk on direct observation in nature journaling. He really inspired me to pursue this direction in my master's project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAmtqGtz1UA Peace Out, Jeremy Smith Edu 701 “The Flat World and Education” Notes
It’s no surprise to me, having began my teaching career in 2000, that there has been a major influx of minority and particularly latino students arriving to the United States each year. My classrooms have always been predominantly and increasingly latino. At the same time I know that our plan to bring these students up has been woefully inadequate. Thanks to this reading I’ve learned the big picture of this personal experience. About a million immigrants are making their way into the United States each year (Martin & Midgley, 2006). Ethnic minorities make up 100 of the total 300 million population in the U.S. And this trend will continue. Between 1974 and 2004, the percentage of students of color rose from 22 to 43 percent of the total population. In California, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas they already exceed the number of Whites. And in two decades they will be the majority of students nationwide. Darling-Hammond shows in a detailed way how the achievement scores of low income students of color is lower than that of their white counterparts. This achievement gap, because of the large population of minority students, is going to have an increasingly important impact on our educational destiny. Most of these students, due to an apparent indifference, and a certain failure of our leaders, have been structurally excluded and marginalized in our societies and schools. Yet their status and attainment levels will increasingly affect our country’s future in an increasingly competitive world. Other countries have been doing much more to ensure equity in education for all students. Whereas the United States has been allowing inadequacies and inequalities in educational funding to persist, other countries have lifted themselves out of educational deficiencies through well planned, well funded, and equity based educational models. It is necessary to study their models and emulate them. The growing achievement gap, product of a mentality of poverty and the status quo’s incredibly shortsighted and “aggressive neglect” of minority students, has led to a school to prison pipeline. The United States, with 5% of the globe’s population, has 25% of its incarcerated people. Our high rates of incarceration are tied to undereducation, race, and poverty. Most U.S. prison inmates are high school dropouts and many are functionally illiterate and have learning disabilities. The majority are people of color. State spending on prisons has outpaced spending on schools by three to one. A reversal of this funding would have exponentially beneficial effects on the wellbeing of our economy, race relations, and the common good. Through education, we have to improve race relations in this country. Darling-Hammond’s “sobering yet hopeful” book points a way for educators to act decisively and thoughtfully through specific policies and school reforms that must take place in order to stop our nation’s academic decline. The political will that is necessary to improve this situation has to arise out of our democratic ideals of social justice and equality. Only equitable and multicultural education can foster the common good and the overarching goals of the commonwealth. What our leaders still don’t realize is that we will not succeed if we don’t bring everybody up together. I’m reminded of my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. This is a country like the United States in that it has a culture, or mentality, of poverty. In the past century, Paraguay has been a supplier of agricultural goods such as cotton, beef, and soybeans. It’s economy has not depended on a highly educated workforce. It’s educational system and society has reflected this. The wealthy hold on to their wealth and do not invest in education and the common good. They live behind brick walls in mansions and drive expensive cars. Yet outside these walls the streets are dirt, and poverty reigns. As a result they, along with the entire country, suffer. The United States seems to be following in their footsteps. Increasing wealth disparity, where the top one percent of the population now controls virtually all of the capital, has had devastating effects on our communities. Rather than seeing education as a means to bring everybody up, has been seen as just another way to make money off of the backs of its people, in the form of student loans. Sadly, I’ve learned from this book that California has been one of the worst if not the worst offender in providing quality education for all students. It is very ironic that our state, being the original hub of technological innovation, has not invested in the education of its own population. It relies on highly educated workers from abroad to fill highly skilled and high paying positions in this increasingly “flat” world. It has not been easy being a teacher here. Our inadequate funding, off target educational priorities in content and assessment, and punitive system of accountability have been palpably inadequate for myself and fellow educators. At the state level, the poor argument that increased funding will not improve educational outcomes has been used more than once to excuse a lack of equitable funding. Status quo backed Prop 13 has severely limited the state’s ability to fund schools. As of yet there has not been the political will to reverse Prop. 13, for a start, and adequately fund our schools. The missteps the state has made in educating our children make me wonder if we, too, are intentionally under-educating our children so that they will continue to fill our agricultural positions (like in our local wine industry), much the same as in Paraguay. Yet, Darling-Hammond shows that increased funding must also be accompanied by directing of funds to the right goals. Calistoga is a good example of this. It is an interesting place to work. Since beginning to teach here four years ago, I feel that for the first time we have enough money to spend on our students. We are a “direct aid” school that gets all of its funding from local taxes. Money comes from tax revenue from high property values and wine tourism. Yet even with adequate funding, our minority students (about 85% of the total student population), still fall short of academic achievement expectations. The problem would appear to be so systemic that even adequate funding at the local level is not enough to close the achievement gap between our minority students and white counterparts. We have to do better, and Darling-Hammond outlines the main targets that increased funding must target: These include (1) meaningful learning goals; (2) intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems; (3) equitable and adequate resources; (4) strong professional standards; and (5) organization of schools for student and teacher learning. These kinds of systemic changes need to happen at the state if not national level. It’s good to see however that local initiatives such as this master’s program in innovative learning we are participating in, where NapaLearns is funding half of our teachers’ tuition, are attempting to close the achievement gap and update our educational models to address the demands of a technological, fast changing 21st century jobs market, and 21st century multicultural reality. |
AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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