Ideas for the 21st Century

My brilliant college friend, Dana, is doing a PhD in public policy, and sent me this bit about the realities of education in the 21st century. It was written in 2002, but it is still fresh.

Here are some insights that spoke to me:

Every student should leave school with high levels of curiosity and persistence, the real key to lifelong learning...

And:

Demand for quality, effectiveness, and service is increasing. People expect it in every aspect of their lives, including their schools.

And:

Nanotechnology--technology at the molecular level--will very likely drive the economy of the future. Who will develop these new technologies? It will be the students who are now in our schools.

Our superintendent, Dr. Alvarez, seems like an ideas person. But I don't know that for sure. And what about our principal and board members? And teachers themselves, the ones on the front lines, who have everyday influence over, and insight into, kids--what they want, what they need? Are the people who really matter thinking about this stuff?

Some of the blogs on my roll, below, feature such teachers. But it would be so awesome to hear from local educators on this stuff.

The recent BOE brouhaha (elected vs. appointed), the current intense debate over where our tax money should go (e.g. schools vs. senior care centers), the new nominating procedure for future BOE members...Well, that's all important.

But I want to hear ideas--from the people who can implement them. Wouldn't it be cool to have regular roundtables featuring teachers from various levels and schools in M-clair, focusing around one issue or question?

For instance, what's it like to teach third grade in the age of NCLB? What do middle school teachers see as strengths in our adolescent students? If our high school teachers could make one wish about their day-to-day professional lives, what would it be?

It could be interesting.

Maybe Low-Tech Schools Aren't So Bad!?!

By now, you've undoubtedly read the stats from a newly-released study about kids and media. You know, the one that reveals if our kids aren't asleep, they're online?

Of course, 7 hours per day in front of a screen is an average. Around here, I am vigilant about electronic time--but not hysterical. I say to myself, "Maybe it's not a bad thing." As you know, I think technology can be educationally helpful. But my kids are young, they are developing social skills, and I want them to know nature, be physically fit, and, by golly, figure out that books are their friends. In spite of that, my son got a laptop for Christmas, has a DS and a Wii; ditto for my daughter. (They share the Wii.) The other day, for about half a playdate, my son and his friend played Internet games on his computer.

They are wired kids. WE are a wired family, and becoming more so each day. I do try to point out to my children that I rarely play games on my various gadgets, but use them to work, write, make social connections, and find info. I think if/when my kids start doing the same with theirs (as opposed to only playing games), I'll actually allow more time with electronic media. (Don't get me wrong: I think gaming is great. To a point.)

So now, I am rethinking my insistence that schools use more technology, more effectively. Maybe a technologically lean school is a GOOD thing after all. As numerous articles around this data have pointed out, schools are the one place kids are NOT necessarily wired up. I've had this thought before as I've watched my kids become ever more electronically enamored. I'm actually even reconsidering my ideas about cursive and handwriting! A little.

I was in my children's school today. My son's class had been using laptops, but a few minutes later the kids were eating lunch in the "cafeteria" (gym) with just one another for entertainment. At home, they might be watching TV with that sandwich. Gulp.

Link to My Mouthful on WNYC

My comment is about 16 minutes into the show.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2010/01/13#

Problems With Commenting Feature!

I just realized I've had a nice healthy handful of comments in the past few days, but they are NOT showing up on the blog. (I am receiving the usual notification of them through my email account, but they are also supposed to show up simultaneously on the blog.)

I checked my settings, and they are set to show comments without moderation, so I don't know what's going on...

Please keep commenting, and I'll figure it out...

(And any suggestions would be welcome. My IT department consists of me, myself, and I.)

Need Help With a Blog Issue...

Does anyone out there know how to get rid of the annoying UNDERLINE on each of my post titles?

I tried to edit the blog's layout, but it does not seem to allow for this. (One may use any color mash-up available to humankind, but not much else.)

I also tried fooling w/ the code, but, again, there's no tag for post underlining...

Any help would be appreciated...

Thanks!

Angst, When I Should Be Icing Cupcakes...

My spectacularly beautiful daughter celebrates her birthday at school tomorrow, with our family on Sunday, and then next week w/ her friends...

And I'm having trouble getting my groove on.

Right this moment, I'm doubting our schools especially keenly... Having read more about The War on Children, then experiencing it firsthand...well, it's getting to me.

Also doubting MYSELF as an educator right now because not one but TWO of my former students have protested their grades, and at least one of them might be right. (The reason I'm not teaching the course this semester? How can I teach about best practices in assessment when I can't apply them within the rigid confines of the traditional grading system @ MSU?)


Wrestling with whether I really should still BE part of the system or even a critic of the system. What good does it do? And who am I to say?

Then again, maybe icing cupcakes, like chopping wood, carrying water, and doin' the hokey-pokey, IS what it's all about.

NYTimes Review of "The War on Children"

Must see this film..

I Pipe Up on WNYC, Talking About Lockdown Drills

About an hour ago, I was on the Leonard Lopate show on WYNC*. He was interviewing Cevin Soling, the producer of the documentary "The War on Kids." I haven't seen it yet, but I've read Soling's views, and think he's onto something. (More, below.)

Anyway, at the moment I turned on my radio, Lopate, Soling, and another guest, Dan Losen (author of The School to Prison Pipeline), happened to be talking about the zero tolerance policy of many schools--how students can be (and have been) suspended for bringing squirt guns and Advil to schools, etc. (This has happened here in Montclair...yet was unable to prevent the huge fights that broke out at the high school in the past few months.)

I picked up the phone right away. I just had to pipe up about our district's recent "lockdown drills," wherein students practice getting under their desks in the eventuality a "guy with a gun" comes in and shoots them.

Apparently, these drills have been taking place over the last few years. I either have never heard about it, or didn't realize what, exactly, they were. Nor do I understand their purpose. If I had, I would have been duly alarmed. As I am now. As my son and a classmate pointed out casually, "What happens if we're NOT in our classrooms when the guy with the gun starts shooting? We didn't practice anywhere else! What if we were in the bathroom."

(I wrote a letter two days ago to Dr. Alvarez asking for more info. Haven't heard back yet.)

Anyway, the irony seemed too rich NOT to call. Apparently, the screeners agreed.

But I am going to look into, and hopefully write about, Mr. Soling's work. He posits (and you'll hear on the podcast) that it's not about these sort of ridiculous overreactions regarding weapons and drugs. It's ABOUT THE KIDS, the fact that children have so little say in their schooling, how, in many schools, obedience and control take the place of learning, critical thinking, democracy, collaboration, etc. etc.. Soling believes (and said as much on the show, though he was rather dismissed by Lopate) that it's about "civil rights"--CHILDRENS' civil rights.

* You can go to the web site, but I don't think the podcast's been downloaded yet. Let me know if you're able to get it! The show was on between 12 and 12:30 PM.

New Year, New Brains, New Literacy

Check out Alison Gopnik's NYT review of Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene.

I zeroed in on it particularly because, in two weeks, I'll be starting my studies in reading and new literacies at MSU.

Here's one excerpt of the review that is particularly applicable to our schools:

Each new generation of children grows up in the new environment its parents have created, and each generation of brains becomes wired in a different way...

These changes are especially vivid for 21st century readers. At this
very moment, if you are under 30, you are much more likely to be moving your eyes across a screen than a page. And you may be simultaneously clicking a hyperlink to the last Colbert Report, IM-ing with friends, etc. etc. We are seeing a new generation of plastic baby brains reshaped by the new digital environment...There is every reason to think that [the brains of current and future children] will be as strikingly different as the reading brain is from the illiterate one...

So, when you walk into a Montclair elementary classroom, why does it so
clearly resemble, both physically and pedagogically, the classroom I attended in the 70's, and the one I taught in during the 80's?

How are we addressing the demands and realities of brains wired for, well, being wired?

Students shouldn't be spending a lot of time on "handwriting," and filling in
worksheets and doing research reports whose topics are dictated by the
teacher, from primarily old-style reference sources, with little
collaboration and only the most superficial application of revisioning
skills. (And always handwritten.)

At least by third grade, kids should be using Google and Wikis and social networking effortlessly, naturally, in the classroom, and should know basic programming and maybe even some aspects of game theory.

As Gopnik points out, "We parents have to watch our children glide irretrievably into a future we can never reach ourselves." And watching as that future happens is the minimum we must do. First, we must admit it is here.