See the link below to a funny bit from Key and Peele that imagines what the world would be like if we gave teachers the respect and attention we give to athletes.

http://huff.to/1H2wBXD

If only!

One Vision of the Future of Classroom Learning

In this thought-provoking blog post, John Katzman, founder and CEO of Noodle, 2U, and the Princeton Review, gives a somewhat unconventional prediction of what the classroom of the future might look like.  Rather than a technology-laden "mission control" type of atmosphere, he predicts that there may actually be less technology in classrooms in the years ahead, as asynchronous learning is enhanced outside of class and the time when students are gathered together in one place becomes more focused on in-depth human interaction.  This remarkably old-school vision for new schools seems like an utterly logical prediction to me.  It puts technology in its proper role, as an aide to rather than a replacement for the most timeless quality of a truly transformative education; the face-to-face exchange of ideas.  It imagines technology as a tool that facilitates this exchange by allowing for more efficient and effective use of students' time beyond the classroom, so that the time spent in community can be richer and more productive.  This not-so-radical vision of the future grows from an abiding belief in the value of social learning, and elevates the classroom to an arena for the shared process of reflection and discernment that is so valuable to the making of meaning. A brave new world indeed!

A Wonderful Article by Friends School Teacher Josh Valle

I’m always amazed by the multiple talents that my colleagues possess.  In addition to the many gifts they bring to their day-to-day work here at school, many members of our professional community are talented artists, musicians, woodworkers, etc.  And, of course, many of our employees are also brilliant writers.  I came across fresh evidence of this fact recently when I read this article on "Spiritual Nurture and Young Children," written by Pre-Kindergarten teacher, Josh Valle, and published in Friends Journal, a highly-respected publication serving the Quaker community.

 

For those of you who know of Josh’s thoughtful and insightful work with our youngest students, it will be no surprise to you that he so powerfully articulates in this piece the delicate balancing act of the teacher’s craft between guidance and openness, between the inherent desire to direct our students’ experiences and the educational benefits of relinquishing that  control.  And he does it all through the metaphor of a stink bug!

 

I hope you enjoy this thought-provoking article as much as I did!

Playing with Fire (and Nails, and Tools, and Mud)

This article from NPR Ed includes an interview with Erin Davis, a documentary director whose latest film The Land traces the development of the adventure playground movement.  Her film focuses in particular on a playground in Wales known as "The Land" that features all the elements we modern parents spend so much time and energy keeping out of our children's lives; fire, tools, nails, and lots of sharp edges.  It's important to note that, especially in Europe (where these facilities have become increasingly common) there are "playworkers" who staff the playgrounds and monitor the safety of children, but are trained to intervene only if absolutely necessary.

I am eager to see the film when it is released, as this phenomenon seems to me to speak to the natural impulse all children have to take risks and the benefits of allowing them to do so.  As Davis says in the article, "(Children) have the play drive. It's up to us to kind of provide the kinds of opportunities for them to really follow through on it."  Personally, I know hardly anyone of my generation who did not occasionally play in unsafe spaces like construction sites, or, for that matter, woods, at great length  and entirely unsupervised in their childhood.  And yet I know almost no parent of my generation who will admit to allowing their children to do the same.   In Davis's mind, "...what's really happening at the heart of The Land is child-directed play and loose parts. So kids have time, space and stuff. I think the very first baby steps we can do is provide kids with loose parts that are simple, and follow their lead in what they are interested in."

While I don't anticipate the students at Friends playing with fire (with or without playworker supervision!) anytime soon, this documentary and the movement it chronicles raise some much-needed questions about the way we conceive of play, freedom, and risk in modern times, and whether, in our quest for maximum safety we've forfeited valuable opportunities for our children's growth.

The Case for a Dose of Benign Neglect

While reading the "It's About Learning" blog from Bo Adams, an educator at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta, I came across this article from the Deseret News in Utah.  Entitled "When Kids Were Breakable," it does far more than, as the title might suggest, look back wistfully to a vanished and idyllic past (a practice for which I generally have extremely limited patience).  Instead, it explores the slow but relentless process we have been engaged in as a society for the past 30 or so years; namely, attempting to "bubble wrap" our children and prevent them from experiencing any danger, frustration, or disappointment as they make their way through childhood.

As an increasing anecdotal and quantitative body of evidence suggests, such an attempt is not merely futile, a vain effort at an utterly unrealistic goal.  It actually has significant pernicious effects on the children on whom it is practiced, stunting emotional and psychological growth and denying young people the powerful learning experiences (positive and negative) that come from being free to make bad decisions outside adult supervision.  The article cites one of the fundamental paradoxes that I believe does so much to fuel the perceived need for (over)protecting our children. "Parents today," the author writes, "operate under the assumption that society is more dangerous than when we were kids, when in fact the opposite is true. Crime rates in the United States are at an all-time low." This incontrovertible fact is constantly undermined by the ubiquitous coverage of the most gruesome and salacious events in the relentless media news cycle. But the statistics speak for themselves and demonstrate a huge drop-off in all categories of major crimes nationwide.

I have come to believe that a healthy dose of benign neglect would do our children a world of good.  Bad things can and will happen to children, and a reasonable amount of caution is, of course, essential.  But we're beginning to understand that there is a real and lasting cost to harboring the illusion that we can and should shield our children from every possible danger.  And a willingness to expand our tolerance for risk and freedom seems a logical reaction against the irrational trend towards over-protection that has been so prominent among our generation of parents.

In Defense of the Humanities

I found this article on the continuing need for the humanities in the 21st Century. by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times to be very insightful.  For many educators (perhaps especially those of us who teach in the humanities) it has been distressing to see the broad devaluation of fields such as History, English, and Philosophy in recent years.  The focus on generating a return on investment for the huge sums of money involved in attending college (or, for that matter, independent schools) has led many people to adopt an overly-utilitarian view of education.  While this phenomenon may be a logical and predictable result of a struggling economy and escalating education costs, it does not, in my mind, capture the value that the humanities add to society as a whole.  As Kristof points out, it is only in the marriage of "hard skills" like computer programming with "soft skills" such as philosophical discernment that civilizations flourish.  One without the other is insufficient.

Education Week - The Goal of Education is "Becoming"

I recently came across a fascinating article from Education Week magazine that made a seemingly counter-intuitive statement - "the goal of education is not learning."  While that line was undoubtedly intended to be provocative, the underlying point in the article is a sound one.  "The real goal of education," writes Marc Prensky, its author,  "and of school, is becoming—becoming a "good" person and becoming a more capable person than when you started. Learning is nothing but a means of accomplishing that goal, and it is dangerous to confuse the ends with the means."

Prensky goes on to make the case, rightfully, I believe, that "very few educators or parents have learning or scholarship in their hearts as the endgame for their children, except in the sense of their kids' getting good grades. Most of us would prefer our children become the very best people they can be, capable of effective thinking, acting, relating, and accomplishing in whatever field they enjoy and have a passion for."  He bemoans the fact that "with the exception of some independent schools," most of modern education focuses on learning (by which he primarily means the mastery of content) above all else.  This explains the obsession with testing that measures this mastery.  "Our tests," he claims, "—big and small—are an attempt to put numbers around that learning and to rank students in their acquisition of it."  

I am proud to number Friends School among those "exceptional" schools that share this focus on becoming.  Our Teaching and Learning Paradigm demonstrates our commitment to developing a core set of qualities that include but also transcend factual knowledge. 

 In his piece, Prensky writes that a truly great education leads students to ask these questions of themselves:

"Who am I becoming? Have I become a better thinker? If so, in what ways? Am I able to do things I couldn't before? What is important to me and why? Can I relate comfortably to individuals, in teams and in virtual communities? Can I accomplish bigger, more sophisticated projects to add to my portfolio? What kind of person have I had to become to achieve these accomplishments? Can I make the world a better place?"

These are very much the kinds of questions we have in mind for our students as they progress through a Friends School education.

From American Psychological Association Journal - "Results from the highest quality studies ... do not support the view that SS (single sex) schooling provides benefits compared with CE (co-ed) schooling."

In this article, authors Erin Pahlke of Whitman College and Janet Shibley Hyde and Carlie M. Allison of the University of Wisconsin—Madison share the results of their analysis of a wide variety of studies of the impact of single-sex v. co-ed learning environments.  Pahlke, et al. concluded that, despite persistent claims to the contrary by advocates of single-sex education, there is no evidence that gender-homogeneous classrooms lead to improved learning outcomes for students.

Given the self-evident limitations inherent in an environment that by its very nature excludes one gender or the other, this lack of demonstrable learning benefits is, it seems to me, particularly problematic for those promoting this educational approach.

The Imperative of and Looming Crisis in Student Engagement

In his article "Getting Our Students to Own Their Educational Experience," Raymond Cirmo, a physics teacher at Connecticut's Cheshire Academy, nicely articulates every teacher's struggle.  "There is no getting around the need for knowledge, and as classroom teachers it is our job to make that knowledge available to our students," he writes.  "But it is also our responsibility to create an environment in which students will want to gain the knowledge presented in the classroom. And therein lies our greatest challenge."

In considering how we can design the most powerful education for our students, I believe that we must realistically take into account the myriad developments in their lives beyond school. The competition for our students’ time and attention is fiercer than it has ever been.  To the already formidable ranks of distractions that all of us faced at this age have been added the proliferation of social media and the many-faceted fruits of ever-evolving technology.  Any study of this landscape reveals quite clearly the qualities that young people seek and appreciate in their lives beyond school; experiences that are deeply interactive, that are relevant to their particular interests, that make room for choice and differentiation, that provide avenues for self-expression, that allow for ongoing and escalating mastery and recognition of achievement, that give the opportunity to collaborate with others towards common goals, that offer the chance to make a lasting impact on their world.  If “school” continues to consist of the same kind of experiences that traditional education has provided, with remarkably little variation for the past 100-plus years, we run the risk of chronic disengagement.  Students - especially motivated and conscientious students - will undoubtedly continue to do what is asked of them, but this compliance should not be mistaken for meaningful engagement. Acquiescence is not a transformational quality.  In order to motivate our students to invest themselves fully in their schoolwork, we must offer the same qualities in their educational experiences that they seek and can so easily find in their lives outside of school.

Visiting a Model School for the Future of Education

Having heard a great deal online and at February's NAIS conference about the exciting developments at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta, the Friends School academic leadership team and I visited the school last Thursday.  The logistics were tricky for a one-day visit, but it was worth every hassle, as we saw a school that is truly a model for what education can and will be in the years ahead.  Many thanks to the folks at MVPS for making us welcome and generously sharing their staff, their classrooms, and their thinking with us.

I can't do justice in this post to all the fantastic work being done at MVPS, but here's a link to their website, which gives a good sampling of the energy, passion, and unity of purpose that we saw everywhere we went on the campus.  We came away thoroughly impressed and greatly inspired to act with a similar level of boldness as we continue to evolve our academic program to meet the needs of our students and our world.

One comment in particular has stuck with me in the days since our visit.  Bo Adams, the Chief Innovation Officer at MVPS, shared with us a question that has helped to guide the design of their program.  "If school is supposed to prepare students for the world, why does what happens in school bear so strikingly little resemblance to the way the world actually works?"  Great question, Bo, and one that all of us involved in the ongoing design of education need to energetically engage with.