Week 2, September 5th
Envisioning the Future of the American Educational System
The three authors of this week's articles present similar ideas of how we should be educating the youth of America, especially in communities composed of minority backgrounds. Each author discusses underlying themes of community and purposeful learning.
In the article "Education: The Great Obsession", Grace Lee Boggs gives the history of traditional education and describes how the values and goals of education have shifted over the years, making the point of how discriminatory these values are against the black community today. She makes the argument that the American educational system needs to be reorganized to allow students to become integrated into their communities in order to engage in purposeful learning. She says, "A human being, young or old, is not a warehouse of information or skills, and an educational system that treats children like warehouses is not only depriving them of education but also crippling their natural capacity to learn. Particularly in a world of rapidly changing information and skills, learning how to learn is more important than learning specific skills and facts." Boggs argues that allowing black students to observe problems in their own communities and work together to develop and carry out plans to solve these problems will intrinsically motivate them to learn. Ultimately, community control of schools is what she is pushing for.
As a science teacher, I connected with Boggs' idea of problem-solving because it closely mirrors the scientific method and how I teach my students to address any problem: observe, research, hypothesize, experiment, analyze, conclude, and share. My goal is that students become familiar enough with this process so they can apply it to real world situations, not necessarily in the science field. After reading Boggs' article, I realize that I will have more success with this by connecting the content to real-life issues that my students experience in their community.
In "A Simple, Revolutionary Idea", Dr. Adrienne Goss uses her own educational experiences to describe her visions for future schools. She believes that schools should provide students with opportunities to work toward solving real-life problems, whether on the local or global level. She stresses the importance of students, especially black students, being in tune with their heritage and ancestry in order to understand themselves and form their identities. She says, "We cannot fully know ourselves without knowing about others in community with us. We cannot serve justly without knowing how our decisions will affect those in community with us. Knowing who we are and to whom we are connected helps us to determine what we are to do with our lives." Goss argues that students need to connect with their past and appreciate their heritage in order to see purpose for learning and bettering their communities.
Finally, in "Imagining futures: the public school and possibility", Maxine Greene envisions a future where teachers use the arts to engage students in real world situations and allow students to communicate with each other in a way that builds community within the classroom. Students are involved in the development of the curriculum and standards set should help students become what they desire to be. She says "Experiences with the arts and the dialogues to which they give rise may give the teachers and learners involved more opportunity for the authentic conversations out of which questioning and critical thinking and, in time, significant inquiries can arise." Greene stresses the importance of imagining the possible when envisioning a better future for education.
While reading these articles, I was reminded several times of a type of educational program called Summit Learning. The program was developed by Facebook in California and is now being piloted across the country. The idea behind Summit is implementing project-based learning and connecting students to real world issues. There is also a community engagement portion of the program where students participate in an apprenticeship with a local business. I was able to travel to San Francisco to visit a Summit school a few years ago when North Kingstown was thinking about trying out the program for our general level students. The school I visited was in an urban setting and I witnessed students who were highly engaged in lessons and projects that clearly connected to their own lives. Students in the Summit program are able to work at their own pace and can view a digital timeline that shows where they are in the curriculum and lists the skills they are working toward. Here is a link to the program: https://www.summitlearning.org/.
Some of the challenges of the Summit program were consistency in grading and assessment across all contents. Traditional grading systems do not work which makes sense because it is a very nontraditional way of educating students. It is a complete change from traditional schools and requires everyone to be on board: teachers, administration, parents, and students. I feel that if the visions of Boggs, Goss, and Greene are to be realized in schools, full commitment will be needed from everyone in the education community. For now, I can do my part in my own classroom by remembering that it isn't as important if my students don't remember the three types of plate boundaries or the equation for acceleration; it is more important that they develop the skills necessary to be able to learn, think critically, and problem-solve in order to be better members of their community.
The three authors of this week's articles present similar ideas of how we should be educating the youth of America, especially in communities composed of minority backgrounds. Each author discusses underlying themes of community and purposeful learning.
In the article "Education: The Great Obsession", Grace Lee Boggs gives the history of traditional education and describes how the values and goals of education have shifted over the years, making the point of how discriminatory these values are against the black community today. She makes the argument that the American educational system needs to be reorganized to allow students to become integrated into their communities in order to engage in purposeful learning. She says, "A human being, young or old, is not a warehouse of information or skills, and an educational system that treats children like warehouses is not only depriving them of education but also crippling their natural capacity to learn. Particularly in a world of rapidly changing information and skills, learning how to learn is more important than learning specific skills and facts." Boggs argues that allowing black students to observe problems in their own communities and work together to develop and carry out plans to solve these problems will intrinsically motivate them to learn. Ultimately, community control of schools is what she is pushing for.
As a science teacher, I connected with Boggs' idea of problem-solving because it closely mirrors the scientific method and how I teach my students to address any problem: observe, research, hypothesize, experiment, analyze, conclude, and share. My goal is that students become familiar enough with this process so they can apply it to real world situations, not necessarily in the science field. After reading Boggs' article, I realize that I will have more success with this by connecting the content to real-life issues that my students experience in their community.
In "A Simple, Revolutionary Idea", Dr. Adrienne Goss uses her own educational experiences to describe her visions for future schools. She believes that schools should provide students with opportunities to work toward solving real-life problems, whether on the local or global level. She stresses the importance of students, especially black students, being in tune with their heritage and ancestry in order to understand themselves and form their identities. She says, "We cannot fully know ourselves without knowing about others in community with us. We cannot serve justly without knowing how our decisions will affect those in community with us. Knowing who we are and to whom we are connected helps us to determine what we are to do with our lives." Goss argues that students need to connect with their past and appreciate their heritage in order to see purpose for learning and bettering their communities.
Finally, in "Imagining futures: the public school and possibility", Maxine Greene envisions a future where teachers use the arts to engage students in real world situations and allow students to communicate with each other in a way that builds community within the classroom. Students are involved in the development of the curriculum and standards set should help students become what they desire to be. She says "Experiences with the arts and the dialogues to which they give rise may give the teachers and learners involved more opportunity for the authentic conversations out of which questioning and critical thinking and, in time, significant inquiries can arise." Greene stresses the importance of imagining the possible when envisioning a better future for education.
While reading these articles, I was reminded several times of a type of educational program called Summit Learning. The program was developed by Facebook in California and is now being piloted across the country. The idea behind Summit is implementing project-based learning and connecting students to real world issues. There is also a community engagement portion of the program where students participate in an apprenticeship with a local business. I was able to travel to San Francisco to visit a Summit school a few years ago when North Kingstown was thinking about trying out the program for our general level students. The school I visited was in an urban setting and I witnessed students who were highly engaged in lessons and projects that clearly connected to their own lives. Students in the Summit program are able to work at their own pace and can view a digital timeline that shows where they are in the curriculum and lists the skills they are working toward. Here is a link to the program: https://www.summitlearning.org/.
Some of the challenges of the Summit program were consistency in grading and assessment across all contents. Traditional grading systems do not work which makes sense because it is a very nontraditional way of educating students. It is a complete change from traditional schools and requires everyone to be on board: teachers, administration, parents, and students. I feel that if the visions of Boggs, Goss, and Greene are to be realized in schools, full commitment will be needed from everyone in the education community. For now, I can do my part in my own classroom by remembering that it isn't as important if my students don't remember the three types of plate boundaries or the equation for acceleration; it is more important that they develop the skills necessary to be able to learn, think critically, and problem-solve in order to be better members of their community.
I had never heard of Summit Learning, but it seems like the type of thing that all schools could use. I wonder how we can best implement project-based learning in our classrooms as we work towards a more widespread acceptance of this method. Obviously, overthrowing a whole system takes time, but I think there are small steps we can take that will make communities see how much better public schooling can be. I like your use of applying the scientific method to real-world issues, not just science experiments. It makes me think of how important it is for students to have transferable skills and not just a wealth of facts. Even before we connect students to the community, we have the ability to connect one subject to another through interdisciplinary units, which I don't think schools do often enough (at least in my experience). Perhaps that's just one piece of putting the puzzle together.
ReplyDelete"It isn't as important if my students don't remember the three types of plate boundaries or the equation for acceleration; it is more important that they develop the skills necessary to be able to learn, think critically, and problem-solve in order to be better members of their community." Well said! And as for the community being on board - part of that is learning to create evaluations that allow students to show these skills instead of just facts (standard testing doesn't do this so well, although they are trying). I hope you tell us more about Summit during class tomorrow, because it sounds like exactly what these authors were speaking towards.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up a really interesting point in regards to traditional grading methods. I often struggle with the efficacy behind the letter grade report card. Especially when our grading rubrics are often based on a scale of "Excelling, Demonstrating, Progressing, Not Yet Meeting" - Saying that a student is "not yet meeting the standards" to me, does not equate to an F and yet that is what it looks like when put into the system.
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