EDU Trending: Back to the Future
More than 100 years ago, Maria Montessori and John Dewey were each pursuing a constructive educational pedagogy that challenged the teacher-driven instructional approach of their times. Both educators were strong proponents of student imagination and inquiry-based, hands-on learning as foundations for personal growth and independent thinking https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED198506
Montessori Schools featuring liberty within structure are now a well-established niche in today’s educational landscape: https://lawliberty.org/the-ordered-liberty-of-montessori/?utm_source=LAL+Updates&utm_campaign=01114937ba-LAL+Updates&utm_medium=email&ut Dewey’s focus on hands-on problem-solving https://www.pedagogy4change.org/john-dewey/ is mainstreamed in project-based activities dotting K-12 curriculum. Yet, teacher-driven instruction is still the primary practice in a majority of schools across the country.
Remote learning during COVID exposed the flaw in the listen-and-learn, teacher-directed approach. Students were bored and disengaged. Without interpersonal interaction and the promise of after-school activities to motivate them, students refused to sit in front of a screen and listen to people talking at them for hours.
Anxious parents sought alternative schools and home school environments that emphasized the incorporation of student interests and hand-on learning in a knowledge-based curriculum. Post-COVID, individualized, student-focused learning organizations continue to grow. For more information please read The Rise of Alternative Schooling, the lead article in Newsletter No. 4: https://merleschell.com/unpacking-education-archives
It may have taken 100 years for personalized real world learning to come fully into its own. Now it is here to stay. Developing content and curriculum through the dual lens of student relevance and their proactive engagement is not easy. But building both academic and social agency is exciting, effective, and empowering for students and teachers alike. And a happy relief to parents.
We have traveled back to the future. Minus the DeLorean, but with the legacy of Montessori and
Dewey, and our own hard-won reality check about what works for our kids’ learning and
well-being - today and for the tomorrows to come. That’s a trip worth taking any time.
Move over Marty McFly ☺
News and Views: School Shootings and Student Trauma?
Last month, worried about the long-term emotional harm of active shooter drills, Colleen Kelly withdrew her three-year old daughter from preschool: https://readlion.com/2022/12/07/active-shooter-drills-for-preschoolers-raise-concerns-among-parents-pediatricians-my-kids-safety-is-my-job/ Other parents have reported for years that their children (including those in high school) are “terrified” by active shooter drills: https://www.npr.org/2020/02/11/804468827/2-big-teachers-unions-call-for-rethinking-student-involvement-in-lockdown-drills
Here are four facts referenced in the links in this article:
Use of assault weapons in mass shootings (including schools) is rapidly rising in the U.S.
Most shooters obtain their weapons from the homes of family, relatives, and friends.
Nine out of 10 times the potential shooter gives advance warning of intent.
Once a shooter enters a venue or school, the massacre is over in five minutes or less.
Here are four strategies referenced in the links in this article:
Pass a new assault weapons ban.
Require all gun owners to store their guns - locked, unloaded, kept separate from ammunition.
Adults and students should report all warning signs. If you hear, know, or suspect someone might be a threat, take him/her seriously and say something to someone in charge immediately!
Provide help for those suffering from mental or emotional distress before he/she kills someone.
Here are four strategies referenced in the links in this article:
Parents, teachers and the American Federation of Teachers, EveryTown for Gun Safety (an advocacy group), and the United States Secret Service all agree that active shooter drills could inflict trauma and long-lasting fear in our children and that on-going prevention is the most effective deterrent to tragedy: https://www.npr.org/2020/02/11/804468827/2-big-teachers-unions-call-for-rethinking-student-involvement-in-lockdown-drills Traumatizing our kids is not!
P.S. In the first 24 days of 2023, U.S. citizens have been killed in 36 mass shootings. The United States has more guns and more gun deaths than any other well-developed, industrial country in the world. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-gun-violence-soars-in-2022/6876785.html Where is the moral high ground in that?
Question of the Day: Priorities 2023
This is an opinion survey. Prioritize the following issues from #1 to #5 with #1 being the most important and #5 being the least important for our children, our country, and our global future.
Ban assault-like weapons (increasingly used in mass shootings and school shootings)
Protect human rights (race, religion, gender, opportunity, etc.)
Support Ukraine in their fight for freedom and democracy (over dictatorship and autocracy)
Combine basic skills with relevant, hands-on K-12 learning (for career and college readiness)
Address and halt climate change (destructive impact on air, oceans, weather, earth, etc.)
For the answer, please read the article Love Matters at www.merleschell.com/reflections
From Me to You: AI, Academic Rigor, and Creativity?
U.S. Education is in a constant state of turmoil. The latest furor is over ChatGPT – a new AI platform
that can produce well-written, persuasive analysis in response to any prompt:
https://www.atlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/openai-chatgpt-writing-high-school-english
It is a writing assignment shortcut. The concern is that students’ ability to write clearly, thoughtfully, and persuasively will go the way of good grammar and cease to exist. A greater concern is that on-going use of programs like ChatGPT could short circuit students’ ability to learn, think, and problem-solve on their own.
Long before ChatGPT, other educators decried the loss of grammatical correctness and writing skills. They profess that basic skills and academic rigor have been dumbed down and sacrificed to the misguided “fostering of creativity.” They champion rote learning and memorization and continue to beat the drum for standardized tests as the definitive measure of student mastery: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/3765287-make-american-education-rigorous-again/
For the record, I believe that multiplication tables and rules of grammar are among the skills that should be memorized and that the development of writing skills should also be mandatory. I also believe that creativity and academic rigor are not and should not be mutually exclusive. They enhance each other. Together they empower our ability to collect and organize our thoughts, and then communicate ideas that are cogent, ingenious, purposeful, and fresh whether in written form or verbal presentation.
To assist in this endeavor, I recommend a most original and effective book: Rain, Steam, and Speed by
Gerald Fleming and Meredith Pike-Baky. The book contains 150 writing prompts over a wide variety of
topics. Regularly scheduled, timed writing with a backdrop of recommended music are used to build
writing fluency, thinking skills, and confidence for students of all ages and levels, including English
language learners. I have used this program for my students, including those with special needs, and
I promise you that it works! Let me know what you think.
Bottom line: We all want our children to be well-educated, but what is an educated person?
Education is on-going individual growth. Standardized tests are data points that measure acquired
knowledge and indicate student strengths and challenges at a given time. They inform teaching, but are not the final word on a student’s intelligence or potential. Unfortunately, some schools – often in poor, urban districts - feel forced to teach-to-the-standardized test, which reduces academic rigor to bullet points that can be memorized, but with little context or appeal.
How to stop chasing our academic tails in this pointless way is a conversation we should be eager to have.
We owe it to our children to teach and reinforce basic skills. They are foundational. In their best interests, we are also responsible to minimize rote thinking and artificial learning and to foster proactive inquiry, imagination, and rigorous academic content that motivates students because we make it relevant to their lives and honor their personal perspectives. It is as complex and as worthwhile as that.
Check out a network of schools that work in this month’s blog: Big Picture Learning: A Blueprint for Student Success:
