Headed Down East

Here’s Julia’s post on NCLB.  She is a junior in my Civics class who commented on the law.

If you want to know about water, then why is the fish the last one asked?

By the time students reach high school they have maintained the same “career” for longer than most adults ever will.  Students graduate high school with thirteen or more years of analyzing and critiquing teachers and their practices.  So why do we teachers (and I fault myself, too) rarely ask the experts what they think about schools?  Fortunately, when my students were asked to write about what they felt were important domestic issues in America today a few of them wrote about education.

Andrew examined the logic behind Connecticut’s standardized test that is one part of the national No Child Left Behind program.  He writes:

Everyone today has their opinions, yet most agree there are inherent problems with both public and private education in America today. When “No child left behind” was passed many were outraged. Basically the problem in No child left behind is that when each school district is required to issue CAPT tests, the schools with good scores recieve more funding, while the worse scoring schools recieve less funding. This whole system is completely STUPID, it takes funding away from where it is really needed and distributes it unevenly where it will not be used as well.  New ideas to reform the education system include completely revamping the way we teach, and redistributing funding to states rather than local district funding. (Andrew’s Blog, 12/15/2006)

Andrew’s summary of NCLB is brief, but cuts to the core of one of the main criticisms of the act in that it does not properly or accurately redistribute funds for education.  Education reform is typically conservative and ill directed.  Rarely does real reform occur.  Andrew states that “New ideas to reform the education system include completely revamping the way we teach.”  This couldn’t be more true, and especially in a time when there are so many technological tools at our disposal to truly revolutionize education.  It’s time for significant change, not politically correct change.

Another student of mine, Jesse, took a more reflective look at what education does versus what it should do:

Education is still an issue - uneducated poor, uneducated you, uneducated youth. This is my stance: most of us are not educated enough. Those who want to learn have to teach themselves. Most are caught in a life they didn’t create, told what to want, where to go, why they shouldn’t stray.

I want to learn how to love, how to live, how to be a man, how to dance, how to play music and make art - I want to learn things that change how I look at the world, things that give me power over myself, knowlege of myself, acceptance of myself. It seems like i’m taught to not accept my life, but to always be looking for something more - money so that one day i’ll have a safe and soft place to be. But i’m not taught to be, i’m taught to become. 

The world today does not know enough about what matters. We don’t know how to live without watse. We don’t know that we don’t rule the world. Mankind was not meant to be king, we put that on ourselves. And that has brought us problems. We live like the earth is ours to use, like the earth was made for us to live on it, like we know now how to live, as if we know what is best for us. “There is no higher power than man” we say, and so we guide ourselves, as if we know the way to go.

We don’t, but we can learn. (a big log, 1/21/2006)

These responses may not be loaded with evidence, but they contain a raw honesty that adults by and large have difficulty tapping into.  Students are professional learners with a keen awareness for good teaching practices and are individuals with nothing to lose by speaking the truth.  They do indeed have something to offer that we cannot.  Listening to that source and incorporating it into the larger discussion about education reform will be invaluable to the future of America’s schools.

Blogs are just one aspect of a larger trend of increased available technology, and hopefully not something that the educational world allows to pass by without examining its power in schools.  Globalization and technology have dramatically changed business practices around the world, and yet education has changed very little.  This is because education has always been largely hypothetical and rarely practical.  Communicative technology like the Web, Blogs, and Wiki spaces offer a chance to revolutionize that notion.  Today students have the opportunity to genuinely participate in building valuable and worthwhile spaces that can be designed for historians, scientists, political analysts, or whoever the target audience may be.  As educators in today’s global community, we have a responsibility to teach and to model, as well as to coach and to guide.  Let’s not forget the excellent teaching practices that have been developed, but let’s also not ignore the monumental opportunities that technology presents.

Traditional teaching practices such as lecturing, when done well, are proven methods for delivering quality content in an efficient and engaging way.  They also model good communicative practices.  Group activities, when properly planned and structured, are engaging and encourage students to learn from one another.  Up until recently, however, it has been virtually impossible for students to construct something that has value outside of the immediate classroom.  Great lessons and projects usually end with a grade; rarely do they progress beyond the school setting.  For this reason, one of the single biggest complaints that students have about school is its lack of relevance to their own lives or the world outside the school house gates.  Online communication has the potential to change that.

Using blogs this semester was not a bad start.  I liked that blogs gave students the opportunity to write for a broader audience than just me.  Blogs allowed students to read and interact with one another far more than a typical homework or writing assignment that is passed from student to teacher to student to recycle bin.  On the blog, students wrote with more sincerity because it was published.  At the very least, a few of their friends would read their blog.  At most, who knows?  Additionally, because of the blogs inherently informal feel, a lot of the student writing contained a genuine voice that is typically not present in essays.

For me, the next step is to go beyond blogs.  While studying the Civil War I should prepare and present quality lectures to convey the “big picture” and model good communicative practices.  Many teachers are masters of their craft and have engaged students for years.  But let’s not stop there.  Provide students the access to a web space, a wiki space, and/or a blog that allows them to construct something of value for the larger community of historians.  Teachers are also coaches.  Help students establish an attainable objective such as to create an online space of primary source materials on abolition before the Civil War.  Guide students as they construct their website of materials.  Ensure that the project is focused enough so that a quality result can be achieved in the amount of time available.  Most importantly, ensure that the final product is accessible to the larger world of historians, or artists, or whoever the audience may be.

This example illustrates my goals as a history teacher, but the concept can be applied to any discipline.  Teach quality content, model good communication, and guide students as they create their own valuable addition to the discipline at hand.  In this way education may become a place where students are a part of the real world, rather than waiting to enter it.  As educators, we need to recognize this opportunity and use it to change the face of education.  The classroom up until now has been a hypothetical space – let’s make it real.