Free Education for All

Having grown up a sheltered, middle class, white girl who has done little traveling in other countries. Now, I'm going to admit now to my ignorance when it comes to third world countries and the realities of the lives of the people who live there. I'm well aware that I should already know of these realities, and it blows my mind when I see things like this post about a free school in India. This "school" is located under a bridge and lets children from the nearby slums attend and get an education for free.

Now for the questions showing my ignorance:

I commented on the actual post saying "Wow. This is amazing. It's great to see the children so eager to learn and try to make a better life from what they were given. How did this get started? Is there no other free education available? Are there other schools like this?"

I am also wondering, why is it that this is the only education that these children have access to? Does India not have any free education other than "schools" under bridges from those willing to teach them? Why can't more people realize that without education, the problems of poverty and children living in slums will repeat generation after generation? What would need to happen for more countries to realize this AND be able to do something about it?

Furthermore, these children are so involved and engaged with their education and are proactively trying to learn. It's so wrong that these children who so want to learn are being so under served, and many kids in our country only go to school because they are forced to. How can we instill this kind of need and purpose for education in our own sheltered, middle class, children?

Integrating disciplines

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Students need to learn how to integrate subjects in their minds. Students need to make the connection between math and science to be able to succeed in chemistry. Rather than seeing math and science as two distinctly separate periods and subjects, utilizing the new and background knowledge across subjects will help them not only succeed during the school year but also remember what they learned.

I personally know that I remember new information better when I make multiple types of connections to other new things I am learning as well as things I already know. Students need to be able to make connections like these in order to tap into the full capacity of their learning and memory capabilities. However, students may or may not be able to learn to do this on their own.

Teachers need to learn how to teach the students through integration of subjects, or at least teaching students about the links between subjects. How powerful would it be to have an art teacher talk to an English class about William Holman Hunt’s painting of "The Lady of Shalott" or other similar paintings while they are reading Lord Tennyson’s ballad? How many more connections could be added by a history teacher? Understanding of the poem could be much deeper and memory of the connections would be much stronger.

What I am trying to say is that teachers should be teaching in a more collaborative and integrated way in order to teach students to make the connections between the subjects. When I was in my middle school placement for student teaching, I saw teachers teaching in exactly the same way they have always taught middle school, completely separate from other subjects. Sure they met as teams, but that was only by subject. Math with math, social studies with social studies. The thing that bothered me most about this way of teaching was the school had been built to facilitate collaboration between subjects.

There were four classrooms and a shared space that made up a pod, and each classroom in a pod was a different subject. Furthermore, most of the students had most of their classes in one pod; a student who had math in pod B usually also had history, language arts, and science in pod B. So why weren’t these teachers collaborating and trying to link their curriculums to find places where they could teach the student to utilize multiple disciplines at once? Yes, it takes a lot of time, but isn’t a school supposed to be about creating success for the students? I think if schools would open their eyes to how beneficial integration of subjects is, there would be more time allocated to collaboration between subjects as professional development.

Project Learning Tree

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Yesterday my cohort had the opportunity for environmental studies professional development through a Project Learning Tree workshop. It was a great, eye-opening experience into both environmental issues and incredible ways in which to incorporate environmental sudies into all school subjects.
I think the most impactful thing I learned, however, was the "pyramid" approach to environmental education. Our instructor introduced us to the concept of creating a base for student knowledge not through fear and guilt, but through connection to and love of the environment.

So many environmental programs go for the upfront "wow" factor by showing pictures of damage world climate change has caused to the earth or showing videos of the giant trash spot in the Pacific Ocean. While these photos and videos may frighten or guilt kids in to turning off a couple lights at home or recycling when it's convenient, it's not going to get lifetime complete buy-in to saving the earth.

However, if we were to start by getting kids to love the environment through outdoor education and direct connection, they would have a reason to want to help save what they have grown to love. For example, if a student were to become interested in birds and when they arrive back to a specific area each year, that student would be more interested in making the environment around where he/she lives livable for birds. That student might move on to studying birds in other ways. If he/she then discovered that human water conservation also impacted bird or other animal populations, the student would then have a personal, deep connection and drive to conserve water. This connection would remain part of this student much more than fear and guilt would. They would have personal investment in environmental concerns.

Although I still plan on teaching middle school math once I'm done with this program, I'm looking forward to using the resource book I bought at the workshop to try to implement some environmental activities in to math lessons. Thanks for the great workshop PLT!

Starting a bit behind

It has been amazingly difficult for me to get back into the swing of things this quarter. Taking a full two week break from everything not on my personal want agenda made it almost impossible to light a fire under my butt to follow other agendas. I'm finally getting to the point where I can't ignore my school assignments and deadlines anymore if I want to be successful this quarter.

Having seen what this long break did to me this year, I'm wondering what long breaks will do to me once I have my own classroom. The breaks feel needed, but do the long breaks actually cause more stress on the tail end than what is relieved during the break? I think that many short breaks may be better for stress in this way than extra long breaks. I'm wondering how the school year could be altered to still have a couple longer breaks but still maintain connection to school and fluidity of productivity. Year-round school is starting to sound like a good idea to me, but how could it be seen as beneficial to all?

Standardized Test

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I stumbled onto this picture quote while I was wondering around the internet today, and it immediately linked to thoughts I've had about standardized testing. The tests assess kids in such a particular way that it could be related to simply testing on their mental ability to climb a tree. Kids who do generally do well on standardized tests come from a certain demographic in which the questions are written for, and  the way in which the core subjects are tests do not correlate with the way many kids understand and think about these topics. Furthermore, the scope and methods of the tests do not cover many topics and abilities important for becoming a critically thinking, problem-solving, functional human being. Even further still, each child learns, thinks, and communicates differently than other children, yet they are tested in the exact same way as all other children.

So, if a kid thinks creatively but grows up speaking something other than proper English, how do you think they will do on a test that is written in proper English, does not take into account creativity, and has incorrect answer options which would make sense in this child's mind? It's like trying to test a fish on climbing trees, who has grown up learning how to move and communicate in a way different than squirrels. This child will not do well on the test and spend years thinking that it is somehow worth less than other due to a score that shows nothing of what they are actually capable of doing and thinking.

I think that we need to do away with standardized testing and come up with more relevant, more complete, and more human ways of assessing children.

Be Prepared

Just as the teachers of the Oklahoma tornado demonstrated, the lives of children are safely entrusted in to the hands of teachers every single day. If parents are entrusting the lives of their children to teachers, why can’t teachers be entrusted with making the decisions regarding curriculum and how they will teach? If teachers have already fully committed to making these students productive adults, why would they sabotage their own ability to teach with shotty curriculum and teaching methods? The community and nation needs to trust in the emotional connection and entrust the curriculum to the teachers just as they entrust us with the lives of the children.

How can we ensure that each teacher is prepared for this kind of responsibility? In Monday’s class, we were talking about creating a uniform, nation-wide standard for teaching certification. Rather than basing teaching performance on standardized tests after the fact, why not ensure that every teacher is fully competent and prepared to teach to a high standard before they even get to the classroom? We should funnel the money spent on standardized testing in to teacher education and enrichment. What better way to make sure teachers are up to par than actually making sure they have the tools and the education to be up to par? After they become teachers, we could have inspecting programs rather than testing; trained professionals who come into classrooms to observe and give feedback to the teacher about their ability and curriculum. Why can’t we focus on what the teacher is actually doing rather than on test scores that may of may not accurately represent what students are learning and are capable of learning? It’s time to change from unemotional paper interaction and assessment to a more appropriate, human interaction way for teachers to be held accountable and for students to be assessed.

Relevant Education

In Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams, he talks a great deal about the purpose of schooling and the shifting need of how students should be taught and what they are learning. Schools were introduced to create obedient workers that needed trivia facts memorized. Godin says "memorizing large amounts of information was essential. In a world where access to data was always limited, the ability to remember what you were taught, without fresh access to all the data, was a critical success factor." One can see the importance of school providing a means of memorizing information for workers of that time and age. 

 

However, our society and technology has made endless memorization almost unnecessary in many circumstances, and has started valuing creativity and independence over knowing facts and obedience. Yet school form and instruction remain the same with increasing pressures in assessment of things other than creativity and in ways that do not comply with the ways most students function or apply what they know. "Workers aren’t really what we need more of, but schools remain focused on yesterday’s needs," Godin elaborates.

 

So, in this new world where data is no longer limited and you can find endless information on your smart phone just as fast as you can take it out of your pocket, why are were still spending school instruction hours memorizing facts rather than learning how to navigate the issues of today's world in a meaningful way?