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From:David
Sent:May 10, 2004 9:55 PM
To: [Our Math Learning Team, my principal, and a few other people whose opions I value]
Subject: School Goal(s)

Hey,
I’ve been bouncing these ideas around and would like to get your slant.

The BIG IDEA
One overall school goal of”Articulate Thinking”

Building the skills necessary to develop articulate students who can express their thoughts in meaningful, articulate ways.

The Philosophical Bent
I don’t really care if my daughters, upon graduation, can identify the subordinate clause in a sentence or if they can tell me how to find the volume of a cone… I do care that they can express themselves in thoughtful, meaningful ways and demonstrate social responsibility in their decision making.

The GOAL(s)
1 main goal that we always focus on… especially with regards to our all-writes/ or our testing,
3 sub goals, but we only focus on one per year… across the curriculum!

Main Goal: Social Responsibility
Sub goals:
Year 1 – Structure of writing – Form, grammar, etc.
Year 2 – Verbal – speeches, presentations etc.
Year 3 – Visual/Spacial – charts, data, displaying information, etc.
(It could work that we divide this into terms and do all 3 per year, but I think 1 per year lets us keep it simple and focussed!)

The Buy In
So, how do we focus on one per year… across the curriculum? And how do we get ALL teachers involved?
In every class, we make a commitment to challenge students with a critical thinking challenge monthly or bimonthly. The topic of the challenge is course specific and preferably integrated with other subjects.
Examples
CAPP: Casa Guatemala, Multiculturalism, Bullying etc.
Social Studies: Current Issues, Religions etc.
Math: Problem Solving with real life application, Dream house, Planning a party, etc.
Science: E3 – Environment, Experiments, Ethics
Explorations: (examples)
Tech-Ed: Build a birdhouse that fits these minimum requirements… but these are the sizes of wood you are limited to…
Computers: Use [insert program here] to present the following information in a meaningful way
Home Ec.: These are the sizes of the individual pieces of material you will need for this sewing project…
place them on this 1m x 1m piece of material so that you waste the least amount of material.
*Key idea… focus on critical challenges that force students to express and justify their ideas.
We have the opportunity to build and sequence these during pro-d!

How the Sub Goals work
Year 1 – Structure of writing – All of the challenges above have a written component and EVERY teacher has a part of their marking rubric factor in Form/Convention/Grammar … Structure of writing.
Year 2 – Verbal – All of the challenges above have a presentation component and EVERY teacher has a part of their marking rubric factor in verbal communication of ideas.
Year 3 – Visual/Spacial – All of the challenges above contain data collection and/or graphing etc., and EVERY teacher has a part of their marking rubric factor in visual representation of the information/ material.

This is not done for every project, but in each class, one of these assignments is expected every 2-3 months.

Back to the BIG GOAL
***The sub goals allow us to micro-teach the necessary skills needed to improve how we express ideas in written form, in our verbal communication and our ability to visually display information… skills that allow us to express our thoughts in articulate ways.
The main goal… Social Responsibility.. is where we collect our data to see how we are progressing… to give us feedback on how well students are doing, (and for that matter how well we are doing at teaching them these skills across the curriculum).
Once a term, or twice a year, we test kids using a critical question based on Social Responsibility topics. These would still be taught in CAPP and Advisory, and hopefully also taught in other areas… looking at the environment in Science, waste reduction in Tech Ed and Home Ec. etc.

How students are expected to respond to the critical question would depend on what year/sub goal we are focusing on:
Year 1 – Structure of writing – Essays
Example: Moral dilemmas
Year 2 – Verbal – speeches, presentations, etc.
Example: Speech on Bullying; Develop an Anti-smoking ad campaign… You must ‘sell’ this idea to your class.
Year 3 – Visual/Spacial – charts, data, displaying information, etc.
Example: Develop a 10 question survey on peer pressure and display your findings in a meaningful way.

Well there you go!
I’d like to hear what you think,

Dave

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Gary wrote:

Ahh, what do you want me to say? It sounds like it could be a unifying concept that the school could rally around. Kind of like Joey’s old EBS, but with an academic slant.

I might argue that these goals are already taught by your Language Art teachers, so the main benefit is that everyone is working towards the same outcome. To that point, the LA teachers touch on those skills every year. The main problem, as I see it, isn’t that we aren’t doing a good job teaching these skills, it is that we have 5 – 20 % of the kids who don’t get it. These are the kids that we need to focus our goals on – these are the ones where academic interventions are required. If we add more teachers teaching a concept, the real question is to what extent are we going to improve the ability of the 5 – 20 %ers? If we aren’t going to improve their skills, then don’t set the goals.

In saying that, perhaps all of our students need to be more articulate thinkers? If so, than this is a well thought out plan!

Good luck,
Gary

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David wrote:

It often comes down to that 5-20% doesn’t it?
I wonder what we are doing now that isn’t working with that group? Is there some school somewhere that handles this group well?
I’m not sure I challenge this group in a way that gets the most out of them, but then I spend too much time on giving them info (not a lot of time on the 3 higher levels of blooms taxonomy). If we challenged kids to think about ‘no right answer’ kinds of questions in every class, maybe we would be challenging and hopefully exciting some of these kids… maybe this is wishful thinking.

I can’t help but wonder what is wrong with the structure of education that limits us from connecting with these kids???? If you built your own school what would be different?

Maybe a good discussion for our book club… not ‘perfect world’ education, but given the resources we have, what would we do differently if we had the budget of a current school and carte blanche permission to make the school look and operate any way we felt?

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Gary wrote:

Well Dave…

One must first challenge some age old assumptions. Our system is built on the belief that “every kid can learn.” Second, we believe that every teacher can teach every child. Thirdly, we assume that every child should be “with their appropriate age grouping.”

If we want to unlock the potential of our students, these assumptions must be examined.

Can every child learn? Developmental psychologist will answer by saying “maybe.” Developmentally, many of our students, especially at the middle level, are stunted in their thinking. They lack the ability to “integrate” the sensory world. They lack the ability to temper dual thoughts. They even lack the adaptive process that we assume all people possess. So their answer to that question is “maybe.” For students to learn, Gordon Neufeld says they must be ready.

Can every teacher teach every child? Come on, we all know that we can’t be all things to everyone. Even good teachers will eventually meet their match.

Finally, should every child be with their appropriate age? I’m of the opinion that the greatest thing in our kids lives is their peers. So much so, that peer pressure is ruining their lives. Students don’t come to school to learn, they come to school to meet their friends. A true cart before the horse analogy. Again, Neufeld would suggest that this very notion of peer influence is what is causing some kids to be unable to learn. He believes peers stunt our growth and block us from learning.

So, the solution?

I will put a computer in every students hand. I would keep students in “similar age groupings”, but I wouldn’t guarantee their same age grouping. I would differentiate all learning, but I would try to cluster learning objectives so that teachers can continue to play a crucial role in learning and still be the main facilitator for learning. The computer, in its ideal form, is the tool that allows us to individualize student work. It will allow us to communicate in real time, learn in real time, and assess in real time. It will be the lever to better learning. Teachers, however, will need to be better than ever before. They will be the fuel for the flame.

My middle school would thus have grade 6 – 8 classes. Some students would remain in the class for only a year before going on to grade 9. Others might stay for four years. Teams of teachers would still work together to deliver the curriculum, but the interaction and model would be much different than today. Some genius will lay out the curriculum into standards and objectives that are clear and easy to follow. Teachers will bring the objectives to life, and technology will allow students to demonstrate their learning in ways unimaginable only a few short years ago. Problem based learning and rich task learning will be for the masses. For our 5 – 20 %, reading recovery, math recovery, writing recovery will be their focus. We won’t be ashamed to actually help people progress.

Finally, students will come to school to learn.

Is it possible?

G

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My thoughts on this conversation:

It was great to re-read this and see where my thinking was 3 years ago… it was before I saw the value of technology in education, and yet it wasn’t very long ago!

I thought this was pretty insightful of Gary, “Teachers will bring the objectives to life, and technology will allow students to demonstrate their learning in ways unimaginable only a few short years ago. Problem based learning and rich task learning will be for the masses.”

This idea of many students not fitting into school, or rather schools not fitting many students, has been a something I have considered a lot… especially in my Square Peg, Round Hole post. The concept of being socially responsible applies equally if not more so in this technological age, (note: my Blogging Rules).

“One overall school goal of ‘Articulate Thinking’. Building the skills necessary to develop articulate students who can express their thoughts in meaningful, articulate ways.” This might have been a lofty goal three years ago, but after reading Thomas Friedman’s (original version of) The World Is Flat 3.0 and watching David Warlick, maybe it is time that education focussed on, as Gary suggests ‘differentiating all learning’. It is the side trips of learning that students enjoy. Maybe when we are better at meeting students needs, they will have the motivation to meaningfully participate… and therefore be more compelled to be the ‘Articulate Thinkers’ they need to be in the 21st Century!