tingilinde

rethinking american high schools

There's a lot to think about here..  sadly any sort of experimentation seems unlikely.

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This is at least part of the reason so little creative experimentation occurs in U.S. high schools, the researchers believe. Teachers feel hamstrung by an “ecosystem of constraint”: externally imposed curricular requirements, standardized testing benchmarks, and metrics that colleges use in admissions processes. These external forces are extremely normative, explains Fine; teaching well within that context, as within any context, requires skill, mentorship, and practice.

“Every teacher we talked to, to a person,” she says, “expressed a desire to have their classroom be a place where powerful learning was happening, regardless of what kind of kids they were teaching. They all wanted it.” The challenge, she says, is that often “the system responds to perceived threats by asserting more control, rather than allowing for a natural release that empowers kids to make more choices and to take ownership of their education.”

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a tip of the hat to Steven

The focus on testing to standards - even when it "succeeds", it fails.   The learning it mandates only lasts a few years at most.  There is no mastery.  We retain and nurture what matters to us.

 

 

 

a just read it

On education in South Korea and dealing with a plummeting birthrate. (via The New York Times)

 

 

 

the tallest waves are getting taller

A hotter Earth means higher windspeeds in areas resulting in taller ocean waves.  The tallest area about 30 cm taller now than 35 years ago.

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

a different kind of student debt

school lunch debt and lunch shaming.

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In 2014, FNS found that students were being lunch-shamed at 60 percent of public schools across the country. Since then, the practice has been widely criticized by parents, educators, administrators, and anti-hunger advocacy groups.

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college football and morality

Is it becoming an issue?  (via The New York Times)

 

 

 

 

 

kathy hayhoe on dealing with polarization

Climate deniers won't change their minds when presented with science.  Kathy Hayhoe has been fighting the battles in Texas and notes some of the techniques sociology suggests.  

 

froebel's gifts

A fascinating piece on the invention of Kindergarten from 99% Invisible.  Audio and transcript

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For a time, Froebel worked with one of the world’s foremost crystallographers in Berlin — and this experience would fundamentally reshape how he understood the world. Where most people saw nature in big flowing organic shapes, like hills and plants and animals, Froebel zoomed in to study the straight lines and geometric forms of crystals. He came to see these as the building blocks of reality.

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lebron's school

Despite the early naysayers and still a club, but it appears to be working.

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Unlike other schools connected to celebrities, I Promise is not a charter school run by a private operator but a public school operated by the district. Its population is 60 percent black, 15 percent English-language learners and 29 percent special education students. Three-quarters of its families meet the low-income threshold to receive help from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

The school’s $2 million budget is funded by the district, roughly the same amount per pupil that it spends in other schools. But Mr. James’s foundation has provided about $600,000 in financial support for additional teaching staff to help reduce class sizes, and an additional hour of after-school programming and tutors.

The school is unusual in the resources and attention it devotes to parents, which educators consider a key to its success. Mr. James’s foundation covers the cost of all expenses in the school’s family resource center, which provides parents with G.E.D. preparation, work advice, health and legal services, and even a quarterly barbershop.

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evolution

From the National Film Board of Canada in 1971.  A science education film to get kids thinking  It stirred up some ire among the religious.  (a bit Lamarkian) 

Evolution, Michael Mills, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

 

college admissions and parents behaving badly

If blatantly illegal isn't your thing, why not sabotage?  (via The Washington Post)

When kids are reduced to a status symbol for their parents.

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The message seemed to confirm the vague rumors that had circulated for weeks — murmurs about parents behaving badly, even going so far as to disparage other students, presumably to give their own teens a leg up in the high-stakes college admissions competition.

The intense pressure surrounding the admissions process — and the corrosive effect it can have on a parent’s tether to reality and morality — has been a hot topic in the aftermath of the recent college admissions scandal that led to indictments against 50 people, including 33 parents, two of them television stars. The alleged multimillion-dollar bribery scheme was said to be aimed at helping less-than-stellar students gain entry to elite colleges and universities

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