Sunday, July 23, 2006

Building Learning Communities 2006

Steve Dembo’s blog has several exciting posts from the Building Learning Communities conference held last week. Some of the bits I find interesting…

From Mark Prensky presentation:
“Content won’t help students to learn throughout their lives, but engagement will.”

I don’t think it’s an either/or situation. Content is important – basic core skills. We certainly are lacking in engagement in most of our classrooms, but it isn’t the content as much as it is the way the content is presented. If we don’t have the content, what would we engage them with? I think his point probably was that all we care about is content and not engagement, so he was just swapping those around saying that we should throw the content out and focus on the engagement. Whatever he meant, I believe they are both crucial in our classrooms. Steve later goes on to say that teachers are used to content first. Students want engagement first. I think that is more accurate. You still have to have both.

Steve goes on to paraphrase Prensky: ADD students are the ones that aren’t engaged by the traditional methods of teaching. They aren’t engaged, and they’re ticked. Which leads to disruption. I would agree. I think that most of the problems encountered in classrooms stem from a lack of engagement and a fear of failure. I’m not engaged by your teaching methods. I’m not getting your content. I’m not getting good grades. I’ll just act out to divert the attention off the issue and make is seem like I just can’t focus. It’s not that I can’t….I won’t. As an adult, I feel this way in those all school/all district in-services. And it’s not just me. At least I control myself. Others just talk, read books, answer cell phones, etc. Are they ADD. NO! They aren’t engaged. Yet we can’t see our own classrooms often parallel the same experiences we have in (bad) adult professional learning.

And the final Prensky paraphrase: After school, they get their real education in 21st century learning. During the day they get yesterdays education, after school they get future learning. So true. We hold them captive, making them live in a world they barely tolerate, or certainly don’t enjoy. And when that final bell rings, freedom – until they return the next day for more. The tension our out-modedness (probably not a word) creates is particularly evident on Fridays and the day prior to vacations. Everyone is screaming with their actions, “Get me out of here!” Students and teachers alike. We need to change that.

Another session that Steve blogs about is Dr. Andy Hargraves keynote, Susatainable Learning Communities.

First quote from Steve’s blog: Every other major country in the world is moving away from nationwide standardization in favor of other more diverse models. He calls the US the captain and lone attendee of a sinking ship. And who has moved us down this road? Our government. And we seem to have a history of allowing them to throw failed initiative upon us, and then allowing them to blame us when they don’t work. When will we buck the system?

We have become what the speaker later says is the “Enron” of educational change. We play the scores game, doing whatever we can to increase those scores so we look good to the public. But do increased scores translate to students doing more reading and writing? Hmmm….not very sustainable. How to make it sustainable? Hargraves suggests putting learning before achievement and testing and connecting to the schools that are succeeding. And how can you tell if a school is really succeeding and not just “playing the game?” From Steve: Successful schools promote stimulating conversations that are also committed conversations, that translate into some kind of action over time. It’s not enough to discuss the ideas, they need to influence actionable decisions that transform the school community. There is a depth and richness below the surface success.

Excellent reading and good thought provoking ideas. Sounds like an excellent conference also.

Posted by Randy on 07/23 at 12:59 PM
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