Flat World Ch 8. "Prisons and Shopping Malls"

I felt that this chapter of "The Flat World and Education" really struck a chord with me when the author mentioned that many schools are built like prisons focused on control rather than instruction and that, rather than having a single, cohesive common core with a few elective modules, many schools have a "shopping mall" approach with an unwieldy number of classes on a catalog to choose from.

From my own work at a local high school, I spent the entire last week sitting down with students trying to help them (and myself to be honest) understand the catalog they received from counseling office with over 200 courses available to take with fluctuating parameters and a byzantine prerequisite system. I was especially shocked and horrified when the author stated that high schools with more than 1,200 students tend to suffer greatly from the pupil load, especially since the school I work at has a bit over 3,000 students enrolled and, despite the high school's origin as a middle school, there are rumors amongst the students every year that the center of the school used to be an old prison because of the panopticon style construction of schools in the 1970's.

Needless to explain further, I whole-heartedly agree that schools ought to be smaller and courses more streamlined to reduce stress on students and allow teachers to better know their students and dive into more intricate matters within their disciplines.

LDH Ch. 8: Testing, Advisory and Authentic learning

I'm going to follow in Arden's footsteps with a little disjointedness. I'm also trying to avoid a broad discussion of some of the qualities of the schools described in the chapter, as I feel other people have already covered that enough.

At the beginning of the chapter they talk about the differences between the desired outcome of teaching and the "1900s" model, that focuses on fact-based education, and lacks the skills transmission that some schools are now learning to focus on. One quote that really stuck out for me was this: "...most initiatives have focused on trying to make the educational system inherited from the 1900s perform more efficiently, rather than fundamentally rethink how schools are designed..." My immediate thought was TESTING! Tests have historically been used to check student's learning of facts, rather than any other skills they may learn in school. With all of the hoopla that surrounds testing today, I think we can see direct correlation: with the focus on a students standardized test results, many school systems fail to teach them other skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, or intrinsic motivation. Trying to teach them exactly what will be on the test may be the more "efficient" way to teach, but it is efficient and effective only insofar as conforming to outdated school system constructs.

On pages 246 and 247 the authors talk about the advisory periods implemented in successful schools. I won't go into detail about them, because the chapter did plenty of that, but I did want to say that I think its an interesting idea, particularly because of how they typically keep teachers with the same students for 2-4 years. During my placement on Monday I found out that ISA actually has a similar advisory structure! At ISA, an advisor meets with a group of students spanning all four grades, once a week for 30  minutes. They keep the same students each year, with the exception of graduating seniors and a new batch of freshman. My mentor teacher has suggested that I attend a few times, and I encourage other trini-students to see if their mentor teacher participates in an advisory as well!

Later in the chapter they discuss the idea of performance based assessment in conjunction with authentic achievement. One of the core components of that concept is that the students are responsible for presenting their material in front of an informed audience. I am a big, big fan of this concept, because I think it does wonders for actually getting kids to learn. I bet we all can relate: having a project that you can BS your way through, versus one that you are held accountable for? It makes a world of difference. I think we can all recognize this--we've all been in a class where we have to give a presentation, but we know that nobody will ask questions, or we turn in a written assignment where the research required is not much more than reading the abstracts. On the other hand, we've also been put in a situation where we KNOW the other students and professors will ask questions, so we have to do enough work where we become experts on the subject. I've found that it is assignments like these that leave me feeling the most rewarded, along with instilling long-term knowledge that I could talk about to this day. For example, in a marketing class I took two years ago, the final assignment was a group project to be presented before a panel of San Antonio marketing professionals. You can bet I worked 2349845x harder on that project than any other that semester, and my knowledge on the topic definitely paid off. I think having kids do this in high school prepares them for college as well as the "real world".

Ch 8 Organizing for Success: From Inequality to Quality

This entry may seem a little disjointed at times, but I just tried to take down my thoughts and feelings as I read through each section so that I wouldn't forget anything!

The anecdote about Eduardo Rodriguez stuck with me because in one of my classes this semester, I will be tutoring a second grade girl in reading. She will probably have similar problems in reading to Eduardo and it is comforting to see that the strategy of saying "You can do it and you're going to do it" rather than "We'll see if you can do it" has worked so well. That is something I was already planning to do, but it is nice to see my classes connect like this!

I think it is really interesting that so many of the classes at these schools were interdisciplinary. When I was in high school, I would have hated 70-75 minutes classes, but had they been as interesting as these sounded, I think it would have made a big difference! It's always useful to see how several of your subjects can connect to one another.

I went to a small school of about 200 women. It was a private Catholic school, but many of the students were there on substantial scholarships or had parents willing to work a substantially harder to ensure that their daughters got a great education in a small school where she would certainly be known. My school has a 100% graduation rate and a 100% college attendance rate. From what I have seen and experienced, small schools help a lot as far as graduation and college goes.

Reduced pupil loads are the best. When I was in Australia, we were only allowed to take four courses at a time and it helped so much. I was able to put a lot more time and energy into each specific class rather than taking six or seven, like we do here, and only being able to put a little bit of time into each class. They even follow this approach in high school where as seniors, students are allowed to pick and choose what courses they want to continue in that would be most relevant to them as go out into the real world and college.

I worked at KIPP U-Prep for a semester. They have Saturday school there about once a month. One day, I made a comment to one of the students about how I would not have enjoyed going to school on a Saturday, but he responded with how helpful it was and how it really wasn't so bad. As the chapter says, it seems this kid viewed the school as a privilege, not a punishment and so he was able to enjoy it and make full use of it.

I love all of the real world applications that this chapter discusses. There are so many times when students ask about how whatever they're learning actually applies to them, and to know that someone put in all this time to figure out these things! It's really cool and I would have loved it in high school.

I appreciate that in this chapter they talk not only about improving student success, but also helping the teachers out. The teachers are given many opportunities to improve the quality of their instruction, including time to collaborate with each other and to design curriculum. It is important to keep the teachers happy and learning in order to keep the students interested and excited to learn. I also feel like one of the best ways to learn is through collaboration and discussion, which is exactly what these schools are doing for these teachers. I think it's great!

I love the idea of intentionality. It's one that we always use at camp and it's something that I think should spread to more and more schools. Having deep and interconnected reasons for doing certain things or teaching in a certain way and making sure your students know that there is a reason behind everything keeps them much more interested. Every night, our girls share their "deltas," or what could have gone better in their day, as well as how they could have changed it, and their "pluses," or what the highlight of their day was. The girls love this because they know they're going to be able to help offer up solutions for other girls' "deltas" while also receiving support from their cabin mates for their own. There are a lot of things from camp that I'd like to bring to my classroom and this is definitely one of them.

LDH Flat World and Education Ch. 8: Organizing for Success: From Inequality to Quality

This article proved to be interesting as well as explain a great approach to a wide spread issue. Education needs to be of good quality for every student. Chapter 8 spends the first couple of pages describing the problem and what successful schools have done in order to make a change. Reading about how smaller and personalized teaching creates success interested me upon reflecting how I learn best. Also, allowing students to encounter real world issues proves to show that this learned behavior goes beyond the classroom and is a great skill for them to have. All in all, smaller schools with smaller classrooms will effectively help students. In order to achieve this, there are difficulties educators are facing daily. It is hard to acquire inspiring teachers and try to fund these schools. If these problems were able to be turned around, education would vastly change. We need more teachers who are passionate, unprecedented, and ready to move forward into a new environment for students. I believe this can happen because the studies tell the truth in relation to how successful it has been so far. Students will face a challenge if they are encouraged by their teachers to do so and I can only hope to bring this mindset to my classroom one day.

LDH Flat World and Education Ch. 8: Organizing for Success: From Inequality to Quality

This reading was a good insight on what it takes to educate disadvantaged students to be successful. The reading emphasized the importance of a curriculum based around applied real world challenges for the students to try and solve. Also trying to incorporate different subjects into projects. In order for students to gain knowledge and skills they need to be challenged to solve complex issues. Data says this will make students more engaged in their learning because they will feel more satisfaction after solving these challenges. In order for this curriculum to be put into place there needs enough time for teachers to coach their students and get to know them as well as enough time for teachers to collaborate with each other. The reading strongly suggested having smaller schools, so teachers spend more quality with their students. Studies show smaller schools help students be more successfull academically and socially. In an ideal world schools like these would become the norm, but there has been pushback to schools because of a lacking quality teachers and funding. For these schools to become more frequent, there needs to be more quality teachers and more funding for school facilities, technology, and resources needed to make schools successful. There also needs to be more open-mindedness for innovative ideas among people in charge of organizing the schools. As a future teacher, I learned from this reading to get to know my students so I can best relate, challenge, and educate them. I also learned to take teacher's own advice of challenging yourself by not giving up on the harder to reach students.

LDH Flat World and Education Ch. 7: Doing What Matters Most: Developing Competent Teaching

This will be a place for us to discuss the reading for the week of Feb. 8 - please be sure you have jumped in by Feb. 15.

LDH Flat World and Education Ch. 8: Organizing for Success: From Inequality to Quality

This will be a place for us to discuss the next reading.  Please be sure you have jumped into the conversation by next Monday (Feb. 8).