Tag: purpose

The Purpose of Writing

We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed. Frank Bidhart

When I was in university and going through some things, I wrote poetry. Not the poetry you’re thinking of – stream of consciousness poetry. Pages full of word after word poetry. My professor, to her credit, saw that those words and how they poured out of me were about more than whatever assignments she’d been giving. Whatever grades I earned in that class, they were about my ability to analyze the works of others and certainly nothing to do with what I’d created.

Whenever I’ve been in love, I’ve written poetry to the object of my affection. Hours have been spent agonizing over stanzas, couplets, and figurative language. In a few instances, those relationships inspired poetry from others. I got to come to an understanding of what I meant to another person in verse.

Throughout high school, I wrote a regular column for the local paper’s youth section. Some pieces were ridiculous attempts to replicate the humor I’d found in the columns of adult voices. Others worked to build a bridge between my high school experience and that of other students and adults who were reading. The ones I loved most started with a mindset of, “What if I try this?” Having that space and that audience made a huge difference in my sense of identity in high school.

I don’t remember much about college, but I remember working at the paper. I remember starting out as a reporter and scrapping for stories. I remember writing my first column and taking that job as seriously as I’d taken anything. I remember becoming editor-in-chief and feeling the responsibility of informing a campus. I remember telling my editors and reporters, “If every student on this campus can’t see themselves somewhere in each issue, then we’re not doing our job.” Different than my high school writing, this was writing with a responsibility I’d never felt before.

Now, my day gig gives me the opportunity to work with practitioners and experts from across the country to form guidance and material that pushes people to shift their thinking about how they form systems and processes of learning. I am asked on a regular basis to provide content that will inform policy and messaging at levels I’d never imagined being a part of. Getting things right has only mattered this much once before.

Writing project descriptions as a teacher was the most difficult writing I’ve ever done. Several years in, the biggest learning I did was asking students who’d had my classes before to read my plans and tell me where I’d screwed up. That writing wasn’t just to explain a thing to other people, but to help them move toward experiences that built on their understanding of the world. Getting things wrong meant they didn’t get to where I knew they could. Getting things right meant they completed projects beyond my imagining. I was writing for the approval of my students and their advancement. What could matter more?

I think you mean, “What are the purposes of writing?” No teacher could have anticipated the things that lead me to write so far in life, and I’ve learned I shouldn’t assume to know what will inspire me to put words to screen or page down the road.

What is the purpose of writing? All of them.

This post is part of a daily conversation between Ben Wilkoff and me. Each day Ben and I post a question to each other and then respond to one another. You can follow the questions and respond via Twitter at #LifeWideLearning16.

18/365 Back to Dewey 1.6 – ‘The Meaning of Purpose’

Since freedom resides in the operations of intelligent observation and judgment by which a purpose is developed, guidance given by the teacher to the exercise of the pupils’ intelligence is an aid to freedom, not a restriction upon it.

– John Dewey

Experience & Education

This post continues a mini-series examining John Dewey’s Experience & Education chapter-by-chapter.

For Chapter 6, Dewey continues clarification of terms, setting his sights on purpose.

The chapter provides yet another clarification of the frequent view that Dewey was proposing a melee approach to learning, letting students loose in a situation and then cleaning them up for learning later on. In Ch. 6, we find the opposite as Dewey highlights the importance of pausing in moments of impulse so that those impulses might lead to desire.

If the earlier chapters were instructing readers on the importance of a philosophical and critically considered approach to the broader scope of progressive education, here we find that need translated to the individual classrooms and students. What is being done, at all times, must be considered thoughtfully. While this is not surprising from a philosopher, Dewey’s considerations are not philosophical as much as they are practical.

If we are to have purpose in education, we must consider our impulses regarding our experiences, hold tight to them, and reflect on how (or whether) we would like to see them enacted.

To do this, Dewey asks that teachers and students observe the surroundings of the learning and move from there to collect knowledge, organize that knowledge and then set out with purpose driven by that knowledge.

He sets it out in clearer terms:

 The formation of purposes is, then, a rather complex intellectual operation. It involves (1) observation of surrounding conditions; (2) knowledge of what has happened in similar situations in the past, a knowledge obtained partly by recollection and partly from the in- formation, advice, and warning of those who have had a wider experience; and (3) judgment which puts together what is observed and what is recalled to see what they signify. A purpose differs from an original impulse and desire through its translation into a plan and method of action based upon foresight of the consequences of acting under given observed conditions in a certain way.

 

Rather than rejecting tools of traditional education wholesale, Dewey asks for a blending. Attend to the impulses and nature of students, yes, but do not do so without an eye to judgement, observation, consideration and guidance.

‘College and Career-Ready’ shoots too low

If you graduate from high school in America, you can find a college that will admit you. I’m not limiting my stance to for-profit, online colleges and universities. Some of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the country, faced with diminished federal funding (see Anya Kamenetz’s DIYU for more on this), are lowering the barriers to admission in order to increase the supply of tuition dollars.

It’s not all a money grab.

We’re sending record numbers of students to college, and we’re telling them it is the correct path (read the only path to success/happiness/money). Many of these students are the first in their families to attend institutions of higher education, and they’re showing up in numbers colleges and universities have never seen before. While much of the literature speaks to the need to help shift the cultures within k-12 schools and their students/families, very little is written about how higher ed needs to think about what it means to be educating shifting populations (see Mike Rose’s thoughts here or in Why School?). It’s what worries me when I see things like the graph on p. 4 of this Achieve report.

If we said the goal of schools was to have kids “life-ready” by the time they left, how would we shift how we look at the work being done in classrooms and schools?

The conversation about “college and career-ready” is an interesting one in that it cleverly makes it sound as though it doesn’t lead to schools forking their curricula to generate two separate tracks for students. If you are to be college-ready, you will be in academic classes. If you are to be career-ready, you will be in vocational classes with the bare-bones academic programs. Vocational programs and academic programs should not be an either/or proposition. College and or career-ready has that as its possibly unintended result and students internalize the distinction. Moreover, teachers internalize the two-track faculty mindset, which erodes internal cohesiveness for faculties.

The idea of a tiered graduation system such as those at work in many European countries is an interesting proposition. I wonder if it doesn’t work to further institutionalize class separations currently at play in the system. Does it say, “We expect all students to meet high standards (and some students to meet higher standards)?” A slippery slope.

If we said, build classrooms and schools to make students life-ready, it would be a messy proposition. I doubt it any messier than college and career-ready. Are we talking all students should be Yale-ready or Phoenix-ready? Are we saying minimum-wage ready or 1% ready? Maybe we’re hoping the language doesn’t raise any questions of whether or not it’s raising the bar.

Things I Know 317 of 365: Tomorrow, I read for me

Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.

– Angela Carter

Just because I’m not in classes at the moment doesn’t mean I’m not reading. It does mean I’m not reading anything that anyone has assigned to me.

It also means I’m sneaking some fiction into my brain. Tomorrow, I’ll pick up Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Some of my favorite students gushed over the book, but I never took the time to read it while I was in the classroom. Somehow, picking it up without the title of “Teacher” attached to my actions makes the reading seem more pure. I’m not reading it to teach in the next few months. No unit or lesson plans will rely on what I get from the experience. I’m reading it to be entertained.

One of the more frequent state standards (and now a Common Core standard) is identifying author’s purpose. (There’s a whole philosophical argument I could make against this, but that’s another post.)

As I anticipate delving into Card’s imagined dystopia tomorrow, I’ve started to think about the importance of asking students to identify reader’s purpose.

If a student is reading a non-fiction text in class, the answer to the question should be, “Because I’m curious,” or “Because it’s interesting.” Some off shoot thereof makes the most sense.

Reader’s purpose in school is most often, “I’m reading this because my teacher said,” or “It was assigned.”

That shifts the experience considerably. I’m looking forward to losing myself in the imagination of tomorrow’s reading, to meeting new characters and trying to figure out how pieces of the narrative puzzle fit together.

Most importantly, I’ll be shifting my purpose from word to word, chapter to chapter. The journey through the book will inform what I want out of it and what I expect.

Were I reading for someone else because the book had been assigned me, the journey would be emptier. I’d be reading to run someone else’s literary errands, hoping to keep the change when all was said and done.

A balanced reading diet is important. Compelling others to read what they are told is forcing them to eat their vegetables. It’s a great way to get people to hate their vegetables.

Things I Know 305 of 365: The initial results are in

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

– John F. Kennedy

Thank you to everyone who has taken a moment to add their thoughts to the School Purpose Project so far. A particular shout out goes to Marcie Hull, Patrick Higgins, Meredith Stewart and Karl Fisch who have pushed the link to the project out to their students and faculty.

The close of the semester meant my partner Trevor and I had to do something with the data we’ve collected so far and turn in our initial results to our professor. That report can be read here.

Though the report has been submitted, we’re not done with the project. The variety of responses has been amazing, and we’re hungry for more. We’ve also decided to submit a proposal to present further findings at the upcoming Student Research Conference at HGSE.

This means we still need your responses, your friends’ responses, your families’ responses and your students’ responses.

It also means our coded data is available for use by anyone who’s interested. Admittedly, I don’t yet know how to create any sort of dynamic infographics, but I hope you do. Maybe you’re a classroom teacher looking to incorporate a data set into your lessons. Maybe you’re a student looking for an only project. Maybe you’re just looking for numbers to play around with.

The SPP is as much about the process of collecting and sharing our process and data as it is about people’s responses. Please, take a look and see what you can build. If you’ve any questions, please comment below. If you build anything, we’d love to see it and feature it on the site.

At the very least, if you haven’t shared your answer to the question, “What should be the purpose of school?” now’s the time.

Things I Know 286 of 365: I wrote my purpose

You may recall one of my assignments for my School Reform course called on me to articulate my beliefs around the purpose of school. Thursday, I’ll likely be receiving the graded paper. Below, you’ll find what I submitted.

The What and The Why

“You’ve made interesting points in your writing,” I said, “I’d like to hear what happens when your points start interacting.” Before I set them free, I asked the students what a productive conversation would look like, and wrote their words on the board. I offered one suggestion, “If things lose steam, ask a question.” Then, they were on their own – a room of 32 high school sophomores left to discuss the themes of Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. If I’d done my job correctly, the room would be quiet for a moment. Then, the first student would dive in, “What I didn’t get was why they all talk so strange.” It wasn’t a question, but it was the necessary spark. We were off. Students pulled in the historical implications of the novel’s setting. Laptops flipped open to find what others had said and exactly where in Florida we were reading about. Students said things like, “Remember what we said about power when we read Lord of the Flies?” I kept my mouth shut, scribbling notes furiously. This task and successive iterations of it as I refined my practice came to embody my belief of the purpose of schooling.

Schooling’s purpose is to provide a space for practice toward mastery of literacy, numeracy, and citizenship embedded inquiry (Sizer, 2004; Postman & Weingartner, 1969). I am straying from the traditional early 20th century definition of literacy e.g., reading a book and writing an essay. Instead, I am referring to a person’s ability to access and create texts across myriad iterations and formats. Numeracy refers to those processes of mathematical thinking that call for the consumption and production of numeric understanding. It asks, “What do I need to understand about numbers to fulfill my definition of success and have the options I want?” This definition applies to the many iterations and formats possible within the realm of numerical thinking – taxes, price comparisons, musical rhythm. Citizenship refers to the habits of mind and action necessary to understanding, questioning, and furthering society. Finally, inquiry is here defined as the process of asking questions, devising answers, testing those answers and then refining one’s thinking by following those refinements with the next level of questioning.

My reasoning is built first and foremost on what I, a teacher – any teacher – cannot know. To quantify the unknowable I need only reference the infinite. No teacher has ever known fully this student or that student sitting before him in a classroom. He has only ever known those attributes and pieces revealed through the relationships he has cultivated with his students and the limited intellectual eavesdropping allowable through assessments he’s designed. He sees only the narrow pieces of themselves school teaches students to exhibit for display and public scrutiny (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2011). His students have remained more unknown than known.

While the teacher of the past may have made peace with this unknowability of students and their personhoods, he could take solace in a fairly clear map of the futures of his students. With few exceptions, he could accurately predict the paths down which his students would embark once they left his classroom and prepare them for these futures. The students may have been diverse, but their futures didn’t seem as such. My purpose of school finds its genesis in the fact that the paths down which students may embark are now as infinite and unknowable as the students themselves. The connectivity, globalization and immediacy of opportunities have taken away any certainty teachers may previously held as to the purpose of their work. All schooling can do is work to develop an understanding of societal systems in the moment as well as the actions and habits of mind necessary to adapt to whatever changes exist on the other side of the horizon.

The Idea’s Evolution

My time as a teacher and student most directly affected my thinking on the purpose of schooling. Exercises in literacy and citizenship such as the one described above were not the norm in my classroom throughout my first few years teaching. A strict focus on management of my teaching served as a placeholder for focusing on learning. When students asked why we needed to read the same book at the same time, I gave the answer my English teachers had given me, “The shared reading experience is an important one.” After a time, I started to reflect on this statement. Nowhere in my personal literacy did I seek out experiences where I read the same parts of the same books at the same time as 30 other people. In truth, we were reading the books together because it was easier for me and it was how I had been taught.

I always believed in the importance of those purposes outlined here, but it wasn’t until I formally returned to the classroom as a student that I became equipped with the language to articulate my beliefs. Minds like Theodore Sizer (2004) gave me words for my ideas on inquiry, “One thinks, one imagines, one analyzes those ideas, one tests them, and then thinks again” (p. 103). This was the road down which I’d embarked when stepping outside my students’ conversation and let them test and refine their ideas. These skills embodied the citizenship toward which I was preparing my students. To paraphrase David Perkins (2010), I was helping my students to play a junior version of the whole game.

Regarding numeracy, I was taught in the usual way – practice set, problems with teacher, homework and eventual test or quiz. This was how I understood numeracy instruction until I observed my teaching colleagues. To be sure, their minds were focused on measurement and estimation, but their practice was focused around rooting those ideas in the questions of our students. When introducing a topic, they opened by inviting questions or uncertainties. Those questions served as the goals toward which a unit of study would work. When time came for students to create projects to present their learning, they were much less stressful than I remember being because, as John Holt (1995) writes, “When we feel powerful and competent, we leap at difficult tasks.” Rooted in inquiry, the numeracy skills they were earning held deeper meaning and were immediately practical. They realized Sizer’s claim that “Education’s job is less in purveying information then in helping people use it – that is, to exercise their minds” (p. 84).

My understanding of the purpose of schooling began in my experiences as a k-12 student and deepened in my missteps as a middle and high school teacher. Those experiences were rooted in compliance, management and transfer. They focused on management of teaching and of student behaviors, yet they failed to invite joy and curiosity into the learning process. Not until I engaged in reflective practice and worked to align my espoused beliefs with my enacted beliefs and encountered those thinkers on whose shoulders I stand did I see how literacy, numeracy and citizenship could and should be embedded in inquiry to awaken the learning of all students.

What it Looks Like

The most accessible vantage point to see this purpose enacted is that of a student engaged in its practice. Our student, Troy, is a 16-year-old African American male living in an urban setting. He transferred to the Learning Center Mixed-Grade Charter Public School (LC) at the age of 12 from a traditional school in the district. He’d experienced some struggles with reading at his old school and his parents noted how distressed he’d gotten with school as he watched his peers move forward while Troy was placed in remedial classes.

Transferring to the Learning Center, Troy was most immediately struck by the fact there were no English, science, history or math classes – let alone remedial classes. Instead, Troy had a week of getting to know each of the five clusters within the school. Each day, he was greeted by a more veteran LC community member of a different cluster. That member mentored Troy and helped him understand the nuance of the cluster such the focus of learning for the International cluster (global agriculture) or the current project of the Media cluster (journalistic standards). At week’s end, Troy met with his faculty advisor and a member from each of the clusters to help him decided where he would like to spend that academic year. While each cluster representative assured Troy they’d be happy to have him as part of their cluster of roughly 80 students each, they also made it clear they were present only to help make certain he made the best decision for his own learning. When he returned to the LC the following Monday, Troy had decided to join Media.

This year, Troy is a member of Media again after spending last academic year as a part of Health and Wellness. He is two mastery projects away from graduation from the LC. He and a team from his cluster are working on a project about interpreting online advertisements that they hope to present to novice learners in the cluster as well as during community time at the end of the day to any LC members who are interested. Troy is responsible for gathering, synthesizing and then making easily understandable the data his group gathered around the amount of money corporations spend on online advertisements for children. In a brainstorming session, another student had asked, “How much do you think companies spend on advertising each year?” Troy volunteered to head up their investigation into advertising budgets as well as the science of psychology behind advertising choices.

Troy is happy with his selection because it has led him and his advisor to discuss the possibility of Troy completing a proposal for a children’s literacy campaign to present before city council as his next mastery task. Of course he will have to refine the task by first presenting it to his learning cluster and then the entire LC. During the presentation, Troy will be required to synthesize and explain his use of the literacy and numeracy principles expected of a Level 5 as outlined by the LC’s mastery rubric and handbook and established by each Mastery Standards Council. Troy appreciates the freedom he has in deciding how to show his mastery, but is also happy to have the guidance of his cluster’s 6 faculty members, including his advisor. He knows he won’t be allowed to advance unless all of his faculty members and 80% of the other students in his cluster at Level 3 and above agree he’s reached mastery according to the rubric.

Today, Troy and other community members who have reached Level 5 Mastery on their Learner’s Permits have organized a field trip to the local food bank to help stock the shelves and make some general repairs as part of a citizenship project organized across three of the clusters. One of the Level 6 students on the trip is also planning to interview the food bank director for her capstone mastery project on the factors influencing citizen philanthropy. Troy knows his sister, a Level 2, would like to come along, but she can’t because Level 2s are only allowed on adult chaperoned trips. Troy knows his sister is also jealous that Level 4+ are allowed to budget their 40 hours each week at the LC as opposed to the standard schedules for Levels 1-3 students.

Troy also has a meeting with the Level 3 Mastery Standards Council. Two representatives from each mastery level above 3 and a faculty member from each cluster have been engaging in the biennial review of the rubric and mastery standards required to move to Level 3. The council means a great deal to Troy because his first mastery project at the LC was Level 3. He was disappointed when his cluster had advised him to revise his presentation, but felt much better when he read all the positive feedback from faculty and community members. Troy found their suggestions for improvement in the literacy zone of the project to be particularly helpful in guiding his studies before his next attempt. He’d also been proud when he finished and had his Level 4 presentation approved in a year and a half. Reading was easier when he was surrounded by people who helped him understand how to get better and remain mindful of the successes he’d had in the process of learning.

Troy knows he wants to go to college when he completes his capstone, and thinks studying marketing might be an interest for him. At the same time, the work he did with the science of epidemiology during his time with the Health and Wellness cluster has piqued his interest as well. Troy’s parents are proud of the joy he has in talking about his learning in literacy numeracy, and citizenship.

Troy’s teachers meet daily from 8-9 before the start of school to review cluster progress, discuss individual students and organize the learning space to fit the needs of each cluster’s activities. The malleable environment allows for the creation of large shared spaces as well as smaller collaborative environments. Though sometimes frustrating, the faculty appreciate the standard of consensus in making decisions for the school.  They see it as an extension of their own citizenship as members of the LC and as adding value to their vision of schooling as providing practice toward mastery in literacy, numeracy and citizenship embedded in inquiry.

References

Holt, J. (1995). How children learn [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com.

Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (2011, October 12). The ecology of education: Culture, communities, and change in schools. Lecture conducted from Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA.

Perkins, D. N. (2010). Making learning whole: How seven principles of teaching can transform education. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.

Postman, N., & Weingartner, C. (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. New York: Delacorte Press.

Sizer, T. R. (2004). Horace’s compromise: The dilemma of the American high school. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co..

Appendix A

Salient Quotations from Theodore Sizer’s Horace’s Compromise (2004):

p. 43 It is a new experience to make up one’s own mind.

p. 44 The supervised youth does the homework but may never learn the self-discipline that he will need in the future.

p. 48 Many adolescents parade their new sexuality. The choreography in a high school hallway during a break between classes is colorful, with awkward strutting, overdressing or underdressing for effect, hip swinging, hugging, self-conscious and overenthusiastic joshing, little bits of competition clumsily over expressed.

p. 50 Eighty years ago, most adolescents had far more sustained contact with both older and younger people than do today’s youth. The separateness and the specialness of adolescence were less attended to.

p. 51 They are impressionable, but also autonomous; the two are not contradictory.

p. 51 Franklin Zimring: “How do we train young people to be free?” he asks. “If the exercise of independent choice is an essential element of maturity, part of the process of becoming mature is learning to make independent decisions. This type of liberty cannot be taught; it can only be learned.” Adults can help this learning, in powerful ways, by example, by being honest, by trusting young people, and by giving them the compliment of both asking much of them and holding them accountable for it.

p. 52 In a word, we shouldn’t pander to youth. WE should show them respect by expecting much of them and by being straight – and part of being straight is telling them that they are still inexperienced and therefore must share their freedom with older people until they have learned the dimensions of liberty. (Learner’s Permit)

p. 52 Wise teachers and parents wait, explain, encourage, criticize, love and explain again.

p. 53 But the kid who’s fun to teach is the questioning one, the kid who wants to know why.

p. 113 Holding a student’s commitment requires convincing him that the subject matter over which he is toiling is genuinely usable — if not now, then in the future.

p. 105 observing-recording-imagining-analyzing-resolving

p. 103 One thinks, one imagines, one analyzes those ideas, one tests them, and then thinks again.

p. 94 Israel Scheffler, “Knowing requires something more than the receipt and acceptance of true information. It requires that the student earn the right to his assurance of the truth of the information in question.”

p. 86 The essential claims in education are very elementary: literacy, numeracy, and civic understanding.

p. 84 Education’s job is less in purveying information than in helping people to use it – that is, to exercise their minds.

p. 68 A sensible school would have a variety of means for exhibition – timed tests, essays, oral exams, portfolios of work.

Appendix B

Salient Quotations from Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969):

p. 1 To the extent that our schools are instruments of such a society, they must develop in the young not only an awareness of this freedom but a will to exercise it, and the intellectual power and perspective to do so effectively.

p. 11 Change changed.

p. 19 It’s not what you say to people, it’s what you have them do.

p. 23 Once you have learned how to ask questions-relevant and appropriate and substantial questions-you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.

p. 33 The full spectrum of learning behaviors – both attitudes and skills – is being employed all the time.

Appendix C

Salient Quotations from John Holt’s How Children Learn (1995) [e-book]:

  • What teachers and learners need to know is what we have known for some time: first, that vivid, vital, pleasurable experiences are the easiest to remember, and secondly, that memory works best when unforced.
  • A child has no stronger desire than to make sense of the world, to move freely in it, to do the things that he sees bigger people doing. Why can’t we make more use of this great drive for understanding and competence? Surely we can find more way to let children see people using some of the skills we want them to acquire—though this will be difficult when in fact those skills, like many of the “essential” skills of arithmetic are not really use to do anything.
  • All children want and strive for increased mastery and control of the world around them, and all are to some degree humiliated, threatened, and frightened by finding out (as they do all the time) that they don’t have it. When we feel powerful and competent, we leap at difficult tasks. There are times when even the most skillful learner must admit to himself that for the time being he is trying to butt his head through a stone wall, and that there is no sense in it. At some times teachers are inclined to use students as a kind of human battering ram. I’ve done it too often myself. It doesn’t work.
  • I feel even more strongly now than then that it is in every way useful for children to see adults doing real work and, wherever possible, to be able to help them.
  • While this goes on, I say nothing.
  • Where the young child, at least until his thinking has been spoiled by adults, has a great advantage is in situations – and many, even most real life situations are like this – where there is so much seemingly senseless data that it is impossible to tell what questions to ask. He is much better at taking in this kind of data; he is better able to tolerate its confusion; and he is much better at picking out the patterns, hearing the faint signal amid all the noise.

Appendix D

Salient ideas from David Perkins’s Making Learning Whole (2010):

1. Play the whole game.

2. Make the game worth playing.

3. Work on the hard parts.

4. Play out of town.

5. Play the hidden game.

6. Learn from the team.

7. Learn the game of learning.

Things I Know 254 of 365: I’m working on crafting my thinking around the purpose of school

Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.

– Thomas Jefferson

The thing that’s been driving my thinking as of late has been an assignment for my School Reform class that asks us to articulate what we believe to be the purpose of school and then describe a school that would embody that value or purpose.

I’m open to feedback and have included my notes below. I think I know where I’m headed, but it’s clearly still in notes/outine stages.

Purpose Statement: The purpose of school is to provide a space for gradual practice and mastery of literacy, numeracy, citizenship and inquiry.

Premises:

Learning is incremental. – Carol Dweck

Making Learning Whole (David Perkins):

1. Play the whole game.

2. Make the game worth playing.

3. Work on the hard parts.

4. Play out of town.

5. Play the hidden game.

6. Learn from the team.

7. Learn the game of learning.

Ted Sizer:

p. 43 It is a new experience to make up one’s own mind.

p. 44 The supervised youth does the homework but may never learn the self-discipline that he will need in the future.

p. 48 Many adolescents parade their new sexuality. The choreography in a high school hallway during a break between classes is colorful, with awkward strutting, overdressing or underdressing for effect, hip swinging, hugging, self-conscious and overenthusiastic joshing, little bits of competition clumsily over expressed. (If they’re on silent, where does this socialization happen?)

p. 50 Eighty years ago, most adolescents had far more sustained contact with both older and younger people than do today’s youth. The separateness and the specialness of adolescence were less attended to.

p. 51 They are impressionable, but also autonomous; the two are not contradictory.

p. 51 Franklin Zimring: “How do we train young people to be free?” he asks. “If the exercise of independent choice is an essential element of maturity, part of the process of becoming mature is learning to make independent decisions. This type of liberty cannot be taught; it can only be learned.” Adults can help this learning, in powerful ways, by example, by being honest, by trusting young people, and by giving them the compliment of both asking much of them and holding them accountable for it. (This aligns w/ Perkins. Also reference Elmore saying in class that people often underestimate what students can do.)

P. 52 In a word, we shouldn’t pander to youth. WE should show them respect by expecting much of them and by being straight – and part of being straight is telling them that they are still inexperienced and therefore must share their freedom with older people until they have learned the dimensions of liberty. (Learner’s Permit)

p. 52 Wise teachers and parents wait, explain, encourage, criticize, love and explain again.

p. 53 But the kid who’s fun to teach is the questiong one, the kid who wants to know why. (Connect to Dweck and the importance of building a school modeled around supporting and drawing out an incremental theory of intelligence.)

p. 113 Hold a students commitment requires convincing him that the subject matter over which he is toiling is genuinely usable — if not now, then in the future. (Connect to Perkins and making the game worth playing.)

p. 105 observing-recording-imagining-analyzing-resolving

p. 103 One thinks, one imagines, one analyzes those ideas, one tests them, and then thinks again.

p. 94 Israel Scheffler, “Knowing requires something more than the receipt and acceptance of true information. It requires that the student earn the right to his assurance of the truth of the information in question.”

p. 86 The essential claims in education are very elementary: literacy, numeracy, and civic understanding.

p. 84 Education’s job is less in purveying information than in helping people to use it – that is, to exercise their minds.

p. 68 A sensible school would have a variety of means for exhibition – timed tests, essays, oral exams, portfolios of work.

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner:

p. 1 To the extent that our schools are instruments of such a society, they must develop in the young not only an awareness o this freedom but a will to exercise it, and the intellectual power and perspective to do so effectively.

p. 11 Change changed. (RE: fourth information age)

p. 19 It’s not what you say to people, it’s what you have them do.

p. 23 Once you have learned how to ask questions-relevant and appropriate and substantial questions-you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.

p. 33 The full spectrum of learning behaviors – both attitudes and skills – is being employed all the time.

John Holt:

Loc. 69 What teachers and learners need to know is what we have known for some time: first, that vivid, vital, pleasurable experiences are the easiest to remember, and secondly, that memory works best when unforced.

Loc. 374-377 A child has no stronger desire than to make sense of the world, to move freely in it, to do the things that he sees bigger people doing. Why can’t we make more use of this great drive for understanding and competence? Surely we can find more way to let children see people using some of the skills we want them to acquire—though this will be difficult when in fact those skills, like many of the “essential” skills of arithmetic are not really use to do anything.

Loc. 520 All children want and strive for increased mastery and control of the world around them, and all are to some degree humiliated, threatened, and frightened by finding out (as they do all the time) that they don’t have it.

– When we feel powerful and competent, we leap at difficult tasks.

– There are times when even the most skillful learner must admit to himself that for the time being he is trying to butt his head through a stone wall, and that there is no sense in it. At some times teachers are inclined to use students as a kind of human battering ram. I’ve done it too often myself. It doesn’t work.

– I feel even more strongly now than then that it is in every way useful for children to see adults doing real work and, wherever possible, to be able to help them.

– While this goes on, I say nothing. (RE: Dan Meyer “Be less helpful.”)

– Where the young child, at least until his thinking has been spoiled by adults, has a great advantage is in situations – and many, even most real life situations are like this – where there is so much seemingly senseless data that it is impossible to tell what questions to ask. He is much better at taking in this kind of data; he is better able to tolerate its confusion; and he is much better at picking out the patterns, hearing the faint signal amid all the noise. (loc. 910)

Purposed practice:

– school of play for half the day for young children. The rest of the day is focused on literacy, numeracy and citizenship. At the lowest grade levels, less focus on inquiry as it occurs naturally in kids as noted in the reading. Field trips will be a strong and frequent portion of the early years experience. Students will be asked to reflect on what they experience with moviemaking, photos and other tools as the become available. Teachers will help facilitate discussions of relevant literacy, numeracy and citizenship content while on field trips with an intent on modeling its integration into experiential learning. Students will exhibit mastery through assessment techniques agreed upon by the faculty and older students. These criteria will be on a regular review schedule and be required to include multiple forms of assessment.

– as students move to mid-adolescence, the inquiry process will be made more explicit. The Learner’s Permit referenced by Sizer will accompany greater freedoms in charting learning experiences outside of the classroom. These may include designing field trips for the entire cohort or small groups around inquiry projects of their design. Other students from inside or outside the cohort will be allowed to accompany the planning students on the trip. Should the trip interfere with the scheduled literacy, numeracy or citizenship instruction, that instruction must be re-scheduled by the planning students. All field trips will be designed with a product in mind (Perkins) as well as a public presentation (Lehmann).

My earliest notes:

  • learner’s permit
  • junior version of the game
  • math, literacy, citizenship
  • Sudbury
  • SLA
  • make as many mistakes as possible as quickly as possible
  • time for personal coaching

Things I Know 160 of 365: This is what it’s all about

I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day.

– Smokey Robinson and Ronald White

Watch this.

It was how the last class I’ll be teaching for the foreseeable future began.

I cannot think of any better way to wrap up my teaching career at SLA.

I knew I wanted to write about it. In fact, as I started to plan this writing in my head, I began with something like, “I know this isn’t what it’s all about, but…”

I mulled and I mulled and I mulled. There are ciders and wines that have seen less mulling.

My conclusion – this is what it’s all about.

If it weren’t me who walked into that classroom and the video depicted some other unsuspecting teacher being serenaded by his class, I would venture to guess that that teacher had done well. I would watch that poor sot get surprised by his students, turn to you, and tell you he’d done something right. Because all I want in this world is for anyone who hears about them or meets them to realize how wonderful my students are, my instinct was to downplay any role I may have had in inspiring the song.

I frequently reprimand other teachers who denigrate or allow others to denigrate the impact and importance they hold in the classroom. I suppose this means I need to own these things myself as well.

So, I say proudly, moments like these are exactly what public education is all about.

If it’s about creating community, done.

If it’s about being a positive force in the lives of my students, check.

If it’s about building a safe space for children to be silly, yes.

If it’s about nurturing creativity, sure.

If it’s about developing strength and confidence of student voice, roger.

If it’s about helping students see the value of creating authentic moments of support and compassion in the lives of other, alright.

If it’s about staking out a claim within the teaching profession that means seeing every student as completely as possible every day, got it.

If it’s about establishing caring relations with each person in my charge in a way that inspires reciprocity, mission accomplished.

In the last class of my last day, my students gave me something I will always cherish – a reminder that I am loved.