I can think of a hundred reasons why are Education System and Schools need to change and mostly it's all about meeting the needs of the students, the learners themselves. It's simple, it's logical, but why is it so hard? We're living in an era of rapid change and yet our education systems have been stagnant for far too long. Over the Christmas break I read Salman Khan's book: "The One World Schoolhouse, Education Re-imagined" and we've heard all of it before, that the original education system was built around the farming seasons, bells and strict structures to support (some would argue brainwash) students to support the Industrial Revolution etc. I highly recommend this book to all educators as Sal has some brilliant ideas about moving forward and has some theories around mastery learning which are really beneficial for us all to investigate and discuss, but there is a lot of information out there in cyberspace as to why we need to change including the article below titled: "Why Kids Need Schools to Change".
One small change I'd like to see implemented is the doing away of all text books, which I know many schools have done years ago. Working six years ago as a course convenor of three university post graduate courses, it was one of the first changes I implemented and it was all very low key and a change that was barely recognised. However six years later in a school it's a battle. One school that managed it swiftly and easily was as a result of a tornado devastating a whole community, including several schools. Devastation can often lead to, or even force, disruptive innovation. In the district of Joplin, Missouri the result of this devastating tornado was that it forced schooling to be moved online. The district leaders grabbed the opportunity of this disaster to redesign the perfect education system for their learners. They introduced a 1:1 notebook model and seized the opportunity to move away from text books all together (not even online texts) in lieu of all the wonderful online resources available, such as the Khan Academy, the flipped-classroom sites, WebQuests and other content specific digital sources.
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/09/why-kids-need-schools-to-change/
September 21, 2012 | 11:51 AM | By Tina Barseghian
The current structure of the school day is obsolete, most would agree. Created during the Industrial Age, the assembly line system we have in place now has little relevance to what we know kids actually need to thrive.
Most of us know this, and yet making room for the huge shift in the system that’s necessary has been difficult, if not impossible because of fear of the unknown, says educator Madeline Levine, author of Teach Your Children Well.
“People don’t like change, especially in times of great uncertainty,” she said. “People naturally go conservative and buckle down and don’t want to try something new. There are schools that are trying to do things differently, and although on the one hand they’re heralded as having terrific vision, they’re still seen as experimental.”
“I’m astounded at the glacial pace of change in education.”
During this time of economic uncertainty, especially, Levine said parents want to make sure their kids won’t fall into the ranks of the unemployed and disenfranchised young people who return home because they’re unable to find jobs. “There’s so much anxiety around the economy, they’re thinking, What can I do to make sure that my kid isn’t one of the unemployed”? she said.
Yet therein lies the paradox. It’s exactly during these uncertain times when people must be willing to try new things, to be more open, curious and experimental, she said. In education, although there are great new models of learning and schooling, they are the exceptions, and the progressive movement has not gained much momentum.
“I’m astounded at the glacial pace of change in education,” she said. “Like many academic areas, there’s a huge disconnect between what’s known and what’s in practice. It’s very slow moving.”
Levine, who was a teacher herself for many years, said she has tremendous respect for educators and believes they need full support from parents and administrators. But until the directive comes from those in power — national and state policymakers, superintendents, principals — what can teachers do individually to make learning relevant for their students?
“One thing we know for sure is that kids learn better when teachers are invested and paying attention and showing they care,” she said. “The biggest impact you’ll have as a teachers is the relationship you establish with your student.”
Try to integrate what students are interested in within what’s happening in class, get to know each student, and have high expectations. Taking seriously the range of interests kids have, she said.
In addition to individual attention, Levine believes a child’s time in school should look much like what kindergarten did.
“There’s probably no better example of the throttling of creativity than the difference between what we observe in a kindergarten classroom and what we observe in a high school classroom,” she writes in Teach Your Children Well. “Take a room full of five-year-olds and you will see creativity in all its forms positively flowing around the room. A
Image: Mike Licht
decade later you will see these same children passively sitting at their desks, half asleep or trying to decipher what will be on the next test.”
In an ideal world, the school day would reflect kids’ changing needs and rhythms. There would be time for free play; school would start later to allow time for students’ much-needed rest; the transition time between classes would be longer, allowing time for kids to walk down the hall and say hi to their friends and plan their next moves; kids would have the opportunity to step away from school “work” in order to regroup and process what they’ve absorbed. “The actual encoding of information doesn’t take place when you’re hunched over a desk,” she said.
And just as importantly, the arts would be integrated into a curriculum, not as an ancillary addition, but as a primary part of learning. “For developing creativity and flexible and divergent thinking, we need to bring back the arts,” she said. “It’s a travesty that kids don’t have arts anymore.”
Read more: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/09/why-kids-need-schools-to-change/
“One thing we know for sure is that kids learn better when teachers are invested and paying attention and showing they care,” she said. “The biggest impact you’ll have as a teachers is the relationship you establish with your student.”
No comments:
Post a Comment