"The Kids Are All right"

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up daintiesat the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

A great principal that I had used this quote all the time. He is a youth advocate and in his new role of Human resources cooridnator for my school district, ensures that all of his actions are done with kids in mind. He used this quote to point out to teachers that the negative opinion of youth is centuries old....the quote above is attributed to Socrates!

A peeve I have is that many of my colleagues continue to talk of the current generation in increasingly negative terms. They claim that kids today have no respect, can't read or write and are addicted to silly activities like texting and gaming. They claim that students today don't want to work at all.
 
In my work as a school improvement agent (I made that title up) I am advocating that classrooms are places in which learning is encouraged and EXPECTED and can happen. If we continue to have negative beliefs about our students we are prejudiced and doomed to re-create an educational system mired in mud. Techniques and practices of teaching and also grading need to be changed. Students today are different...they demand more of the educational system than my generation did!
 
My alma mater is University of Lethbridge and I am proud to say it is a great school. One of it's luminaries is Dr. Reginald Bibby who is a reknowned and famous sociologist. His work is very important for teachers to read. His current release puts many myth of youth today out the window. He points out that many people, "don't want to be confused by facts". I think he is right. These facts point to the current generation as being bright, balanced and articulate. This is also the same message that Don Tapscott comments on consistently.
 
As Dr. Bibby says, "To quote a famous baby boomer lyric: the kids are all right" Now, can we stop worrying about the kids so much and worry more about our actions in schools?

Behind Closed Doors

Educational reformists have been talking for a while now of the need and importance of making teaching less private. For far too long teachers have ruled the roost in their classroom behind closed doors. Now, to be fair to many of my colleagues, I do know that many teachers are willing to share. And I know that the reasons for teaching behind closed doors are not sinister. Indeed the vast majority of these teachers are reluctant to open up their doors as they are afraid of being judged. Nontheless though it is still important that we continue to teach in a more public manner. We need to let our practice be guided (and judged) by Professional research.

The notion of professional research is much different than simple "professional judgement." I have heard colleagues defend poor practice using the battle cry of "it was my professional judgement". As Khym Goslin has written we (teachers) need to act more like the law profession (no, not that side of the law!.), but rather that we must, like court judges, act within a certain boundary. The teaching profession has changed and we can not continue to insist that we teach like we were taught, it is simply not enough. Our actions need to be guided by current widespread knowledge guided by research.

The doors of our schools also need to be open. This openness needs to be within the practice of schools and make this more public. Certainly recent guidelines for Cycle 4 AISI projects point to this need. This call was suggested by critical friends of the AISI project (i.e. Hargreaves) who suggest that more "networking" needs to be done between schools. They even calls for this networking to increase to include more consistent dialogue between school districts.

We need to make Public Education, public!

Role of mentoring

Benefit Of A Mentor: Disadvantaged Teens Twice As Likely To Attend College

ScienceDaily (2009-11-05) -- Two findings from a new national study reveal the power of mentors, particularly those in the teaching profession: for all teen students, having an adult mentor meant a 50 percent greater likelihood of attending college; for disadvantaged students, mentorship by a teacher nearly doubled the odds of attending college. ... > read full article

Looks like there is plenty of support of the advisor system that is in place in our middle and high schools in Lethbridge School District1.

What levels of students does DI work with?

In my move from junior high school to high school and back to middle school I often hear teachers comment that various teaching styles work or don't work in various levels.
The comments have never sat well with me as I think that there are unique situations for each class. It also strikes me that good teaching techniques are not unique to any level. The level of use may vary for each unique context but they are not mutually exclusive.
In the June issue of Educational Leadership, Dianne Brederson, writes of her journey with this issue. Specifically she writes of using DI techniques for the college level.

Article is here

Summer Reading

With summer coming to a close I thought it a good time to reflect on my summer reading. With three weeks of my summer chewed up with my university course work it left little time to read as much as I wanted.


Over the last few years I have read less and less fiction. I know I need to get back and read this genre but I am really hooked on so called "pop economics" style books. Freakonomics started this for me. I also find that Malcolm Gladwell's books are fun and thought provoking. I noted that even my university professors were using ideas and thoughts from Gladwell. I avidly follow his blog on The New Yorker and would suggest everyone read his latest, "Outliers".

This summer I read "Sway" that tries to explain why we make irrational decisions and how we can easily be manipulated from rational decisions for a variety of reasons. The concept of being more aware of rational decisions and the pyschological forces that push us to poor decisions is an important one for educators and educational leaders to consider. How many decisions have been made in schools or school districts in which a psychological "sway" pushes people into poor decisions. Common sense tells us that this happens all the time and is oftern, the result of group dynamics at meetings. Appeasement of bullies at meetings is common, or losing site of the purpose of education is easy to do. We must be vigilant to guard against these irrational decisions.

Having previously read two of Donald Tapscott's books, I picked up his latest book, "Grown Up Digital" which examines how the "Net Generation" of people have changed society and provides insight into how they have been POSITVELY impacted by technology. He is not myopic about some of the negatives of technology but is an avid supporter of technology, but more importantly he is a staunch supporter of the "Net Generation". He clearly paints rebuttals to those who cry that today's kids are "dumber" previous generations. His arguments flow together and use data gleaned from a wide number of sources to lend more than anecdotal evidence to his points. Tapscott devotes a whole chapter to education in which he condemns the current stand and deliver method of instruction. With the AISI/ETL project hitting the ground this fall for the Lethbridge School District we will have a great chance to discuss many of the points that he raises. It certainly is the intent for the project to address his concerns and deal properly with our students by engaging them more fully in their schooling.