The Huffington Post has begun a curated weekend program under the banner of TEDweekends. One of the featured posts this month was from Sir Ken Robinson and included a link to his 2006 TEDtalk. He notes that much of today’s education is driven by a desire for standardization, insistence on a kind of cultural compliance and an emphasis on linear and rigid thinking. He cites the urgency of educators finding alternatives, exploiting their students’ natural curiosity while encouraging the development … [Read more...]
Comments On “Confessions of a Bad Teacher”
There is really nothing surprising about William Johnson’s op ed in The New York Times Sunday Review. Mr. Johnson eloquently describes the plight of many teachers in contemporary urban American schools under the peculiar and confused pressure of state and national efforts to reform education through reliance on high stakes testing. Mr. Johnson has the courage and patience to work with some of the most difficult students encountered in a public high school. These students do not receive high … [Read more...]
Underachiever Wins Nobel Prize
Last week the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotentGurdon discovered in 1962 that the specialization of cells is reversible. In a classic experiment, he replaced the immature cell nucleus in an egg cell of a frog with the nucleus from a mature intestinal cell. This modified egg cell developed into a normal tadpole. The DNA of the mature cell still … [Read more...]
Helping Students To Develop Self-Awareness
Many years ago, I took driver’s ed. my senior year in high school. I don’t remember seeing the graphic movies about irresponsible teenagers driving badly, but I do remember we practiced using machines called simulators. The simulator was a boxy affair that one sat in with the basic layout of a car—steering wheel, brake and gas pedal, turn signal. They were as realistic as the original bridge of the Starship Enterprise. All students sat in their simulators and watched a large movie screen in the … [Read more...]
A New Driver for Expanding Access to Early Education?
"Parents—and this is a real sea change—understand the infant-toddle years as learning years." —Betty Holcomb, Policy Director, Children's Initiatives An article recently posted in the Wall Street Journal focused on the growing competition to find excellent early childhood programs in New York City. The change in this case is that the demand appears to be driven by affluent parents who are newly convinced that their very young children need the stimulation and guided instruction available … [Read more...]
Excitement For Student-Centered Learning Builds In Sanford, ME
At the end of the 2012 school year, the NISCE leadership team took a field trip to witness a community event in Sanford, Maine. Parents, students, teachers, administrators and community supporters had gathered to celebrate the end of the first year of a three-year effort designed to reshape their entire school system.This effort had been galvanized by the award of a competitive $3.75 million grant from the Nellie Mae Foundation. Sanford's Student-Centered Proficiency Based Learning approach … [Read more...]
Opportunities for Meaningful Education
When I first started working at Dearborn Academy, I had a colleague who'd been around for a number of years. He had a gentle soul and his love and respect for our students was manifest. One day the two of us were playing a pickup game of basketball, a game at which he excelled, against a pair of middle schoolers. I wasn't sure how hard I should be playing against such over-matched opponents, and when I got a chance to do so unobtrusively I asked how hard we should try to win.His response … [Read more...]
Creating a Culture of Collaborative Problem Solving at Seaport Academy
Seaport Academy was recently recognized in The Navy Yard News, a quarterly publication of the friends of the Charlestown Navy Yard, as emphasizing collaborative problem solving and a curriculum designed to be flexible enough to meet the wide variety of learning needs presented by their students.Here is the story: “We’ve scrapped the usual style of ‘reward-consequence’ learning in favor of collaboration — students identify issues and help solve problems together,” says Alex Tsonas, Director … [Read more...]
On Teaching Woodshop
When I tell people I teach woodshop to special needs students I am fairly certain to receive one of a couple of responses. Particularly when I first started, people would go on about what a noble thing I was doing. I don’t get that as much these days, and I don’t know whether that is a sign of the times or something about the way I now explain my work.People also tend to tell me about their own shop experience and how they still have this or that old shop project hidden away somewhere (that … [Read more...]
Jonah Mowry’s Story
Eighth-grader Jonah Mowry posted this extraordinary personal video on bullying and suicide, What’s Goin’ On, on YouTube last December. His video has been viewed over a ten million times and has generated more than 350,000 comments Jonah's video can help schools, families and parent-teacher organization begin a conversation on on issues of bullying and acceptance, and his courage and honesty can be an inspiration to us all. … [Read more...]
