There is a range of alternative schools within schools, substantially separate schools,therapeutic day schools, residential schools, specialized private schools, and schools with intense behavior modification programs that may be of immeasurable value for appropriately identified students. In most such settings, the level of adult supervision and adult decision-making will be great when compared with the mainstream. Creating a healthy student-centered perspective will take on broader … [Read more...]
Lady Gaga’s Foundation – Preventing Bullying Begins With Us
Dr. Richard Weissbourd, a member of the Dearborn Academy Professional Advisory Board, was featured in yesterday's Huff Post commenting on the importance of constructively addressing the problem of bullying.The article's focus moves from simply blaming the bully or inoculating our own children to withstand bullying or harassment. Weissbourd recommends teaching our children to go outside of themselves by finding ways to care for and about each other.Dearborn Academy's Human Dignity Program … [Read more...]
Cognitive, Emotional and Developmental Differences in the Classroom
There is variety among students, including those that are outside the mainstream student population, and we know that each learner is unique in his or her manner of learning and of expressing what he knows. However, there are reasonable limits to the degree and types of variance that any teacher can be expected to manage effectively. There are cognitive, emotional, and developmental differences that stretch beyond the capacities of any single classroom.Consider developmental differences. These … [Read more...]
Accepting Alternative Education Practices
There is tremendous variety in the many types of schools that are not in the mainstream of public education, but represent variations on traditional educational methods and models. A wide range of private schools, vocational schools, and exam schools offer programs geared towards students with particular interests and talents or parents who desire a different learning environment for their children.While many of these schools differ from the mainstream in the focus of their curriculum, the … [Read more...]
How The Political Climate Is Not Promoting Student-Centered Education
Demonstrated dramatically in the case of an Atlanta school scandal, in which teachers admitted to changing test scores in order to meet the demands of the school superintendent, No Child Left Behind puts the focus in the wrong place. In the words of Dianne Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H. W. Bush, the “simple minded and singular focus on test scores distorts and degrades the meaning and practice of education.”Well-formulated standards are of great use … [Read more...]
No Child Left Behind, Leaving Kids Behind
The pressure to raise test scores and to compete with other countries generated bythe 1983 publication of A Nation at Riskhas led us in directions that decidedly do not keep students at the center inour focus. In particular, the recent wave of school reform enacted as law in theUSin 2001 under the mantle of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), mandates that allpublic schools make Adequate Yearly Progress demonstrated by raising scores onstandardized tests.At the core of this reform is the basic … [Read more...]
A History of Assembly Line Education
Despite the work of Sugata Mitra, Maria Montessori, and those student-centered educators in traditional classrooms who were keeping the child and the learning process at the center of their thinking, it is ironic the vast energy in public education in the 20th century was moving completely in the opposite direction. At this time there was a drive towards educational models based on the principal of mass production assembly lines, where efficiency and cost control are essential to doing business … [Read more...]
Strategies for Overcoming the Pitfalls of a Traditional Classroom Model
Aclassroom can be lifeless and boring, or even downright dangerous. Students canbe highly disrespectful, uncooperative, unmotivated, threatening, even assaultive. Teachers can be woefully out of touch with even the best ofstudents, so that these students lose their motivation, at least for theduration of this class period. A standard classroom can be a dismal place forall concerned, or a place of excitement and challenge. However, theseenvironments can change.Take thefollowing movie clips … [Read more...]
Films From The New Learning Institute
The New Learning Institute films look specifically at ways in which school leaders and educators are testing and proving project-based models for a new, student-centered model of learning.This collection—which includes profiles of school innovators David "T.C." Ellis, Jean Johnson, and Larry Rosenstock, as well as a profile of school architect Randall Fielding—explores collaborative, creative, multi-disciplinary approaches to engaging students. Each leader has developed personalized, … [Read more...]
What Dumbledore and Other Can Teach Us about Positive Examples of Traditional Classroom
Stripped down to essentials, this is the basic image of a classroom with which we areall familiar. At its best, when students are actually listening and learning,and when the teacher is truly enthralled with the subject and the experience,the effect can be magic. We have only to consult our popular culture torecognize what this scene can produce in our imaginations, at least. Think of To Sir with Love, or Stand and Deliver, or even ProfessorDumbledore speaking at Hogwarts. Greatness in teaching … [Read more...]
