NOTE: you don't need to take notes. Just listen. If you want to take notes, don't worry. We will give you this presentation on a CD or dvd, your choice.
At the end of this presentation, you will be asked to work with partners to apply some of the information that is discussed in this workshop. You might want to keep this question in the back of your mind: How can I use this information in my classroom?
What could I change in my lesson plans and in my classroom to put this information to use? What materials can I bring into my classroom that could build on what I'm hearing today? Yes, 1983 is ancient history for many of us... 1. The Situation in 1983 The Carnegie Foundation paid millions of dollars to get a report that made broad recommendations for school reform.
Chairman Boyer looked at the school systems around the country and concluded: I hope that in the century ahead students will be judged not by their performance on a single test but they the quality of their lives. I hope that students will be encouraged to be creative, not confirming, and learn to cooperate rather than compete. Ernest Boyer, president of Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1993.
Nearly 30 years later We have more measurement. Did anything ever grow by measuring it?
Have things really changed? Is Boyer turning over in his grave?
What's needed? A new way of looking at the problem.
2. What happens when you change the mindset?
Before we look at schools, let's look at other times when the mindset was changed.
GALILEO and COPERNICUS Galileo looked at the moon and said, "The moon orbits the earth, but there's no way that the sun circles the earth." He provided a new model for categorizing what everyone saw.
His telescope showed that there were little moons around Jupiter and those moons did not circle the Earth. This data just blew the minds of 16th century italians and they couldn't handle it. Galileo had to recant.
There are have been other shifts in mindsets or paradigms.
Mindsets come from the way we looked at the world scientifically -- ether. scientists used to think that light traveled along the ethers. they used to think that light was a wave, but it also acts as a particle (that's a shift in the mindset) – phlogiston -- this word describes a material's ability to burn... Intellectuals in the Middle Ages thought that wood and paper had more “phlogiston” than metal or stone.
We are talking about cars that run on alternatives to gasoline.
There have been dozens of major changes in humanity's collective mindset and we are in the middle of a mindset change now...
Howard Gardner helped us reset our minds and the way we think about intelligence (multiple intelligences) Robert Ballard asked us to look at the Black Sea and imagine what might have happened to create the story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood Dan Pink told us to think about the other side of the brain
but these mindsets have stalled. People like Dan Pink are saying, "Hey, design is important, look to the whole brain" while test mavens want to standardize education in a left brained unbalanced manner.
Progress does not have to move forward smoothly. There will be losses, retrenchment before we unloose the bonds that bind us to tradition and then we can surge ahead.
so let's move on...
3. Unintended Consequences
Problem: we depend on foreign oil Remedy: ethanol from corn unintended consequence: (cartoon of starving kid next to fuel pump with ethanol form corn)
(INSERT CARTOON HERE)
There are numerous other examples of unintended consequences.
Who knew that when Congress made it a goal to put more people into housing that the entire structure would start to fall down? Solution: Congress made it easier to lend money Solution: Interest-only loans with a balloon payment and increased interest rate after four or five years. OOPS: people who couldn't afford to borrow were given loans...
4. what are the unintended consequences of measuring and applying standards to schools?
a) teaching to the test "tell us what's on the test, and let us prepare for the test."
b) preparing for a test (instead of teaching as we used to and just letting the test measure what was taught.)
These were NOT what Governor Jeb Bush stated in his plan for "A+" when the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) was proposed.
5. SOME QUOTES "It seems to me that schools primarily teach kids how to take test, a skill one hardly uses in real life unless one is a contestant on a quiz show). elementary school prepares kids for junior high; junior high prepares them for high school. So the goal (if we can call it that) of schools is to prepare kids for more school." -- Tom Magliozzi, one of the Car Talk guys, writing in his book, In Our Humble Opinion: Car Talk's Click and Clack Rant and Rave (2000).
"I have been a psychologist for 21 years, and I have never had to do in the profession what I needed to do to get an A in many of my courses in college. In particular, I've never had to memorize a book or lecture. If I can't remember something, I just look it up. However, schools set things up to reward with As the students who are good memorizers, not just at the college level but at many other levels as well. -- Robert Sternberg, psychologist. Our education system should be creating mindful learners. (Littky)
Too often we teach people things like "There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything." What we should be teaching them is how to think flexibly, to be mindful of all the different possibilities of every situation an not close themselves off from information that could help them. Ellen Langer, professor of psychology
I never let schooling get in the way of my education. -- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back. -- Turkish proverb
Think about how people learn best. We learn best when we care about what we are doing, when we have choices. We learn best when the work has meaning to us, when it matters. We learn best when the work is real and relevant. We want to prepare our children for the world, so let's no isolate them from the world. Many people talk about how difficult it is to integrate a curriculum. How can English teachers work with math, science and history teachers? That is ridiculous: the world is integrated! Every day schools unravel the world and all its vast knowledge and put it into boxes called subjects and separate things that are not separate in the real world. What is science and geography without math? What is English with its history and word origins and other languages? We teach kids about the real world by locking them up in a building that looks, acts and feels nothing like the real world. -- Littky, page 29 The traditional school isolates large groups of young people from adults and the experiences of the real world, then expects them to emerge at age 18 knowing how to be adult, how to work and how to live in the real world. Kids are expected to sit still for long periods of time, to learn primarily by listening to someone talk and never talk to anyone around them. They learn how to please eight different teachers with eight different sets of expectations -- and the teachers base their understanding of the kids on 45 minutes spent in a room with 20 to 30 other kids. Only if they are having trouble do they get an individualized education plan (IEP) or get any feedback on their learning beyond a single letter on their report card. Their education system assume that they are exactly like every other kid in the class and every other kid who was in that class 40 and 50 years ago. The school emphasizes the same "set of knowledge" for everyone and expects them all to demonstrate the exact same skills. The world is changing -- schools are not. -- Littky, The Big Picture, page 32 One-third of the jobs that will be around ten to fifteen years from now haven't been invented yet. 6. BEYOND RANTING AND RAVING What can teachers do today? We could continue complaining, but let's end this training with two questions: 1) how can we personalize our lessons? 2) how can we integrate our lessons with other subjects?
GROUP ACTIVITY Let's brain storm together -- sit with a group of four teachers and come up with three things you can do to individualize training. How can you integrate your subject with other subjects? Can we use the Internet to create virtual internships? (time to circulate with the audience, put them into groups, someone takes notes, the notes get passed to the front, a big list is made and checked off the list that is given to the audience.)
CONCLUSION This workshop is not over yet... When you are finished working in your small group, we say, “Very good. Each group got at least ten of the items that are on our list.”
BRAVO, thank you for your participation. Some of the groups added some ideas that we didn't have on our list, so we will add them to the lit for our next training.
Don't leave! sit! stay!
NOW COMES THE EXCITING PART> You might think that this seminar is over. We've talked together for 30-40 minutes. This has just begun. We are passing around a sheet of paper with your contact information. You signed this paper, putting your email address and your name on the sheet. Well, most of you did. We want you to sign up for 7, 30, 90 day checkups. Dennis and Steve will make it their job to call you, email you or possibly visit you in your class to see how you use these techniques. If you want none of that follow up, scratch out the numbers. If you want all three visits or emails, 7 30 90, then circle all three numbers. We will contact you or visit you on this basis. Please add your phone number. If we can text your mobile phone, please write the word "TEXT" next to the phone. Thank you for your attention. the unexpected consequence of this presentation is not yet known, but we have a hunch that you might bring a camera into your classroom, a computer and a disk burner. As the crowd disperses, the following quote goes on the projector What is the power of stories? I tell stories to new teachers who are just beginning to get a sense of what "one kid at a time" really means. When they start to gather their own stories that is when they are beginning to see the inner workings of each kid and to understand where the kids come from. This is when they are able to make learning happen and when they are helping to carry on the culture of our school.--- Dennis Littky At the end, quotes by Steve Jobs, Thomas Friedman, etc. go on the wall, CDs are distributed with the materials and the lecture on the CDs so they don't need to take notes. Presented by Dennis and Steve By the way... here are two things you can introduce to you students immediately – digital books and educational mp3 files – the CDs are included in your packet. Please follow up with us and tell us
ho 2006 – we've been pushing digital books on TV (see the photograph of Steve on a local TV news show, South Florida Today) For more information, write to VisualandActive@gmail.com  Dennis Yuzenas Steve McCrea visualandactive.com
 | Please invite us to bring this presentation to your school. See also "That's Edu-tainment!" Visual and Active Techniques for your classroom VIDEO of our presentation on Youtube (COMING SOON) For more information, write to VisualandActive@gmail.com   Steve McCrea visualandactive.com      THE LIST Integrate curriculum 1. build a car. Every subject comes together in a project-centered curriculum. 2. why not share classes with two other teachers? Then each teacher could teach the same class for 3 periods a day, instead of just one period. English, social studies and foreign language could combine; math, science and art could combine. Each student would have two teachers instead of six. 3. videotape the lessons so that other teachers can make sure that the materials are being covered adequately. 4. participate in national history day and other multi-school competitions. The skills needed to compete are across the board. individualize instruction 1. ask each student to carry a portfolio 2. ask each student to lay out their goals for 5 year from now. what do they want to be doing? 3. integrate those goals in the lesson plan. 4. adopt the attitude that any lesson plan has time for taking five minutes each class to review goals and connecting the classwork to each student's lives. 5. rearrange the furniture so that every kid can see every other person in the room. Keep the teacher the same distance from every student by putting the teacher in the center of the room. Bring in the real world 1. all homework has to be real. 2. build a portfolio, like Rudolf Steiner's Waldorf schools. 3. ask each student to build an autobiography, either magazine, video or traditional book. It should be at least 75 pages or 30 minutes if in video format. 4. bring in real people, not for one visit each year, but for repeated visits -- find real mentors to talk with four or five kids, not the entire class. What is more boring than listening to a stranger answer questions in the front row.      << Dennis Littky www.BigPicture.org www.Metcenter.org  Bill Gates read Dennis Littky's book... and included Littky's "The New Three Rs" in a speech given to the Governors of the USA in February 2005  Go ahead, download digital books and share them with your students |
