Is this your classroom?

Funny!.....?? Sort of. True of the American high school classroom? In some cases. What can we do to make this different?

Please, I want your input!!!!!

This article made me think hmmmmm?

Read this article

Then comment

How, What, Where, When, and Why?

Actually it should go what, when, where, why, and how.... Today's blog is about the what. What is the subject? High school reform! That is what! From Breaking Ranks: Data Driven Model High School reform:

For more than 100 years, our high schools met the workforce needs of an industrial society by organizing learning around a curriculum delivered in standardized time periods called Carnegie Units. Within this structure, curriculum was defined as a set of units, sequences, and facts. Credentials (Carnegie Units) were based on “time served,” and the failure of significant numbers of students was not only accepted, but also regarded as an expected result of norm-referenced testing. For the most part, this system of education prepared generations of high school students to find their place in American society. Where it did not, the economy had a place for people who were willing to work hard even if they lacked basic skills or formal schooling. The opportunities and demands of today’s society are different. Conditions of secondary education that allow high school students to leave school without developing essential competencies or ever being challenged to fulfill their potential are no longer acceptable. Educational failure and undeveloped talent are permanent drains on society, and the current reform movement has shifted the emphasis from access for all to high-quality learning for all (Lachat, 1994).

Although the problem is more complex than "conditions have changed so we must change," the call for change is much warranted! There are many issues to consider. Teacher quality, curriculum alignment, problem based learning, student engagement, technology, dropout prevention, credit recovery, quality advisement, parent and community involvement, and so the list goes on and on. So many questions to be answered. Where do we start to make our high school a better place to prepare our students for their future? I think we need to start with our community. We need to engage all of the people who stand to benefit from a high quality local education system. We need them to define what they want from their local high school and get them involved in the process of making it what they want. Involvement will bring a sense of ownership and with that ownership will come pride in a job well done and a willingness to work to make things better. Energy spent criticizing can be spent working for a positive outcome. So many communities have great pride in their schools. Paris should have the same. As we put together our new cooperative high school we need to engage parents, businesses, industry, and community members in the process of defining our mission and setting a vision for the future of high school education in Paris. Keep your eyes open and your ears peeled, we are going to be having several public meetings in the near future regarding setting goals and defining what we want Paris High School to be.

Does this apply to public education?

What do you think?

Walking the walk

Last December I challenged our staff to increase the amount of reading that they are having our students do. I stated that I thought students should be reading as many as sixteen books per year. Faculty reaction was mixed. I heard a lot of concerns about student time, assessment of the reading assignments, where will the time come from to teach the curriculum we already have? All of them good, legitimate questions. The thing that hit me most about our school discussions about my challenge was all the "we can't" statements that it generated. I know I offended some staff when I told them that I did not want to hear what we can't do. I told them to frame their arguments about what we can do. Slowly but surely, even though it has taken a month or so, I have heard a lot of "this is what I can do," or "I think we could try this," and I am heartened by the fact that so many of our staff are willing to implement little changes to increase the opportunities for our students to read. I guess on a macro level I am also looking for a culture change. I want a professional culture where we spend more time contemplating and implementing ideas and agendas we can do as opposed to wringing our hands and lamenting about those things we cannot do. After all, anyone can point out a problem or state "that can't be done." Leaders, innovators, and great teachers will find ways to make things happen for their students. I want to believe that we have a staff full of those kind of educators. For what it is worth, I am trying to walk the walk if you will. My goal is to read at least sixteen books this year. You will see in the right hand column of my blog a list of books I am reading or have read. You can watch my progress and hopefully you will ask about what I am reading. I have already learned one very important thing, I miss reading books. I have turned away from my computer(a little anyway) and have made time to read everyday. One of the best parts of my day so far this year! WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Thoughts after reading The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

I realize how late I am in coming to the discussion of the phenomenon(s) illustrated in Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat , but the book has me thinking and I thought I might as well blog about it to help myself sort all of his "stuff" out.



The fact that technology is changing everything has really played out in the past two or three years on national stage. We watched Barack Obama raise unprecedented amounts of money for his campaign and network thousands of volunteers by using the social networks created by what Mr. Friedman calls flateners (basically all new technologies dealing with data transfer and communication). The companies and institutions that have successfully employed new strategies based upon exploiting new technologies are the ones getting ahead. Walmart, Dell, Rolls Royce, and dozens of smaller less know entities are all examples that Friedman sets forth in the book to show how new technology and the collaboration they foster are rapidly changing the economic landscape of the world. He argues that the availability of instant information, connectivity and data transfer is allowing the field of economic competition to be leveled in ways it never has before. New groups of people, hungry for a better standard of living are joining the world markets and changing the dynamics of the economic landscape of the world.

I jotted down a few notes as I read (I actually listened to it as I ran then wrote the notes when I sat down to recover). The following snippets are some of my thoughts as I digested the material.

Somewhere I read in a business magazine the ratings of 150 ranking organizations in harnessing new technologies. American public schools ranked 150th. LAST! Friedman says the South Korea has more broadband capacity than the U.S. Can that be true? What does this say about our ability to stay on top of what our students need to be able to do and experience to compete in the world job market? We ban students from using some of these tools in schools because we are afraid they will abuse them (i.e. cell phones, My Space, Facebook, Youtube...etc.) Where will they learn to use them properly????? To continue this rather incoherent line of thought, and I am paraphrasing a passage in the book, we have stopped telling our children to clean their plates, their are children starving in India and China, and instead we need to start telling our kids, do your math and science homework, the kids in China and India are doing theirs and they are happy to have the opportunity to do it.

Friedman argues in his later chapters that in order for all societies in all parts of the world to take advantage of the new broadening, flat economic landscape, that their needs to be a concerted effort to bring all social strata into the changing landscape and allow them to have access and understanding of the new tools for the exchange of information and data. The phrase in his book that continues to ring in my ears (again this is paraphrased) is that the difference between the middle class and those who are considered below middle class is hope. He argues the middle class is the belief in upward mobility. Those nations and societies that are experiencing rapid qualitative changes in their standards of living, for the first time, are thriving on hope....and believing that they can make their way out of poverty. I can't help but look at and think about our own situation here in Paris and wonder, do a majority of our students and their families have that hope? Do they believe that it is possible to raise their standard of living? Did the war on poverty actually, by rewarding those who did not seek to improve their job skills or to retrain themselves, take away the motivation to raise their standard of living and/or remove the hope that it was possible?

Friedman stated that American public schools are actually out-producing American private school when comes to the students that are qualified to go to MIT and Cal Poly Tech. That many of the students in private schools have a sense of entitlement and do not work as hard and therefor are not performing as well as some of their public school counterparts. He stated that the common denominator for these highly successful students are parents who push their children and make education important and make sure learning opportunities are available both in and out of school. Unfortunately, according to Friedman, we are in a crisis in the U.S. when it comes to parenting our children to be strong students. Almost every public school is capable of producing and does produce high performing students, those schools that have parents that make education important for their children are the schools that are producing students that are prepared to compete in the newly flat world.

I have a lot more notes .....and I will most likely continue the topic of this entry in my next blog........

Just so you all know.....

If you are a regular reader.....you must be one!


Ok, you can quit laughing now!