When we created this video - Growing Iridescent Classrooms - we were really tapping into the basic learning idea of this century, an idea which has been growing and developing since the 1960s.
Growing Iridescent Classrooms
The ideas, in which 19th century factory production techniques are replaced by much free-er, much more human paradigms, might best be illustrated in the three videos below...
ABC's Nightline asks IDEO to recreate the shopping cart, 1999
There are a few phrases of vital importance in these videos. "Not organized chaos," IDEO's boss says, "focused chaos." For he finds too much organization self-defeating. You must "hire people who don't listen to you," he says, "but corporate America" - and I might add, most educational systems - "aren't ready for that." Ideas need "eclectic teams" - not all people with similar educational backgrounds, not all people with similar training. "In an innovative culture you can't have a hierarchy," he adds, noting that ideas flow from everybody.
We must get out into the world and observe, counting "seat time" is absurd. We must "have wild ideas. If everyone only came up with appropriate ideas, you wouldn't have any points to take from, to get to really innovative ideas." The team must do the evaluating. "Enlightened trial and error," "fail your way to success." Places of innovation are playful.
Now IDEO, and other groups, corporate and non-profit, from NASA to Data General, from Mozilla to Twitter, from Push Pin Studios to Xerox PARC, wherever true learning gets to run and move toward the future, we find the kind of chaos which allows new concepts to both emerge and be tested.
The era of the "open classroom" primary and "school-without-walls" secondary - that much maligned time of "new math" and "whole language" - produced the thinkers who revolutionized the world, creating Microsoft, Apple, Google, the supercomputer...
I was helping my sister's family move from California to Massachusetts when I entered my brother-in-law's new place of work. I entered a huge space filled with guys in shorts and T-shirts riding bikes and skateboards, laughing, yelling, throwing frisbees, footballs, baseballs... And I realized that this workplace, at that moment creating the world's most powerful computer, looked a whole lot more like my "free school" alternative high school than like any workplace for which the traditional classroom was prepping us.
"When you're young and you get interested in something, you get passionate about it. Maybe it's because you don't know the importance
of money and responsibility yet, but you really get into a sport, or
hobby, or any other interest, and you do that hobby or play that sport,
you write stories or fix cars, making whatever sacrifices you need to
just so you can do this thing you love, not because you want to make
money at it, or gain respect or admiration, but because it gives you
priceless rewards and satisfaction."
And that passion, that messy and barely controlled excitement, is what I see at places like Bridge21Learning, what I see at CoderDojos, what I see when I see kids at play, in fields, on streets, or online, what I see in good primary/elementary schools, but which I rarely see in secondary schools. - or in the often worthless virtual environments created by most educational software developers.
Play. Joy. Chaos. Argument. Movement. Absurdity. Laughter. Human Observation. These are all required parts of the kind of learning which leads to creation rather than replication.
Embracing the chaotic nature of learning... An Australian school at work
There's a point here. Schools must trust childhood and children. They must embrace the search-for-the-new of adolescence. They must stop trying to turn kids into compliant adults destined to build iPads for $8.00 a day. Instead they must help develop young adults who have kept their wonder and width of vision intact. Talking to Irish educators last month in Tipperary, I noted that their nation's exam driven secondary school system left Trinity College's Medical School with great test takers who were so clueless about the world that the first thing they need is art classes, so they can learn to see and describe. If Irish kids, or American kids, came out of secondary schools that looked a lot more like IDEO, that problem wouldn't exist. And, a whole lot more students would want to come to school, instead of trying to get out of it.
A Dublin 17-year-old discusses the difference between "education," a self-motivating, inspiring, possibility-building activity he is engaging in at Bridge21Learning, and "school," where uninteresting, irrelevant information is "shoved" at him.
A primary school teacher from Cork demonstrates how his youngest students are creating e-books they have written, illustrated, assembled digitally, and narrated (as alternative output), and then notes that the secondary school most will attend insists that students do all work writing with fountain pens - to encourage proper handwriting.
A first-year university-level student explains that after lectures "no one understands," he and his fellow students meet in a comfortable lounge under a high ceiling, go online, and figure it out together.
A group of primary students in Tallaght, crossing years four through six, work in a room with "computers" ranging from somewhat elderly laptops to iPod-Touches, and research, investigate, create stories on films, write, while supporting each other.
In Dualla, primary students from year two through six, work together in a classroom and push each other forward, academically, artistically, athletically, while linking themselves to the world through technology. They enthusiastically share their work on all with clear, sophisticated voices.
On the absolute edge of Europe, where County Kerry meets the Atlantic at St. Finan's Bay, the 24 student GaelscoilAn ScoilagAn Ghleanna was a magnificent place of freedom, democracy, familial community, and learning. A huge Titanic sculpture/display graces one corner of the upper students' classroom, demonstrating and students await Skyping with Dublin and America.
And at the Tipperary Institute of the Limerick Institute of Technology, late on a Thursday afternoon, the widest possible range of primary and secondary students gathers voluntarily, to work individually and together, to build computer programming skills at one of the many CoderDojos which have appeared across Ireland, and increasingly, the world - a movement born of Irish invention.
Ireland is a nation which has valued education for all of its history. It is also a nation which has been remarkably creative in importing, adapting, and reinventing ideas, from Christianity and Beer to Literature in English and Contemporary Software.
That ability, crossing fields of knowledge and hundreds of generations, was not created by "vocational education," but by a broad view of the world which was transmitted to anyone in the population who wanted it. When the British made education illegal for Irish Catholics, students met in fields and caves for "formal" education, and kept singing, dancing, quoting poetry, and debating to keep the art of teaching fully in play.
This is a nation who's heroes are authors - not just any authors - but some of the most inventive to ever write in the English language. It is a nation which has led Europe in software development. A nation chosen as a home for multinational corporations every bit as much for a thinking, adaptive, creative workforce as for any "tax haven" reasons.
I, and American school leader Dr. Pamela Moran, came to LIT - Tipperary to present at the 2012 ICTEDU Conference, to share and compare our experiences in the States with those of Irish educators when it comes to rethinking both education and technology, as well as the point where those things connect. Yet we found a profound disconnect, or a series of profound disconnects - between levels of Irish education, between intentions and policies, between "Dublin" and classrooms, between the future of Irish students and many of their "presents."
That is not to suggest that we were disappointed in Irish education - far from it. In school after school we found wonderful students led by humane and very human teachers, students allowed to find success across the range of human skillsets. We saw beautiful art, heard magnificent music, and found places filled with a passion for learning... but...
We found an educational system crying out for the need to carry the inventiveness and excitement of primary education forward into lifespan learning. An education system needing to join the present - contemporary technology, global connectedness, universal design for learning - to the uniquely human Irish traditions of humanity, literature, arts, and music. An education system needing - desperately - to free itself from the straight-jacket of compliance to testing norms so that students can find the wide variety of paths to success which will equip a small island with the range of talents it will need in the future.
Irish Primary Education appears brilliantly inventive - if a bit "technology challenged" (for a nation which sees itself as a technology leader) - but the post-primary system, of desks and handwriting, test-driven-curricula and 40-minute time blocks, is constricting the possibilities for teachers and students and "our" collective future.
This is both about access - offering the best we can possibly offer to the widest variety of students - and economics - the building of a creative society which leads - not a factory society which builds copies of American designs. It is both about the joy of learning and about the purposes of education. In our minds, we measure our success as educators by the range of choices available to our young people in their adulthood - are they able to choose careers, homes, lives, routes, passions? are they not tied to the limits of doing others' work or emigrating.
Education should not be about creating a workforce for corporations - they may train new workers if they must - but even if Irish Education Minister Ruairi Quinn wants schools as only job preparation, we all know that creative workers, able to adapt and adjust, able to utilize the tools of this century, will surely top test-takers with fountain pen skills.
We did not come to Ireland to show Irish educators how to recreate anything in the American education system. We do not think Ireland should copy Washington's policies or London's policies - both are leading conservative reductionist efforts which seek to strip the humanity from education for all but the children of the wealthy. Rather, we came to Ireland to help push Irish educators toward accomplishing the true goals of the system - an inclusive, creative, supportive, fully-rounded program which helps to develop Irish-European-Global citizens with the skills and learning tools and strategies they will need during their lifespans. We came to connect, to join, to learn from, to share, and to encourage Ireland to pursue its own course toward its own future.
So, we ask Irish educators to slow down, to look deeply at their schools, their students, and the world of today, and to not be afraid to change Irish schools - despite the inspectors, despite the Leaving Certs, despite whatever the sad commentary is from Dublin's government buildings.
When my great friend Leigh Graves Wolf sent me the link to the "Caine's Arcade" video (below), she said I had to "watch it now." And I did. And it encapsulated, for me, so much of what we are trying to describe as "The Iridescent Classroom" - the replacement of "teaching places" with "learning spaces."
As you watch this short film, you will see what children are capable of when they are given space for their imaginations to roam, when they are liberated from the external motivators of "grades" and other traditional assessments.
Because Caine is not - in my experience - unusual in his capabilities, but rather, what is unusual is the playing field offered to him by his father. It is a blank canvas of a playing field, which rewards imagination and internal motivation. As I watched, I thought back to my own son's childhood - the cardboard box buildings he so loved to make, the tree house he and his eight-year-old friends built without adult design help (and with only surreptitious (late night) adult construction help) - and I thought of my son's rant this past Christmas against Lego kits and pieces so specialized that they stripped the imagination out of play.
Other parents on our block in North Muskegon, MI doubted my sanity and parenting skills - especially as kids began coming home from my backyard scraped from falls from the tree house construction site - but I always preferred to let my kid - all kids - find their own way to knowledge. No one got badly hurt at the tree house, and it completely eclipsed the store kit climbing tower I had built two years before - because the tree house belonged to the kids in every way.
Caine has that open playing field, and he has seized it. His motivations have nothing to do with those prescribed by schools, they lie purely in his curiosity and quest for knowledge. And when a real reward comes Caine's way, it is not a grade, it is not a score, it is not something which compares him to others - the reward comes on Caine's terms, his accomplishments are recognized in ways he understands and appreciates.
So where in your school, in your classroom, is the space for Caine's Arcade?
Learning how to work on any device, anywhere
Monticello High School Library
Charlottesville, Virginia
I have spent another week in Albemarle County, Virginia, working with the people, of all ages, who make up the Albemarle County Public Schools. There are fabulous educators there, people who work every day to get better at what they do. People who seem to spend 24/7 reaching out across the globe to bring their students better learning opportunities, better connections, more far reaching experiences. But now I want to talk about the kids.
There are myths in America that our kids are, well, I don't know, "lazy," "uneducated," that they are "failing," that, to use US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's words - just this week - that we are in "a race to the bottom." And believe me, I know our schools are a long way from perfect. The educators in Albemarle County know that their schools are a long way from perfect, and we are putting in some incredibly long days to try and get closer. That is what I joined them in for the past ten, very, very long days, but...
The last five days I worked with students, as I helped teachers re-imagine lessons. We're working on something called "The Iridescent Classroom" in Albemarle County, a form of Universal Design for Learning joined to a deep commitment to getting kids ready for the choices of their century, the choices of their generation, so that they have the skills, the passions, and the knowledge to do a better job than previous generations. This requires, for students who will, for the most part, begin their adulthood in the third decade of the Twenty-First Century, the ability to collaborate globally, to share transparently, to value all cultures and skills, to search rapidly and effectively, to choose tools wisely, and to do a lot more than read and comprehend, but to be constantly able to adapt knowledge to changing environments and situations. It also includes the ability to work anywhere (like an airport, as I am doing now), from many devices, with every kind of person, through every kind of interface. And it means thinking deeply, in transformative ways.
For, to quote one sixth grader this week, "People keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and we have to stop."
He said that in a lesson about the Andersonville Trial. They are starting to study the Civil War and they are beginning Middle School, and I thought a lesson bringing these things together might make sense. Now I don't know what you were asked to do at 12, but I wasn't asked to wrestle with one of the thorniest questions of national morality... when is a person obligated to disobey orders, to rebel against his government.
We started by watching the scene above, representing a crucial moment in United States history, in which the United States Government declares that even a military officer has an obligation to disobey orders, to take up arms against his government. A position the U.S. reiterated (with the death penalty) at Nuremberg, and reiterated again when My Lai occurred.We started them with these websites:
And we asked these 12-year-olds, not rich kids, not kids from great neighborhoods, not kids whose parents have university degrees, but kids from some incredibly poor places, kids who came from an elementary school where teachers join local churches in sending food home every weekend when kids will be away from free school lunches, the kinds of kids Arne Duncan thinks can only handle KIPP education so they learn to stare at their teachers, we asked them what they thought... and it was remarkable.
They understood all the implications, the difficulties, the issues - ranging from a crowd of kids bullying someone to nations invading nations. They looked stuff up on their laptops, they raised serious questions. They even challenged the adults in the room.
This is what education means to me. It may or may not matter much if these kids are slow readers, we can get them information many ways. It may or may not matter if they spell well, when I was asked, "how do you spell that?" I simply said, "I'm really not sure, try spelling it in Google and see what happens." They did, it worked, they found what they needed. But what these kids already have are deep inquiry skills, deep comprehension skills, and effective technology skills. And you know what? That other stuff, well, its not easy, but they live in a century when all that is solvable.
In a math lesson a day later I watched a seventh grader, a kid who really struggled to divide 64 by 2 in his head, or 32 by 2, or, for that matter, 16 by 2, work diligently to explain to his disbelieving teacher how he knew - and he knew instantly - how many games are in the NCAA basketball tournament. He knew, because math is about rules and logic, and his logic was perfect and his understanding of the rules I had described was perfect, and because math is not arithmetic, no matter how much our poorly educated national and state leaders think it is. He and his classmates also understood, almost instantly, that the question - no calculators or paper or Google allowed - "If the temperature in Detroit, Michigan is 50 degrees what is the temperature likely to be in Windsor, Ontario? was about (a) culture, and then (b) understanding comparable scales, and then (c) order of operations.
Yes, I showed them this map. Yes they were surprised that Michigan is north of Canada (as you may be). But they got it, and could do it in their head, and understood that if you divide by 2 first then subtract 32, you're in trouble, they even understood that when they said "9" and a teacher said, "well actually 9.9," that it didn't matter, the point of mental math is to know that if someone anywhere outside the U.S. says, "it's 10 degrees," that the person isn't very cold.
With other sixth graders we rocked through a Yuri Gargarin lesson, heading deep into what "space" means and ideas of distance. I met one of the fastest, most effective, users of a search engine I have ever met... a kid usually labeled, "a problem."
I watched fourth graders listen to a story while using computers to look up everything they didn't understand.We were reading Titanicatand we were flooding them with ideas. We used Google Maps to fly from Esmont, Virginia to Belfast. Belfast? They all found Belfast. What country is Belfast in? What does "UK" mean? OK, does, "University of Kentucky" make sense? What is the United Kingdom? Is it in England or is England in the UK? Where in Belfast was the ship built? Do they still build ships there?
The story moves to Southampton, and on the big white board we showed them the Quay at Southampton. They found that. Where was London? "Who else sailed from London that we talk about in Virginia?" OK, they got me there, they knew the name of the ship and the captain who brought the colonists to Jamestown in 1607, something I didn't.
It was a wildly chaotic environment... and yet... it was not. The kids were all working, really working, learning search, learning maps. If some found their houses or ended up looking at London or missed half the story, its no big deal. They'll read the book later. They were learning skills and doing things many of the people who write the laws about education probably cannot do. Mostly, they were reveling in inquiry.
I ended the week in a high school, talking to seniors who wanted to ask questions for a citizenship/service capstone project. We sat in a library filled with students working in all sorts of ways with all sorts of tools, and they asked what I thought about requiring all Americans to have health insurance and offering in state tuition to "illegal" - undocumented - immigrants who live in the state.
I challenged them to stop thinking politically, or even constitutionally (which is, by nature, open to varied interpretations), and to think about what kind of society they wanted to live in. Why do we have laws? Why do we require anyone to do anything? Why can they tell you not to drive 100 miles an hour or tell you to wear a seat belt? The kid working on the tuition issue, who is putting together a public forum with elected officials and experts, and who invited "Rick Perry, because, why not?" asked what I thought. I suggested first that he think back to 1607 and Jamestown, Virginia. Weren't those illegal immigrants? Didn't they come without permission, not knowing the language, not willing to learn the language or rules of the society? Weren't they sloppy people so uninterested in health that they began a pandemic? Maybe, I suggested, the otherwise conservative Texas Governor Perry believes in this because Texas too was created by illegal immigrants from the United States?
They rolled with all this, wonderfully neither accepting my opinion nor rejecting it. They were considering, wondering what to ask next, who to ask next. They were as smart, as educated, as engaged as any 18-year-olds I have ever met.
So I brought up the idea of "equal vs. equitable" to them.I asked if Finland's income-based system of fines sounded good to them. This is a tough concept for Americans to consider, and they immediately began debating it. I should have brought up the pilot of The Andy Griffith Show, which, back in 1960, was all about that...
"Danny finally agrees with his wife and decides to the $5 fine. He takes out a huge wad of cash, and he gives him more money
and more money. Danny doesn't care if Andy is robbing him, after all
he's a big time star. Andy sees this as a time to get more money, and
tells Danny he has to pay $100 or spend 10 days in jail. meanwhile Any fines another motorist $2 for the same offense.
"Danny is furious! He goes in his jail cell talks about tyranny in this world, and how he languishes in a
cold, damp, dirty cell. Andy is offended by this and says "Now hold on a
durn second!" Andy says his Aunt Lucy cleans the cell and does a fine
job! The host then cross-examines Andy, and Andy says he had to raise
the price to make an impression on these city folk, who can get $5 or
$10 very easily. Danny realizes he was wrong and apologizes to Andy in
the end after hearing his explanation"
but... I now know these kids, and I suspect one of them will find that, and a whole lot more.
So I just want to tell you, that the kids are all right, and if we trust them, and challenge them, and stop sweating the meaningless stuff every day, they'll be great. They'll be a lot better than we ever were.
In the film Smoke(1995) Auggie Wren, a Brooklyn cigar store owner, explains his "life's project" to grieving widower, and frozen writer, Paul Benjamin...
Auggie: "You'll never get it if you don't slow down my friend."
Paul: "What do you mean?"
Auggie: "I mean you're going too fast, you're hardly even looking at the pictures."
Paul: "They're all the same."
Auggie: "They're
all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You've got
your bright mornings and your dark mornings, you got your summer light
and your autumn light, you got your weekdays and your weekends, you got
your people in overcoats and galoshes and you've got your people in T
shirts and shorts. Sometimes the same people, sometimes different ones.
Sometimes the different ones become the same, or the same ones
disappear. The earth revolves around the sun, and every day the light
from the sun hits the earth at a different angle."
Paul: "Slow down, huh?" Auggie: "That's what I recommend. You know how it is. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, time creeps on its petty pace."'
You walk into your school, into your classroom, and what do you see? Do you see the same place, the same students, the same children you saw yesterday?
Do you see the kids who is "always the screw up"? The one who "always understands"? The one who "never figures it out"? The one who is "always happy"? The one who will "cause a problem if you take your eyes off him" (or "her")? The one who is "good at math"? The "slow reader"?
Any student, and anyone who can remember being a student - K-12, primary, secondary - understands the assumptions the adults make about them. How students become "fixed" in description, and how hard it is - how impossible it often is - to change that reputation.
Last week @MissShuganah sent me a note about how one of her daughters suddenly did some thing for the first time. Something she'd been unable to do for years... and then, one day, one random day, something changed, and what was impossible became possible.
Working with Middle Schoolers the last two days, I watched kids amaze me. And sometimes they changed across the brief period I worked with them. Because kids, really all humans who are willing to learn, are like that. Constantly changing.
They're
the same kids, but each one is different from day to day and sometimes hour to hour or minute to minute. You've got
your bright mornings and your dark mornings, you got your tired days and your days filled with energy. You've got your sad days and your happy days. You've got your days when things click, and days when nothing does. Sometimes students make leaps, sometimes they move very slowly. The brain chemicals change, and connections link, or become elusive. The slow, the sad become quick and happy, the happy and fast have bad days and moments of intense struggle. The earth revolves around the sun, and every day the light
from the sun hits the earth at a different angle. And no student is exactly the same ever again as they are in that moment.
But teachers and school administrators, and yes, even parents, miss much of this. They see students as they see furniture and the walls of their classrooms - as permanent things. When you listen, they describe students with terms like "always," "every time," "never gets it," "always behaves perfectly."
When we do that, we give up on being educators, we give up on being the transformative adults we must be around children, and we surely miss out on the chance to intervene in so many moments.
So how do we see anew every day? First, we must want to do that, because it isn't easy throwing off years or decades of filters on our eyes. Second, we must give kids choices every day, because without children having choice, all you will see are patterns, all you will see is a repetitive scene.
If your classroom has real choices, children will do many things, and you will see them many ways. In the video below, Mike Thornton's third grade class is doing a familiar exercise - write five sentences about what you did over Thanksgiving break, put a picture with one - but, because they have choice in tool, in work environment, in many things, we not only see work and learning happening, we see it happening with individuals, individuals who have never been exactly like this before, and who will never be exactly like this again.
Once you have allowed your students to be the individual humans they are, rather than actors doing a performance for your benefit, you have the chance to see them in all their human differentiation, and they have the chance to stop playing their roles - the smart kid, the dumb kid, the disabled kid, the teacher pleaser, the kid with one skill set or one interest, the behavior problem, the silent kid - and start being the evolving human learners they are away from adult preconceptions.
Slow down tomorrow. Walk toward your school as if you haven't seen it before. Walk through your hallways as if you are fully "ADHD," sucking in every sight and sound. Look at you classroom as if you are a kindergarten student observing a place for the first time. And watch your students the way you look at a new group of friends, figuring out how you might approach each of them in a way which personally connects.
Then try to do that every day. You'll find you are in a new place every time our planet spins.
Barbara Lindsey of the University of Connecticut
asked me join her, her students, and colleagues Wednesday for a
conversation about Universal Design for Learning and re-imagining
education.
Before
the session, those participating sent me ten questions. They were ten
great questions, and as I began answering them I began to see an "FAQ"
developing... So I wanted to share this widely. This is part two - with my suggested starting points in the search for
answers. Part one, the first five questions, is here.
Rethinking Everything. Michael Thornton Photo.
Q6:"How can we concretely make special needs education more visible at the
institution level? Could these policies be spread to all students as
each student is different and has his/ her own difficulties? Would that
make sense? and how?"
I
don't really believe in "lesson plans" and I advise teachers not to
create them. I'd like you to think more in terms of starting an activity
with a "learning goal" or a "learning target." That is, "what will your
students be able to do, or understand, or how will they be changed, if
your activity/lesson succeeds."
If
that is your starting point, then you'll have a real goal which
students can focus on, and you won't be trying to specify paths in
advance for any of your students. This is essential because specifying
paths not only limits creativity, prevents critical thinking, and builds
dependence, but it really limits Special Needs students by stopping
them from exploring their capabilities. http://mthornton78.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/cave-painting/http://mthornton78.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/welcome-to-the-future/
Suppose
you are teaching a maths lesson. Consider, ratios. Different students
can choose entirely different routes and completely different tools -
based on their needs, interests, preferences. You could use blocks, or
food, or a calculator, or a computer, or draw on the floor - you might
approach it conceptually or mechanically, the trick - Montessori style -
is to have this wide range of tools and supports available. What I call
your "Tool Crib."
Similarly,
my 9th year English teacher offered us print copies of books, audio
books, and movies made from the books. (long before computers) We could
write, or type, or dictate to a friend, or record our voice. If we
really didn't like the book, he'd help us find something else to read
which would allow us to be part of the conversations. This was a class
full of "failures," the school referred to it as "Dumb English." Most of
us had never read a book before or written more than half a page. Yet
with this very low tech UDL we produced hundreds of pages of poetry and
short stories and arguments, and read through most of the great
dystopian literature of the 20th Century.
Alan from Paul Shapiro on Vimeo. My high school English teacher, reshaping education to allow all to succeed.
Q8:"It is extremely important not to make feel student with disabilities
different but what is a practical example of it? If you have two
different examples of cases with different disabilities even better!"
Q10:"Why do we use the term "universal design" when we introduce a concept
that avoids creating a universally accurate design for all students?
Isn't it better when we emphasize diversity?"
First,
I need to ask, what is “a universally accurate design”? Can such a
thing exist? Even in rocket science, the US and Russia always embraced
radically different design ideas.
So,
if there is no learning design which can be "universally accurate," we
choose to embrace our humanity and acknowledge that we are all
different. Diversity isn't something which needs emphasizing, it is
simply a fact of working with people instead of products.
It
is important to know that the idea of "same for all" teaching and
assessment is a relatively recent concept, reaching only back to the
start of the Second Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of the
American and "Second" British Empires. Until the late 19th century most
students continued to go to schools with all ages, individualised
lessons and evaluations, they came to school when finished with family
chores in the morning, and left school when they were done with their
work.
The
"all the same" idea, treating students "as if they were any other
manufactured product," as Ellwood Cubberley - the chief advocate of this
- said, was designed for two purposes (a) to train single function
workers for factories and offices, and (b) to fail 80% of students -
there are eight grades before high school, each grade was supposed to
chase 10% of students out, leaving 20% to go to high school. In fact, as
recently as 1960, evidence shows, few more than 25% of American
students finished high school.http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/09/designed-to-fail-education-in-america.htmlhttp://education.change.org/blog/view/counting_the_origins_of_failure
Those are the purposes behind the design of our schools. If those are no longer our purposes, the design must change.
Barbara Lindsey of the University of Connecticut asked me join her, her students, and colleagues Wednesday for a conversation about Universal Design for Learning and re-imagining education.
Before the session, those participating sent me ten questions. They were ten great questions, and as I began answering them I began to see an "FAQ" developing... So I wanted to share this widely. This is part one - the first five questions with my suggested starting points in the search for answers. Part Two is here.
Q1:“I have a question about assessment. I think the idea of universal
design is a great idea. But, if we start implementing different learning
tools individually designed for each student, how do you end up
with assessment?"
Does anyone really need an "exam" to assess any of the learning in this video? Could you create a test that would meaningfully measure any of it?
Now,
to me, there are two different kinds of courses, there are courses
where demonstrated competence in a single skill is the point, to quote a
structural engineering prof I once had (in a pass/fail grading system),
“no one leaves my class knowing 95% of what it takes to make a building
stand up.” http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/06/great-schools-3-profession-without.html
So, in that course, 95% was “failing” except, there were no tests, and
every student’s project, demonstrating their knowledge, was different.
You didn’t have to be “perfect” - but your building design had to work.
The
other kind of course, say, what I teach, involves moving students from
where they are to a place they need and want to go. So there, I have to
ask the students where they are at the start. I ask lots of questions,
and ask them to respond to ideas, and then we have a point on the map
for the students to begin their journey. My measures in a course like
that are based in progress and effort and accomplishing what they set
out to accomplish - or how they adapt if they have to change paths.
Q2:"Teachers need to interact with students but these
students need to be willing to do so. What could be done in compulsory
school (or even University) if students are not interested? How
according to UDL we can try to motivate them?"
This
may sound radical, but if a student doesn’t know why they’re in a
class, they’re going to space out and not interact, and most students
have no idea why they are in a class. Even though I can do architectural
engineering and pretty good statistics, I still don’t know why I ever
took any of the Algebra classes I took, whether I failed or got an A.So, step one, explain to students what this class will dofor them,
Not for their school career, but for them. Why are they - to put it in
micro-economic terms - wasting their “opportunity costs” on sitting with
you? If you can’t explain that, well, they should check out.Now,
some students - oddly the ones we traditionally consider “good”
students - have few internal motivations, and for them - because they
rely on external motivation, we can bribe or threaten, which is what
grades are. But in my experience that’s about a third or less of
students, the rest don’t care about grades - and the ones who do will
tend to be “pleasers” - students who only want to give “the teacher”
whatever their teacher wants. Which isn’t learning - its compliance.
Q3:"Considering your experience with alternative education, are there
non-traditional subjects or activities capable of raising interests
among students of any level and that should be introduced to them? How
could new technologies help with that?"
As
in the question above, Passion-Based Learning is what raises interest,
we need to connect what we are teaching to what students want and know
they need to know. I don’t care if this is first grade, why would any
kid work really hard to figure out a text they’re not interested in? Or
in graduate school, if I can’t twist the class into something which
matters to me, I’m not interested. Only when you’ve hooked kids through
their interests and passions can you begin to expand their world by
leveraging those interests.
Quoting Alan Shapiro and Neil Postman regarding what they described as their “judo theory of education,”“we
are assuming (1) that learning takes places best not when conceived as a
preparation for life but when it occurs in the context of actually
living, (2) that each learner ultimately must organize his own learning
in his own way, (3) that "problems" and personal interests rather than
"subjects" are a more realistic structure by which to organize learning
experiences, (4) that students are capable of directly and authentically
participating in the intellectual and social life of their community,
(5) that they should do so, and (6) that the community badly needs
them." http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-schools-1-changing-everything.html
Q4:"According to your own experience, how do students face these
new-non-scripted assignments? Did you need any previous "training"?
Sometimes I feel that most students just want, "do A, B, and C
in the X way", and they feel terrified otherwise."
The
longer students have been in school the more they have been trained in
compliance, and the more creativity scares them. Its fairly easy to get
first graders to try anything http://adunsiger.com/http://avivadunsiger.wikispaces.com/
much harder with university first years who, being typically the most
compliant “pleasers” in their secondary schools, haven’t thought on
their own in many years. But there are tricks. A middle school music
teacher told me this week that he told students they couldn’t play a
certain type of song in his band room unless they had written it
themselves. Half the class began composing music. At universities I
often ask students to base a part of their project on themselves, or
create it for a family member, this makes originality a personal
necessity. http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-help-students-see-differently.html
Q5:"My question is contextualized in a school/high-school where teachers
are sometimes just asked to become a nanny for 25-30 students. How do we
deal with this individually? How can a teacher manage an appropriate
environment for each individuality?"
I
think teachers choose to become babysitters. I’ve never understood
that, but they do. In order to break that, if this has become “the
school norm,” you have to be really aggressive, and you have to be blunt
with kids. Get them out of their seats, get rid of their chairs if you
can, and get them out of the classroom.
, from Mozilla to Twitter, from Push Pin Studios to Xerox PARC, wherever true learning gets to run and move toward the future, we find the kind of chaos which allows new concepts to both emerge and be tested.
and we were flooding them with ideas. We used Google Maps to fly from Esmont, Virginia to Belfast. Belfast? They all found Belfast. What country is Belfast in? What does "UK" mean? OK, does, "University of Kentucky" make sense? What is the United Kingdom? Is it in England or is England in the UK? Where in Belfast was the ship built? Do they still build ships there?
(1995) Auggie Wren, a Brooklyn cigar store owner, explains his "life's project" to grieving widower, and frozen writer, Paul Benjamin...
