Do What You Do Best and Outsource the Rest.
Did anyone else see the eschoolnews.com piece that was picked up in the ASCD hotline last week (http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=58946)? In a nutshell it noted that after spending billions of dollars on the notion of “small schools”, the Gates Foundation had come to the conclusion that what matters most is great teachers.
That’s good news/bad news in my estimation. I’m not surprised at the conclusion, who would be? Who among us that made it through school, doesn’t immediately associate wonderful, terrific teachers with the experience? I think I can still name every single teacher I had K-12. When I think of why they had an impact, it wasn’t because of their knowledge base alone; it was because somehow they let me know that they cared about ME, and in turn, I cared about them. It’s what good teachers have always done – formed a relationship of caring and nurturing with students. In What Would Google Do? Jeff Jarvis suggested “Do what you do best, and outsource the rest!” What if we established environments where teachers could really do that? I’m not talking about coddling students, excusing laziness, accommodating irresponsibility, or giving unwarranted “rewards”. I’m talking about establishing relationships with learning and exploring at their center, with high demands and high rewards, with high measures of encouragement and high degrees of personal investment and involvement. I’m not talking about continuing a system of a “clearly articulated curriculum” where the most important thing is what’s “covered” instead of what a teacher helps learners uncover.
So the good news? The good news is the recognition that, as my Dad used to regularly say: “Whatever it is, it’s 90T people”. Good teachers matter; good teachers change lives. Congratulations Gates Foundation. You figured it out.
But the bad news? I’d divide that into two parts. One part is that the system is not set up to help teachers do what they do best. Artificial time limits (almost always too short or too long), and curricula designed to drive students against it and see how they do is not a way to help teachers and students develop strong relationships centered in expanding learning. It happens from time to time for some teachers and some students, but pretty rarely in my estimation. The second part? We don’t have enough of those wonderful caring teachers that every child deserves. I’m always happy for kids in wonderful schools and districts, but also very saddened by thinking of the millions of kids who, because they live in the wrong place, won’t get to experience the teachers or the school that has, for a period of time at least, gotten it “right”. My familiar theme – In the 21st century we cannot continue to let geography be the main determiner of a student’s opportunity to learn at the highest levels.
Conclusion—we must find ways for Jarvis’ notion to take hold. We must find ways to let teachers do what they do best – create strong personal relationships centered on accelerating student learning, and set systems in place so that those relationships can be sustained over years.
Yes, learning in the 21st century CAN be done very differently; teaching can be done very differently. It’s up to us to see that it happens.
• Small class size. Okay, of course that helps because it gives kids more of a chance to express themselves, get personalized attention, receive differentiated instruction.
• Great teachers, effective teaching strategies, best practice. Yeah, yeah, that helps, too, because when teachers know how to present content in interesting, enjoyable ways and provide opportunities for meaningful, engaging discovery and application of learning kids will respond.
••BUT– what about the learners, themselves? Instead of teaching content, what about helping learners discover how to learn, how to maximize their cognitive instincts and powers, how to set goals??? (Oh, please get that LinguaFolio research out to the public soon, Ali Moeller!!) The content will eventually, if it hasn’t already, mushroom to the point where we can’t stuff it all into kids heads in the usual systematic manner, so let’s not try to do that. Let’s try a different approach, let’s not have teachers instructing about content. Instead, let’s have cognition trainers working to improve kids’ mental fitness through personalized coaching and mentoring. Let’s go to Better Brains and work out.
Yes, J, you are correct. It’s got to be about the learners and not the content that the teacher or the text decides is important. I like the idea of the cognition trainers who improve kids’ mental fitness. I think there are things that “need” to be known and understood as part of the schooling/learning process but there are so many ways to do that today. I get frustrated because we hold kids back so effectively from what they could be learning if we would coach them (as you put it) in a more effective way.
Did you happen to catch the link to the “Media Change” article that I posted yesterday (Sept 6) on Facebook. It also drives home the same point, though from a different perspective.
One other thought on this — I think we need to be doing serious work on erasing the definition between “formal” and “informal” education and learning. Why on earth would we want to draw such an insurmountable line between the two? So many organizations and institutions have done a tremendous job and made a huge commitment to “informal” learning (because that’s all the “System” will allow), but we don’t give it the value it deserves. This needs to change. We now have ways that we can assess the value add for other experiences.