I left Chapel Hill right after my session at PodcasterCon, around 4:00 PM. After dropping Steve Dembo off at the airport, I drove home to Raleigh, where we packed up the rest of my daughters belongings, and drove about three quarters of the way to the college town in the mountains that she has transfered back to. It’s still early in the morning, in a hotel room in Black Mountain. It’s a budget hotel, but they have high speed Internet.
Brenda and I will drive on to Asheville soon, where we’ll walk around its beautiful and funky downtown and hopefully find something interesting for breakfast, before heading on up the mountains to Cullowhee.
I thought that the education podcasting session went well. I want to thank Steve Dembo for handling the mike on the south side of the lecture hall, running up and down the isle so that every comment there would be amplified. I also want to thank Brian Russell and Anton Zuiker for taking notes on the wiki page in real time, to Joseph Puentes, for recording the session for future podcasting, and to everyone else who contributed to the conversation.
Now, on up the mountain.
Hi David –
Looking over your “Model for Education†I was struck how I have seen much the same model for most of my 25 years as a teacher.
School mission statements have revolved around developing students that know how to learn or teach themselves for many years. “Students will develop the skills required to become lifelong learners,†has become almost a mantra in education. Then we go about this by doing what we have been doing forever – just more focused, organized and “research based.†NCLB added “the stick†because obviously what was missing was strict accountability.
Language and math “literacy†have become the focus because the thinking is that underachieving students will never make it without the “3R’s.†OK, fair enough (sort of) – and some of those programs have made a difference – especially in primary grade reading test scores. As soon as students get to 3rd or 4th grade however those scores drop and continue to drop more each grade level thereafter.
Why? Partly because the programs being mandated emphasize discrete skills and thinking and are so time consuming that there is no time for anything else (field trips, science, social studies, art, technology, etc.) where students might experience at least some of the vocabulary and background knowledge required to make sense of what they read and make it interesting. When students hit upper elementary, reading and math questions stress more and more analytical skills and vocabulary and students just don’t have the schema in those areas to be successful. Reading too often is meaningless and boring.
Does anyone see many students developing the skills to become lifelong learners here? Do you see teachers developing skills and appreciation for the power of project-based learning? Technology? Field trips? The arts? The really scary part for me is that many teachers that have taught for 8 years or less only know this 3 hours of language, 2 hours of math model for teaching. Most teachers I know still struggle to send an email, much less have students emailing, or using the net for research, or integrating other technologies into their instruction or student learning. Podcasting? Wiki? What’s that and how can that be valuable when they aren’t reading or doing math at grade level?
My students’ parents make teachers seem as though they are on the cutting edge of technology – so students are exposed to thoughtful technology use nowhere in their lives (except cell phones). I’ve said before that many of my sixth graders think there are killer sharks in Lake Tahoe (30 minutes from my school). They have no idea how or why anything works – but they think they do.
David – you attend tech conferences all over – when you question 300 attendees at a Podcasting conference don’t you think they might know something about it? Walk into most schools in this country – especially low income schools most effected by NCLB, and ask teachers to show you how to send an attachment on an email or download a picture from a digital camera or hook a printer up to their computer (not even load the software just attach the USB or Ethernet cable). Very few will know how because there is no perceived value in knowing how and no real push from anywhere to change those perceptions.
When I present tech/project trainings and show teachers award winning digital videos and web pages my students have produced that are downloadable from the net – teachers seem to get how that would be valuable for students to do, but next ask me how I do that without, “getting in trouble,†for straying from “the curriculum,†or “the program,†or “the standards.â€Â
Lastly – my wife teaches at a very high income elementary school where parents are very concerned about their children’s’ learning. Research has shown for over 30 years that teaching spelling by having students memorize lists of words and being tested on them at the end of the week is not an effective way to teach spelling. My wife shares this each year at Back-to-School night and parents nod their understanding. Then over the next 2 weeks parents come in to pressure her to give “challenging word lists†and tests because they would just feel better that their child is being challenged – because that’s what they did when they were in school.
You have been asking how we can bring about the change in thinking about and designing and doing school and learning. It is an excellent, very difficult question. Please keep asking it and sharing responses to it. One thing we have to do is to find a way to get teachers like Brett Moller not to “quit their day jobs,†out of frustration.
Brian