Hackschooling. Jason, what's with the John Lennon quote? It's a great quote, but unless someone has explicitly told you otherwise, it has nothing to do with Logan any more than it has to do with your story above; which might be fine less the need to somehow single out your obsession with John Lennon (who's great but your making big reaches; not a good sign). It's not really necessary to try and make a great link in the specific way you have, between a good historical quote and some necessity by Logan to somehow tell the audience; "Hey, everything I've done is from John Lennon. " It's not of course; maybe Logan hasn't listened to a Beatles song in his entire life.
Maybe he has, but don't presume what you don't know and don't reach too far. If you read-up, Logan re-wrote his entire talk he had worked on for some 60 days, just prior to this TEDx event because he wasn't quite happy with it and asked others for advice. Finally, I have to address this privilege thing you refer to.
The Educational Value of Field Trips. Crystal Bridges; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; School Tour © 2013 Stephen Ironside/Ironside PhotographyBo Bartlett – “The Box” – 2002 • Oil on Linen • 82 x 100 – Photographer is Karen Mauch The school field trip has a long history in American public education. For decades, students have piled into yellow buses to visit a variety of cultural institutions, including art, natural history, and science museums, as well as theaters, zoos, and historical sites. Schools gladly endured the expense and disruption of providing field trips because they saw these experiences as central to their educational mission: schools exist not only to provide economically useful skills in numeracy and literacy, but also to produce civilized young men and women who would appreciate the arts and culture.
Today, culturally enriching field trips are in decline. Museums across the country report a steep drop in school tours. We find that students learn quite a lot. Design of the Study and School Tours. Bill Gates On Education: "We Can Make Massive Strides" Pop quiz: Is Bill Gates a) the savior of American public education or b) a cloistered billionaire who should stick to something simple like eradicating polio? Both views have proponents. There's Malcolm Gladwell's hero's tale in his book Outliers about the young Gates spending "10,000 hours" in computer labs honing the skills that would spawn one of the world's most important technology companies. And there's the counterpart: the standardized-test obsessive, the avatar of school privatization, the sworn enemy of teachers' unions. Both notions are caricatures.
"We're stuck at $600 billion a year," Gates notes wryly, referring to the annual amount spent on education in the United States nationwide. Gates is as enamored of technology as he's always been, but is also now quick to stress the human side of education. After almost two decades of pursuing improvements in U.S. education through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates maintains a sweeping and grand ambition. When Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Meddle with Education, Students Lose & Billionaires Gain - Schools. Is the Gates Foundation helping or hurting the country's education system? Read how it has affected Boston schools. By John Radosta, a Boston Public School parent The legend of Bill Gates and his rise from college dropout to billionaire is fixed in everyone’s mind.
Now he is known for his philanthropy, and his desire to cure every ill from malaria to education, to helping design the next generation toilet in China. Today I’ll skip the potty humor and focus on his involvement in educational matters. What is it about Bill Gates, along with the bulk of advocates for corporate “Ed Reform” that makes him such an expert on what’s wrong with our public schools? I don’t think it’s his personal experience attending the horrific (or heroic, if you look at what Garfield High teachers have accomplished over the past year) Seattle Public Schools. So just where has the Gates Foundation spent its money? Taking apart Boston’s High Schools Charter School Expansion Stand for Children Teach for America inBloom. Common Core Standards - Fact and Fiction. The Trouble With Common Core - Stan Karp speaks in Portland Oregon. Experiential learningsoeffective. If My Child Refuses State Tests Will My School Lose Funding? - NYS Allies for Public Education.
Place-based education. Place-based education, sometimes called pedagogy of place, place-based learning, experiential education, community-based education, education for sustainability, environmental education or more rarely, service learning, is an educational philosophy developed initially by The Orion Society, [1] a Massachusetts based nonprofit organization, as well as Professor David Sobel, Project Director at Antioch University New England though educators have used its principles for decades. The term was coined in the early 1990s by Laurie Lane-Zucker of The Orion Society and Dr. John Elder of Middlebury College. Orion's early work in the area of place-based education was funded by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Place-based education is often hands-on, project-based and always related to something in the real world. Byron Fellowship is a place-based learning experience built around sustainable community development.
Place-based education in schools[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] PPS Focus on Diversity - Courageous Conversations about Race 3/20/12. In Testing, a Principal Leans on Her Experience. In Testing, a Principal Leans on Her Experience. As principal, it is her job to make sure children learn (94.9 percent of the fourth graders were proficient on the 2012 state math test); hire talented teachers (Antoinette Byam, for one, has been awarded grants to study in Ghana, Peru and Mexico and used the research to develop a fifth-grade curriculum on Mayan culture); create an environment where good teachers thrive (the turnover rate is 4 percent ); and encourage families to be involved (she holds weekly breakfasts with parents.)
She also believes it is her job is to shield students, teachers and parents from the state’s ever-expanding standardized testing system and to question its reliability publicly. “At my age, I’ve seen so many education fads come and go,” she says. “It gives me the confidence to trust what we’re doing here.” In a letter to parents in April she criticized the newly developed tests as too hard, too confusing and too long. The P.S. 146 fourth-grade classes where 94.9 percent were proficient in math last year? Scrapthemap.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/teacher-work-group-on-assessment-recommendations-spring-2013.pdf. Scrap the MAP! | Solidarity with Seattle teachers boycotting the MAP test. Common Core. In copying the response of Hart Research, I inadvertently copied only part of Guy Moyneaux’s comments. Here is his full response: TO:American Federation of Teachers FROM:Guy Molyneux, Hart Research Associates DATE:May 10, 2013 RE:Methodology for Common Core Survey Following are some facts about the methodology for AFT’s recent survey of AFT K-12 teachers on Common Core implementation that may help to answer the criticisms and questions raised by Mercedes Schneider.
Schneider’s objections speak to two distinct questions: 1) does the survey reflect the views of AFT K-12 teachers? In fact, it is likely that a survey of all U.S. teachers would report results broadly similar to what we found among AFT members, for reasons explained below. . • The survey employed a standard sampling methodology, used in countless surveys by many polling organizations. . • A sample size of 800 teachers is appropriate and common. . • The survey sample is demographically similar to the population of AFT teachers. The Benefits of Character Education - Jessica Lahey. Jessica Lahey When I signed on to teach English at a core virtues school, I had no idea what I was in for. I nodded and smiled in my interview when the Headmaster explained the virtues curriculum, and I parried back with everything I thought she wanted to hear; how I could infuse my lessons on To Kill a Mockingbird with discussions about empathy and courage.
I may have even quoted Atticus' line about walking around in someone else's skin. I figured I could tack on some of that quaint "virtue" stuff before getting to the real meat of the lesson, the academic stuff. And for the first year I taught at Crossroads Academy, that's pretty much what I did. I made some empty gesticulations toward the core virtues bulletin board in my classroom and made some token mentions of fortitude at obvious moments in our reading of The Illiad and The Aeneid.
I was teaching literature, but I certainly wasn't doing Aristotle proud. I mean come on. Here on our campus, our marshmallow is a duck. Is It Time We Threw Standardized Testing Out the Door? Dr. Mark Naison is involved in a movement he hopes will change the American education system. A professor of African-American studies and history at New York’s Fordham University, Naison wants to see less standardized tests in the classroom. “You should organize the school experience around what excites and energizes children—the arts, music, physical activity, hands-on science, collaborative learning—and do project-based assessment by teachers and school administrators, with standardized tests on a state or national level reduced to a minimum,” Naison told TakePart.
He isn’t alone. Students, parents and teachers around the country are saying enough to standardized testing. At Seattle’s Garfield High School, for example, teachers took the bold step of voting unanimously in January to boycott a series of district-mandated tests. But it’s not just Seattle where protests are occurring. Naison compares the protests around the country to a significant event in U.S. history—the Vietnam War. What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart? Helsinki, Finland High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night.
They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7. Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it's done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. Mr. Christine Gross-Loh: Have American Parents Got It All Backwards?
The eager new mom offering her insouciant toddler an array of carefully-arranged healthy snacks from an ice cube tray? The always-on-top-of-her-child’s-play parent intervening during play dates at the first sign of discord? We hold some basic truths as self-evident when it comes to good parenting. Our job is to keep our children safe, enable them to fulfill their potential and make sure they’re healthy and happy and thriving. The parent I used to be and the parent I am now both have the same goal: to raise self-reliant, self-assured, successful children. We need to let 3-year-olds climb trees and 5-year-olds use knives. Imagine my surprise when I came across a kindergartener in the German forest whittling away on a stick with a penknife. Similarly, Brittany, an American mom, was stunned when she moved her young family to Sweden and saw 3- and 4-year-olds with no adult supervision bicycling down the street, climbing the roofs of playhouses and scaling tall trees with no adult supervision.
Metropolitan Learning Center.