edustange's posterous

"Do we want schools that all prepare and deliver the same “teaching” and “learning” the same way to each and every child (episodic teacher improv aside), or do we want schools that admit local teachers who offer kids more idiosyncratic, homemade teaching and learning?

"We can see franchise schools all around us – including both traditional, public schools and corporate charter schools. They run like franchise restaurants with clear hierarchies and expectations of behaviors – including learning behaviors. Those who don’t comply are punished by exclusion from spaces of compliance.

"We can sometimes catch glimpses of farmers market schools – schools at which both teachers and students have the autonomy to engage in a more meaningful economy of negotiation about teaching and learning. At these schools, even when standards are present, the curriculum, instruction, and assessment are developed and shared locally according to local interests, needs, and skills."

http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/franchises-farmers-markets-schools/

I really like Chad's analogy. Franchises dominate learning in many ways. In my school, they manifest themselves in learning resources. Provincial assessments have the same impact on teachers. Centrally developed common assessments presented to classroom teachers also constrain the classroom teacher's ability to differentiate and adapt for the unique needs and interests of our young people. I don't like being maneuvered into a passive aggressive retaliation to standardization.

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Creative Personal Learning

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:24:18 -0700

"Personalized learning begins with the learner and means the student drives their learning. To transform a classroom into a personalized learning environment means including student voice and student choice.

"Student voice is difficult to hear in a traditional classroom where the teacher provides direct instruction and curriculum that is either provided for the teacher, adapted by the teacher, or designed by the teacher. Student choice means students choose how they learn something and, possibly, what they learn.

"Giving students voice and choice motivates them so they are engaged in learning and want to explore the topics in your classroom!

"In a traditional classroom, in order to meet the Common Core Reading Literature standard for Key Ideas and Details, third graders may read or listen to the same text and are usually asked to respond the same way as everyone else in the class.

ELA-RL.3.1. Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.

"In a personalized learning environment, each third grader and the teacher knows how the learner learns best and the ways that work best for them to demonstrate their learning. In this environment, the teacher might still present a story, but offers multiple ways to read, listen, and respond. The classroom would be set up with multiple stations to provide students with choices for how to learn and demonstrate understanding of a concept. For example: laptop computers with productivity tools 2-3 tables grouped for collaborative work teacher area with places for students to sit individual space for private journaling standing or pacing area (high desks without chairs)

http://creativeeducator.tech4learning.com/2012/articles/Creative_Personalized...

I always get excited to read about improving the learning spaces our students use. Read the whole article and reflect on your own space.

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Differentiated Assessment - Sean Granger

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:39:21 -0700

"Great strides have been made to adjust our instruction to meet individual student needs, but often we don't adjust the way we assess this individualized learning. Differentiated instruction must at some point lead to differentiated assessment, otherwise we're fooling ourselves.

"Students are all on their own timeline and we're finally starting to realize that we need to figure out what that timeline is in order to apply an optimized and purposeful learning experience. We need to meet them where they're at and help them learn forward. This is the differentiation process. It accounts for a student's particular learning styles, interests, strengths and weaknesses and adjusts for them to optimize learning. However, once we've done such a good job creating an appropriate and fair learning context for individual kids, we often ruin the process by not making a reciprocal effort to create an appropriate and fair assessment context for individual kids.

http://www.seangrainger.com/2012/04/differentiated-assessment.html#!/2012/04/....html

I share Granger's position. If young people learn in different ways then the assessment of that learning cannot be uniform. All of us have students who do not demonstrate their learning well through the scheduled, time-sensitive common assessments (hopefully) developed to meet the needs of an average student.

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RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us by theRSAorg

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:10:30 -0700

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Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:55:00 -0700

"The fantasy of celebrity culture is not designed simply to entertain. It is designed to keep us from fighting back. “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books,” Neil Postman wrote: What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble -puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."15

https://kindle.amazon.com/work/empire-illusion-literacy-spectacle-ebook/B001R...

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Google Drive

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:14:00 -0700

via drive.google.com

This looks like it may be useful to me. I use Dropbox, but another drive with better document integration might be attractive.

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You Don't Own Their Summer - Pernille Ripp

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:29:00 -0700

Summer vacation is starting to sneak into our school minds as stealthily as the first signs of a cold. A mention of a vacation planned here, some raised trepidation about next year, begging for me to transfer to 6th grade. And so while we plow on through all of our projects, still staying focused, I think of the things the students could be doing during that break; math facts, reading, fixing mistakes in their brain so that they start fresh the following year, perhaps even a little bit ahead, ready to conquer the world of 6th grade. And then I am reminded; I don't own their summer.

Already we have been given gentle recommendations to assign math games over summer. Some students know they will be expected to finish a math book, others to read a classic book or two. And my outrage starts to bubble. We don't own their summer, we don't own their summer, we don't own their summer.

Summer vacation in America may be too long for some kids. It may lead to the infamous summer slide, loss of knowledge, skill setbacks that will lead to worse test results, but we don't own their summer. Their summer is for them to explore, to renew, to breathe, to invest in whatever catches their interest. Perhaps their summer will have nothing to do with school and yet everything to do with learning. Perhaps their summer will be spent reading book after book, perhaps just being at a pool. Whatever they choose to do with their time is none of our business.

And sure, of course those that assign homework for a class that starts after summer, they have the best interest of their students in mind. Yet the truth is, you have no right to that time. You have no power over whether they do it or not. You cannot expect them to come having read 2 books, or written a paper, or done a packet of math problems. You can ask them to, but you cannot demand it. You may say that the summer work is like preparing for a job, but guess what, even jobs give you time off. You may say that summer work is in the best interest of the students, to keep them out of trouble, well, let them make that decision. You may say that if they don't work over the summer you will never get through everything you have to cover; that is a time management problem not something you can push onto the students.

You can hope that their summer is spent learning. That their summer is spent finding new interests. That their summer wasn't just a big break from anything strenuous, but you cannot decide what they should do. You cannot decide what constitutes summer learning or not, because, yes, that's right, you don't own their summer.

http://mrspripp.blogspot.ca/2012/04/you-dont-own-their-summer.html

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We need to stop blocking collaboration in schools

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:48:32 -0700

http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/tear-down-that-wall/

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title

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:23:45 -0700

I wish the language was accessible to me. Mostly, I can exist in my little unilingual bubble, and then a moment like this intrudes to disturb the wa. If our project was about the different ways we can tell our stories then perhaps broadly speaking your students might also have something to narrate. Journalists also talk about story. At any rate, I don't think our journey toward a joint project progressed far enough to preclude projects of any sort. You students should be pleased. Thanks for posting this.

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An Open Letter to Honorable Ray Boughen, MP

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:45:00 -0700

I heard it said on Twitter that a Member of Parliament represents his or her constituents to the government, not represents the government to his constituency. With that in mind, I beg you to express my concern to our government.

It is fundamental to Canadian democracy that the government of the day is accountable to Parliament (that is you...). It is fundamental that a minister of the crown be held accountable for his or her portfolio. We cannot let our democracy erode so that a political party can be sustained, or personal power is protected. It is no small thing to avoid responsibility. It frightens me that the failure of honesty and accountability surrounding the F-35 purchase might be dismissed so easily by the people we rely on so much. It scares me when I think where this twenty-year trend of irresponsibility could lead Canada.

The honorable Minister of Defence, Peter McKay must be held accountable for his failure to administer his portfolio. In fact, lies have been made both inside and outside the House of Commons. Historically, ministers have accepted responsibility, resigned, and then returned to honorable service to the Crown and the people of Canada. The shame lies not in the failure, but in the failure to accept responsibility for one's actions. Ministerial accountability has served our democracy for a long time. Don't allow it to be abandoned, strengthen it.

I understand the pressure of real-politic. As a university student and member of the debating union, I enjoyed playing party politics. Well we were playing games and you are not. You represent and protect the democratic interests of our constituency. Perhaps you feel you cannot speak out publicly on this matter. I prey you can speak frankly in party caucus. If you cannot do that without fear, then you might reflect more deaply on the values of your party.

Take a principled stand on this issue. Call for Honorable Minister's resignation. Peter McKay must go for the good of the government, the good of Parliament, and the good of the country.

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Matthew Fuller, "Questioning Capitalist Realism: An Interview with Mark Fisher"

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 11:27:00 -0700

Capitalist Realism is in your account extremely evident in education, which is a zone which is at once suffering immense restructuring from the introduction of pseudo-markets and the intense pressures of constant audit and competition; it is also a space which offers one of the last forms of refuge from the blunter stupidities of a traumatised and simplistically reduced range of opportunities and forms of life within contemporary capitalism, and as such is expected to absorb an immense amount of problems in society. Education no longer represses desires in a mode of high intolerance, but produces and incubates stupidities and 'holds' unsolvable problems?

Yes, there's a way in which capitalist realism can only really be felt in areas -- such as public service -- which had previously been relatively free of business imperatives. Elsewhere, in many ways, capitalist realism is taken for granted! But the phrase 'pseudo-marketisation' is crucial -- what we have in public services is an absurd simulation of market mechanisms rather the market as such, a kind of worst of all worlds scenario in which a simulated market goes alongside continuing surveillance and monitoring from state bodies. (At the same time, it's important not to demonise markets, or to let capitalism claim that it is equivalent to marketisation. I take seriously Manuel DeLanda's idea that capitalism is in fact an anti-market, and I think there's a great deal of political potential in this kind of thinking.) If the market is supposed to deliver the best results all on its own, why do we still need inspection regimes, league tables etc? Neoliberal ideology likes us to believe that bureaucracy has decreased under it, but the reality is that it has simply changed form, and the average teacher or lecturer is doing much more bureaucracy than ever before -- and this is not 'necessary' bureaucracy, or bureaucracy that 'improves performance'; on the contrary, as we all know, it is a purely empty activity, a dead ritual that is at best useless, at worst actually counter-productive. What I mean by 'capitalist realism' is partly the imposition of these mechanisms -- whose real significance might be to ensure ideological compliance at this ritualized level -- and also the acceptance of those mechanisms by workers (and managers), who go along with them because 'that's just how things are now.'

Education is still often thought of as an ivory tower, even by teachers and lecturers. There were people at the FE college where I used to work whose partners worked in business who would make this claim -- that we were somehow fortunate not to be in the dog-eat-dog world of business where people are sacked if their performance is not up to scratch. It was a laughable claim then; it's even more manifestly absurd now after the bank bailouts, which have showed that it isn't public services that are an ivory tower, but big business, where catastrophically bad performance, far from being punished, continues to be rewarded, and if people are sacked, they receive a handsome severance package.

But, far from being an ivory tower, education has been at the core of all of the social mutations of the last thirty years. With parents stressed and overworked, with the family disintegrating (even as it assumes a kind of hyper-normativity), education is increasingly required to take on socialisation and pastoral care tasks, and to contain and manage a kind of inchoate discontent that certainly isn't being expressed in political terms. Post-16 education has been massively expanded, without a commensurate increase in resources, so lecturers now have to deal with more and more students who don't really want to be doing academic study, but who are effectively forced into staying on at school. Teachers and lecturers find themselves in an impossible position, having to continually switch between the disciplinary role of authority figure and the consumer role of 'providing a service'.

via mrzine.monthlyreview.org

This was thoughtful. Fisher's remarks summarize things nicely.

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Day of Silence: April 20th 2012 by sheamusburns

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:40:44 -0700

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The Puritanical Trap

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 21:56:17 -0700

The Puritanical Trap by John T. Spencer from http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/the-puritanical-trap/ http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/9250/

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Canada's democracy deserves honest Leaders C-35

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:01:00 -0700

Conservative Party of Canada government LIES to Canadian Parliament, is held in contempt of Parliament, LIES to the Electorate during last federal election, secures a majority, and refuses to accept MINISTRRIAL RESPONSIBILITY for INCOMPETENCE, LIES, and CONTEMPT. Totonto Globe and Mail meekly suggests,

"But with the House of Commons now on break for the next two weeks, all sides will have some time to cool their jets on the issue."

This would be a terrible outcome for this issue. The press should be educating the public on parliamentary democracy and exposing the extent of wrong doing. We have a broken system here where the power of the Prime Minister is greater than Parliament and that includes the entire back bench of the Conservative Party. WRONG has been done and Parliament must correct this or we can be sure the lies and manipulation will continue.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/cabinet-would-have-known-true-f-...

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