Here are some great thoughts about why we collect data surrounding student growth in an authentic way.
I hope that we are on the way to more deep project-based learning opportunities for kids.Here is a great chart showcasing the difference between projects and project-based learning.
What type of teacher are you. This blog may explain.
A piece about the importance of learning networks and the strength of things like edcamp.
How do we get kids to learn after 3:05 without making it mandatory?
We are always looking for grants that fit our dreams and passions. This seems like a great clearinghouse.
Research about the power of moving schools to more intrinsic motivation continues to overwhelm me in a positive way. Here is another piece on the topic.
Does authentic assessment produce better quality data that minimizes cheating? Great thoughts in this article.
Higher Order Thinking Strategies and Tools seem like they were an educational wave that should have taken more of us with them. These research-based ideas can add to cooperative learning, reflective learning, and project based learning.
How do we connect kids with the concept of compassion. This TED talk attempts to start the conversation.
Free lesson plans surrounding Common Core standards.
Is there a way for us to do asynchronous digital citizenship or does it require community conversation?
This is some stretch curriculum ideas for middle school, but it would be perfect for a high school economics classroom. Make economics come to life through these videos.
The Urban Ecology Center is one of my favorite dreams that has come true. The city of Milwaukee now has three locations where the staff of the Urban Ecology Center helps kids and community members connect with nature and foster an understanding of place. This dream began when one man looked at the possibility of Riverside Park becoming reborn into a place of wonder from a place of crime and urban decay. Though I live six hours away in Saint Louis, I can still feel the power of this dream on the community of Milwaukee and beyond. The video below showcases how the Urban Ecology Center is changing communities one hike at the time. In Saint Louis, we have an incredible system of well-supported county and state parks that give our students and families and opportunity to connect with nature, but there is more work to be done. How do we support the inherent desire of families to find happiness, peace, and connectedness with nature? How do we model this for families in nature? How do we make sure that families have the resources and supplies to make this possible? Schools and communities needs to continue to support ways to connect families to communities especially the natural beauty of their community. Thanks to Ken, Beth, and the entire staff of the Urban Ecology Center for living this dream and being models for the rest of us.
The video below got me thinking about the future of science education. There is no subject that is more stuck in tradition with the easier road forward that science. Every business and university is pumping money into STEM classes, looking for partnerships, begging teachers to do it differently. There is truly a treasure trove for resources in this area including grants, experts, and opportunities, but too many science educators are still making volcanoes, foam ball solar systems, and having students decorate poster boards for the science fair. Everyday science doesn't happen in rows in classrooms. It happens outside. It happens when students interact with nature. It happens when students are talking about real, serious adult problems surrounding food, water, and energy. Students will never be future scientists learning science in a classroom. Put down the books, pick up the sticks. Stop with the multiple choice tests (science is never multiple choice) and start having kids keep a scientific journal. Have your student engage in a citizen science project, do an energy audit in your school, test the water quality in your fountains, analyze the impact of noise or indoor air quality in your classrooms. Leave some room for the unknown. Create an authentic audience. It is no longer about resources. It is about the will to do things the right way. Push back against the standardization of science for the healthy of our kids and our planet.
I'm ready to do this whole thing differently. It is rare when a mid-career teacher, principal, parent, or anyone else really used these words with the genuine gusto to carry this desire to reality. It is hard to shed the baggage of the past, push aside your mental models, and embrace a new path. Systems grow roots. Change becomes really hard. The more that I read and experience the concept of design thinking and design thinking in education, the more that it seems like it is a way forward for people and schools that are beginning to grow roots. How can more schools create space for design thinking in their growth process? How can we allow the necessary adult failure inherent in design thinking to occur safely? How can we build a passion for new and better ways to serve our dynamic system? I'm thankful this break to give more thought to moving systems forward in a sustainable way that results in healthy kids, families, and communities.
Being part of a healthy learning community means so much more than producing kids that can memorize knowledge and do well on multiple choice tests. This fact seems to be growing into common acceptance in larger and larger circles in our nation, but the question remains about what the rest of the learning should look like. What opportunities and experiences for growth should we provide students in order that we build the whole child? What skills, knowledge, and understandings are necessary to help to mold our future leaders, citizens, and stewards, so that they can fulfill their duty to leave the planet better than they found it.
Below is a great video about the habits of highly empathetic people. Empathy seems like one of those necessary cogs that we should be nurturing in our kids at school as often as that we can. The second chunk of sharing comes from the Center for Ecoliteracy. It highlights five areas that seems like the starting point for a great conversation surrounding ideas and skills that should be filling our schools. See if those five vital practices ring true to you also.
It is a great time in our work as we are growing a model of education that is whole, healthy, and hopeful.
With a goal of nurturing students to become
ecoliterate, the Center for Ecoliteracy has identified five vital
practices that integrate emotional, social, and ecological intelligence.
They are described at greater length in our book, Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence (Jossey-Bass, 2012), from which the excerpt below is taken.
We
work to inspire teachers to use a variety of learning opportunities
that help students consider and apply these practices in a diverse range
of contexts. These practices allow students to strengthen and extend
their capacity to live sustainably.
1. Developing Empathy for All Forms of Life
encourages students to expand their sense of compassion to other forms
of life. By shifting from our society's dominant mindset (which
considers humans to be separate from and superior to the rest of life on
Earth) to a view that recognizes humans as being members of the web of
life, students broaden their care and concern to include a more
inclusive network of relationships. 2. Embracing Sustainability as a Community Practice
emerges from knowing that organisms do not exist in isolation. The
quality of the web of relationships within any living community
determines its collective ability to survive and thrive. By learning
about the wondrous ways that plants, animals, and other living things
are interdependent, students are inspired to consider the role of
interconnectedness within their communities and see the value in
strengthening those relationships by thinking and acting cooperatively. 3. Making the Invisible Visible
assists students in recognizing the myriad effects of human behavior on
other people and the environment. The impacts of human behavior have
expanded exponentially in time, space, and magnitude, making the results
difficult if not impossible to understand fully. Using tools to help
make the invisible visible reveals the far-reaching implications of
human behavior and enables us to act in more life-affirming ways. 4. Anticipating Unintended Consequences
is a twofold challenge of predicting the potential implications of our
behaviors as best we can, while at the same time accepting that we
cannot foresee all possible cause-and-effect associations. Assuming that
the ultimate goal is to improve the quality of life, students can adopt
systems thinking and the “precautionary principle” as guidelines for
cultivating a way of living that defends rather than destroys the web of
life. Second, we build resiliency by supporting the capacity of natural
and social communities to rebound from unintended consequences. 5. Understanding How Nature Sustains Life
is imperative for students to cultivate a society that takes into
account future generations and other forms of life. Nature has
successfully supported life on Earth for billions of years. Therefore,
by examining the Earth's processes, we learn strategies that are
applicable to designing human endeavors.
