As I went through Cycle two’s readings, I began to see that
many of the articles referred to making education practical and current in
today’s world. This leads me right
into what should schools teach?
What Should Schools Teach?
Since I am a current Kindergarten teacher, my initial
reaction is that I need to teach to the standards so that my students can
become successful. Also, if my
students have mastered the Common Core Standards than I will see them become
more confident in themselves and their own learning. However, keeping in mind what I learned from Cycle One, I
know that there is much more to teaching than the standards. This leads me to ponder about my own
teaching and what should I teach in my classroom. I do believe that I need to teach the standards but how do I
go about teaching them. This is
what I feel really brings this Cycle’s information to life. Technology, technology,
technology! My students LOVE using
technology. Technology is a part
of the lifestyle today. Everywhere
we go people are using technology, whether it is through their phone, lap top,
ipad, tablets, or a variety of other devices. Technology has become a part of our lifestyle and we, as
teachers, need to bring it into the classroom and have technology be a part of
our learning. I am thankful to
have an interactive whiteboard in my classroom, as well as I have access to a
computer lab and a tablet lab. I
have quickly learned that my students are fully engaged when we are using some
form of technology.
This brings me to the article titled Learning By Playing Video Games in the Classroom, which highlighted
the type of schooling called Quest to Learn. Quest to learn is a structured school where students’
learning is organized around video games.
This idea was mind boggling to me.
I cannot imagine teaching my students only using video games. Where would all the social skills
go? Would our students be able to
interact in a positive way in society?
What about our students that lack the most simple technology
skills? Would our students be able
to collaborate with others face to face?
Many questions continued to come to mind as I read and thought more
about this article. As I reflect
on my current students learning I can see when there would be certain
situations that it would be very fun to engage my students in a video game type
learning. For example, when we
talk about where we live. It would
be fun to find a program where my students could design a city that they would
live in. Adding all the essential
needs in a city. We would be able
to discuss location of objects in the city, distance from different places,
etc. I can just imagine how
excited students would become being immersed in this form of technology. I also can see the benefits of making
teaching practical for the students and allow them to work in teams to
challenge and express their thinking.
This brings me to Geoff Mulgan’s idea of a Studio
School. In a Studio School a
majority of the curriculum is done through practical projects where the
students are learning by doing. The
webcast stated that this form of schooling is aimed at teenagers, however I can
see how even five and six year olds would really excel in this form of
schooling. I found this idea to be so fascinating
and I was eager to learn more about it. I went on a search to see if there was any Studio
Schools in the United States. I
found the following website for a Studio School in New York. http://www.studioschoolnyc.org/about_us.htm
Interestingly enough this school has been around since 1971,
where it opened as a one-room schoolhouse that taught 25 students’ ages 4 to
12. The students mission is
“educate the hearts and minds of children as we nurture the unfolding of their
authentic spirit and character.
Our students learn to value intellectual and creative ideas, and to take
pleasure in the process of discovery….” (The Studio School). As I continued to explore the website I
found that there are classes from the age of nearly two all the way through
middle school. This school has its
curriculum structured for exploring and mastering how to learn and how to
think. It empowers the students to
integrate what they learn with who they are. This school does teach specific skills like math,
reading, dance but instead of just teaching these skills this school provides
experiences for the students so that they can “take the skills and concepts
they are mastering and use them cohesively and in a productive manner.” I believe providing experiences
integrating math, reading, science, social studies, and the fine arts are a
great way to promote learning and teach my students.
How Should Schools Be Held Accountable?
However, if I only teach through creating experiences for my
students, than how would I be held accountable? This led me to reflect upon the ways that I am currently
being held accountable at my job and my thoughts regarding this. Currently I am being held
accountable through two major systems, one being principal observations and the
other being standardized testing.
Let me briefly share my thoughts on both. Principal observations are a great interactive way for
teachers to be held accountable.
These observations are a time where Principals are in our classrooms
watching and critiquing our teaching.
At my school my principal does a wonderful job providing positive
remarks as to strengths and areas of improvement with our teaching and with the
way that she observes our students learning. I find this to be such a motivating time where I really feel
like I am being held accountable for what and how I am teaching in the
classroom. However, this does not
provide detailed data that states how my students are performing. That is where standardized testing
comes into play. Yes, even for my
kindergarten students! Even at the
beginning of the year, when some are only four years old and have just stepped
into their first classroom experience, we are testing them! At times I do believe we go a bit crazy
with testing. However, I do enjoy
diving into student data to help me determine my teaching weaknesses or where I
need to intervene with some of my students. I do believe that standardized testing is helping me be held
accountable but there is just TOO much of it! In Chapter 5, Cultural
Literacy and the Schools, Hirsch states “it appears the chief factor in
academic achievement is the time the student spends in studying the material to
be mastered.” (Hirsch, 115).
Meaning it is most crucial for teachers to be aware of the student’s
time on task. Interestingly
enough, my school just had a professional development afternoon where our
presenter had each grade level do a time on task evaluation of your entire day
at school. We had to do a time
audit that shared exactly when we were teaching, what we were teaching, and for
how long. If you have not ever
done this, do it! It was so
amazing to see how many little things take away from your entire day of
learning, like morning announcements. Doing this time audit allowed each grade level to be
held more accountable to students on task learning! Hirsch also stated “schools
across our nation should share common goals but their means for achieving goals
should be varied and adaptive.” (Hirsh 127). I believe that this simply makes sense. Curriculum should be shared across the
nation and we should be teaching similar things. However, should a lot of time be spent on teaching for a
test? This is a hot topic in
education today! The
following article, shares some of the side effects of standardized
testing. http://gazette.teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/howard-seeman/the-side-effects-of-standardized-testing/
This article makes me question standardized testing in its
validity to being practical and current in today’s world. Just one quote to end on, the article
shared “in inner-city schools, testing anxiety not only consumes about a third
of the year, …every minute of the school day…to be directed to a specifically
stated test-related skill.” Is
this making learning fun for our students? Are our students actually learning? Or should we reconsider creating those
well-rounded experiences, where our students can be exploring new ideas while
reconstructing older thoughts throughout all subject areas!
Hello, Caitlin! I’m Jihyeon from Korea.
ReplyDeleteI’d like to tell you that your post is so helpful to think of many things about my current situation. The impact of technology is so powerful in the classrooms that students are passionately engaging in the activities when technology involved. I can imagine how your kindergarten students react to the class when the gadgets are used. Even my high school students who apparently have the latest and newest tablet computers are actively participating in the class when they are in the computer lab, even though the computers are not as attractive as theirs. It might be quite easy to imagine how enthusiastic the students in Quest to Learn are, besides they are building games not just playing them. But I do have the same concern as you do. How would they be going to have social skills? How would they have opportunities to understand others who do not have the same opinion as theirs? It is not about the score results of state-wide test. I think many times the more important one might not be measured easily, because it is hard to transform intangible values into tangible ones so that we can see. In that perspective, I absolutely agree with your idea of “providing experiences integrating math, reading, science, social studies, and the fine arts are a great way to promote learning and teach students”. And it seems like it is trending in the name of interdisciplinary teaching, cross-curriculum, and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). http://www.steamedu.com/, http://www.namac.org/node/24925
As you mentioned, we should consider how we be held accountable about teaching our students. I envy how you’re getting positive feedback from your principal. Currently I’m working at a high school with more than 400 students in each grade level, so more than 1,200 students in total. It is almost impossible for the principal to monitor and give feedback to all teachers by himself. He often tries to do that, but in a rather superficial way. My co-workers seem to be a little intimidated about the idea of “being watched”, which is natural that I too feel that way sometimes. By the way, I read the article you made a link about “The side effects of standardized testing” with interest, finding out that something I’ve thought is just the opposite. It says that “Standardized tests are not a valid measure of a good education.” I couldn’t agree more. However, without those, how are we going to know students are achieving certain level of “facts” and “skills”? The problem is that there is a strong tendency to give full credit to standardized tests and label students accordingly. I think it’s time to integrate educational segments to create well-rounded tests not just teaching areas.
I’ve enjoyed reading your post so much. I should say that it’s wonderful to have vicarious experiences through reading what others think. I’d like to conclude my response with these proverbs that Hirsch quoted, which I found interesting and figure out everything has its flip side so it’s important to know the extremes and stay balanced.
“Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but many hands make light work. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. You’re never too old to learn, unless you happen to be an old dog trying to learn new trick.” Thank you for your insightful post and have a good day, Caitlin!
Caitlin,
ReplyDeleteWow, standardized testing in Kindergarten?!? I'm glad you get useful information from it, but I agree with you that there's definitely too much of it. Wow, even in kindergarten. I think the only thing I actually learned in kindergarten was how to share, and I don't think I did well at it (I learned reading and writing at home before kindergarten). As someone not involved in public schools directly (I teach private music lessons), I feel like standardized testing is a waste of time and money. Ever since beginning my master's, I felt like we should just give teachers the reins. How many cool, amazing experiences could you provide your students with, if you were only allowed to? And they'd certainly learn while doing it, too. Teachers of older grades can always ask their students to read or write about the experience or similar experiences that others have had; they can blog and interact with others on their experiences, and experiences can be about math or science. Anyway, I feel like there's a lot that schools could be doing, but they're being limited by having to teach to the tests.
I don't think Quest to Learn was entirely about video games, just that it was structured more like a video game. Students still had to read and write, and they also interacted with each other. Did you read about their social media platform, Being Me? I thought that was excellent. All the students, teachers, and parents on there, all teaching these kids how to effectively, safely, and politely navigate social media. I don't know about you, but I've had some pretty deep discussions on Facebook, that would not have been possible without it, due to a vast number of my friends living in multiple countries and time zones. I really felt like the big difference with Quest to Learn was not so much that it was fun like a game, but that it was engaging and relevant like a game. I've experienced this many times with my students. Learning new music is not always fun: often it's hard work and quite exhausting, mentally and sometimes physically. But I've seen my students enter a flow state as we work hard on it during their lessons and rehearsals. If I asked them if it was "fun," would they say yes? Probably not. But it was engaging, provided the immediate feedback that is so essential to flow states, and was relevant to my students, so they learned a lot.
That was a really cool Studio School you linked to! I really enjoyed exploring the website. I noticed it was private; private schools don't necessarily always have to participate in standardized testing. Which makes me think even more that standardized testing hinders what teachers can do.
The article on side effects of standardized testing was pretty harsh against them, even for me. However, I LOVED the bit about using student portfolios to evaluate them. Here in WA state, if you homeschool, that's one of the ways your child can be evaluated each year. That is looking at their performance and improvement, rather than how many times they can guess correctly, or how well they fill in a little bubble. I will say, though, that the article you sited on the side-effects of standardized testing made me dislike it even more!
Again, I'm really happy that at least you get some use from standardized testing.
Ashley
Caitlin,
ReplyDeleteI want to begin by saying how much I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the resources for this week. I found it interesting that you sought out more information and statistics about the studio school program, even finding one here in the United States. Connecting the topics from the readings this week into your own teaching was also very successful for you. As a high school teacher I am amazed at how you utilized technology in your classroom teaching with students of such a young age. It’s incredible that you are having such success utilizing technology with those students and how well they seem to already be able to use it.
After reading your thoughts a variety of ideas and questions arose for me regarding the topics of this cycle. First, as an elementary teacher using such an amount of technology with your students, do you ever worry that t is too much? This was the question that I raised when reading about the Quest to Learn (video game) school. I wondered if students from elementary and middle school are using technology on a consistent basis will they ever be able to learn without those tools? This is a constant worry for me in the high school setting. While I agree that technological tools are incredibly beneficial, I do worry about the amount children are using in today’s world. Students never seem to put down the phones, tablets, video games, etc. The constant use of these devices concerns me about a student’s ability to focus for longer periods when in a collegiate or workplace environment of their future.
I wanted to also comment about your thoughts on accountability of teachers and schools. My district also mixes the professional observations and standardized test scores for evaluation purposes. One question that keeps being brought up in our district is how can different administrators evaluate different teachers and yet claim “all are evaluated fairly”. While I personally have never been concerned about an evaluation, I do wonder about if a new administrator was brought into the school that did not like what I was doing. This is a concern for many teachers in my district and I wondered if that concern was shared by you as well?
I also very much agreed with your thoughts on Hirsh and standardized testing. Students across the country should know entering a class what will be covered and that no matter what teacher you have you will learn the same topics, knowledge, and skills. I think more teachers should embrace this view and see the benefits of working together on common standards and testing rather than closing themselves into a room for no outsiders to see. Most teachers that object to this idea in my school are the ones who have their “pet projects” that they do not want to stop doing because “the kids think its fun”. While I would agree that students may enjoy doing a certain project is that a rationale for doing it every year and not something different? I know that how schools are held accountable is a massive and complex issue, however I think it starts with the classroom teachers. It seemed as though you shared this view when you were discussing the “time audits” and how teachers at your school responded to that process. I thought that was a great concept and encouraging to see teachers “buy in”.
Thanks for writing,
Jeff Richards
Hi Caitlin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your work here. It generated some really nice discussion!
I was also pretty shocked that you were starting off kindergarten with standardized tests. My son is here in East Lansing, and I think he took one test this fall. The teacher showed it to us, but she pretty much laughed off learning anything from it except whether or not he could listen and follow directions. So, she learned he could do that pretty well. But I suppose for those kids who didn't really get what they were doing (I mean they have this fun classroom most days, with stations, and collaboration, and all of a sudden they have to spread out and work alone?), the results were not very valid in terms of showing what they can and can't do.
So I am definitely interested in what your four-year-olds are up to and how you roll back the results of their tests into your teaching.
I am not too surprised about the love for technology. I think it's awesome that you are embracing it. Teaching online like this has really changed my mind about what we can do. These new devices where kids can navigate and create so easily--I think it's promising for us as teaching. This is just another way to experiment with platforms for helping students organize their own learning. I thought Q2L, while giving us a lot to think about, really stressed those social skills around problem-solving. In that way, the technology can be about communication and organizing one's learning. I think that could start in kindergarten--so again, good for you in taking this on!
Thanks again for your work, I enjoyed reading your post!
Kyle