Dan Gross

This just came in today’s Milwaukee Journal: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=796646

Basically, the state’s largest school district could break into many smaller districts. As a whole and like many urban districts in large cities, MPS consumes a lot of resources just to sustain itself. However, it doesn’t produce results commesurate to its size as measured by state tests or by the majority of people who have passed through its doors. (I am sure there are some wonderful people who have been through MPS’ “system” over the years.)

Once again, I continue to have serious concerns about our educational system as a whole – from large to small districts what has become the “Industrialization” of our educational process.

Passport Distance Learning offers Museum Storytelling

Laugh, listen, participate, learn and experience the Milwaukee Public Museum through story.

Storytelling has existed as long as humanity has had language. It’s the world of myth, of history; of the imagination…it explains life. Every culture has its stories, legends and every culture has its storyteller, often revered figures with the magic of the tale in their voices and minds.

Join storytellers at the Milwaukee Public Museum September 25^th at 9:00 am and 1:30 pm central time to see and hear the story of how and where the first kindergarten in the United States began. This 40 minutes interactive program is design for students in grades K-5 and includes hands on activities. Connections can be made via IP or ISDN at a cost of $25.00 per end point.

Space is limited and will be filled on a first come first serve basis. To reserve your space contact Gaye-Lynn Clyde today at 414-278-6146 or clyde@mpm.edu.

This has been bothering me a little bit lately, so I just want to get it off my chest and my mind.

I grew up in a family where my mother worked as a dedicated educator in a private school. She made very little money (4 digit salaries most of her career) and reinvested most of that back into her classroom purchasing materials and providing experiences for her students. As the teacher’s kid, I was always one of the first ones there in the morning, and usually the last one to leave – a habit that carried over into my own work ethic when I went into education 2 decades ago.

We had textbooks, and workbooks, and we took “SRA” tests. We didn’t have computers in the classroom ~ or cell phones ~ heck, we didn’t have calculators because they cost too much. The school shared an Encyclopedia Britannica set located down the hall in a small and cramped library with a bunch of well loved and taken care of titles that likely my mother had read when she went through school.

I understand the sacrifice that teachers have made in education. Our family ate later than everyone else. As I got older, I was a latch-key kid, letting myself in by myself when I walked home from the bus which dropped me off in any weather about .75 of a mile from my parents home. (And yes, it was uphill on the way home!)

But today I see teachers backed by strong unions complaining that they “get no respect.” They show up slightly before the first bell, leave after a contractually demanded 30 minute work period. They demand discounts and special treatment, yet often those things don’t translate to the classroom. I hate to see the amount of materials and services that each day are wasted by educators that feel “I don’t get paid for that” while others could benefit greatly and must go without.

In my circle of friends I’ve heard accusations that teachers shouldn’t stay late or work outside of school because it will become EXPECTED of them. Don’t fix the technology, because it is someone else’s job. I was once grieved for moving my desk so that my back was no longer to my window.

A typical classroom I walk into today has about 25 students in it ~ sometimes more. If each student received just 15 minutes of individual attention in the 6 instructional hours available there would still not be enough time to validate every child. Take from that passing times, assemblies (as another friend just experienced, getting students to sell magazines improves their achievement how?), and all of the time lost to general silliness that includes discipline problems and administrative oversight like testing to make sure our schools aren’t “failing.” It’s hard to make sure that children are succeeding when we set ourselves up for failure with “no child left behind.”

Where teachers once used to set benchmarks and deal with “scope and sequence” today we have state and national standards, and universal textbooks with content set by states with strong influence over those textbook manufacturers. In many classrooms themes and activities have been replaced by chapters in the textbook. Suggested lesson plans in the teacher’s edition have become THE lesson plans for the classroom so we can guarantee McDonald’s like consistency from classroom to classroom and school to school. New teachers in the past 10 years have known nothing different. In many classrooms I visit I now feel like the “art” of teaching has been lost to the “application” of a formula.

At the same time we have wonderful new robust communications networks in our schools. 38 states are now part of Internet2. Wiring loans and grants over the past 10 years have brought fiber connections to remote communities, and placed computers in almost every classroom. Cell phone providers now offer high speed services in more communities which include podcasting services, internet access and unlimited text messaging. Moreover an increasing number of students in K12 are walking around with these devices in their pockets! Web2.0, or the “Read/Write Web” has turned every child into a publisher, and given every user the opportunity to have a voice.

Yet our textbooks, which take 6-7 years to come to print and be approved and deployed, don’t yet know how to embrace virtual worlds, social networking, and instant publishing. Our classroom doors remain “closed” because teachers have not received training. (And it is not solely a question of access to training, for where it is available it is often underutilized.) Where teachers have gotten trained, filters tied to funding legislation and criminal repercussions mean that teachers can’t seize the teachable moment with students. And for the few cases where access exists and filters don’t provide insurmountable hurdles, we have Acceptable Use Policies restrictive enough to not put any child “at risk.”

All of this perhaps wouldn’t bother me as much as it does, but it hits really close to home. I see the effects on my own children. Without calling anyone in particular out, for all of the accountability and prescriptive teaching we have put in place, we’ve forgotten we are teaching children. Money flows freely for special education services while budgets tighten in other areas. Field trips are cut. TAG services have been squeezed. Energy and transportation costs have gone through the roof. And unions are telling teachers that it should not be THEM that spend the extra time making sure the children are not the losers.

If you’re one of my 7 readers – I will admit you’re probably not who I am talking to. I really want to give my son’s teacher this year the benefit of the doubt. I know it is the system that is broken, not entirely the teacher’s fault. But I sure wish there was more than 10-15 minutes in the day to help inspire and lead my sons, offer them opportunities and help them become future leaders. I do everything I can to spend that time myself, interested in what happens when I am not around, and working with my boys and their friends through Scouts and sports. I feel bad for those children whose parents can’t or won’t make those same commitments.

Perhaps this isn’t the most upbeat post I will ever write ~ but as I said, it’s something I feel that I need to just get off my chest so it doesn’t keep weighing me down. I sometimes think that I would love to home school my boys. Maybe even hire a private tutor for even just a few hours per day ~ an outstanding private educator.

I imagine what it would have been like to be a parent pioneer on the new frontier. You’ve left what you know behind and picked up and headed west. From cities, to small towns, and soon to rural areas that not only looked different, but provided fundamental different challenges. New foods, new soils, no shelter – maybe even the language was different. Would there be a blacksmith? Or would you learn to make your own tools? Would you create something new to solve a problem never before experienced in the “Old New World” ~ or would your children? Did you bring along textbooks, eager to home school your children, carrying their slates and telling them – “if you study hard, you won’t have to work the land like your father.”

Maybe hindsight makes this sound funny, but I have no doubt those families weren’t always in agreement. The discomfort from moving from one paradigm to another produces hundreds, thousands, innumerable points of contention on how to get from “here” to “there.”

There is no doubt in my mind that today’s commercial farmers need to receive extensive education to compete in a global supply chain that has elevated the “green thumb” to an act of science and art of production. Somewhere the world changed. Hard work alone wasn’t enough.

I am sure that many who read Will Richardson’s newly republished 2006 post in Edutopia (http://www.edutopia.org/new-face-learning) will cry foul. After all we’ve “figured it out.” Right?

We have a formula for education that strictly scripts out what students need to learn, and when, and checks for understanding kicking the ones that need slight remediation back into the system so that “no child is left behind.” That isn’t tongue-in-cheek humor; it’s the recognition of our own arrogance that somehow we can stop human adaptation and evolution by choosing not to be a part of it.

In the two years since Will first wrote this, Web2.0 has exploded. And I predict it will continue to grow exponentially.

It is no more possible to drink from the fire hose and consume the product of all human knowledge now than it was then, or in 1960, or in 1860. What we have observed is that good education today includes teaching students where and how to dip their cup into this stream in order to pull out the most relevant and best points to discuss and learn from.

The Read/Write web gives our young people the ability to quickly find and take other’s thoughts and ideas, build upon them and mash them up, and release them back into the stream slightly improved for the next incremental update. Ideas can ferment, boil over, and be contributed to by dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of authors – or they can slip below the surface where they lurk near the bottom of the stream until they are needed again. And the best part is, it doesn’t matter if you’re NBC or some 8 year old kid. You can be in Urban City, USA, or in a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. (Props to my good friend @Kobus who is doing exactly this.)

As a parent, as an educator, as an administrator – how willing am I to push my kids out to that frontier? How do I balance CIPA concerns with students becoming literate in this new landscape? How much longer can we make this old model work? With a working life of 40-50 years post graduation what service are we giving today’s students by training them for a future where they will no longer be the ones at the high end, but filling out the remnants of what yesterday’s future might have looked like?

Someday, we’ll be able to look back on this and reflect on how much the dry erase marker was an improvement over chalk and a slate and how far we came because of it.

Those that succeed in this new world will be just looking forward to students concentrating on reaching new markets spanning continents and galaxies. (Just 50 years ago, a moon landing seemed impossible.)

There is a whole lot of high level speak here – these are reforms of ideals – not exactly the kind of things where the rubber of change meets the road of the classroom. But put me on Will’s wagon here, his bandwagon if you must. I want to see my children grow up in a system where they learn leadership and collaboration. I want to see them learn to be able to grab relevant information as it happens, mentally process that information, and be able to intelligently move through 21^st Century skills with agility and grace rather than see them stuck in a rut of “retraining” and “obsolescence” every few years.

100 years is an awful long time to someone who only sees day to day. But it is a blink of the eye on the ever expanding horizon of where we will be some day. It is this new frontier that I see my future in, and therefore my children. So, circle your wagons. Dig in. Make sure nobody gets left behind. I’ve got a land claim I need to go cash in on.