No child left behind

 As education feels as thought its shifting towards a more "business" model its becoming increasingly more apparent that the powers at be seem to "not care" about the school districts that seem to be, based on test scores, not producing future business leaders. However when Ken Robinson say that if these struggling school districts and demographics are assisted in the way the should be we could add $1 trillion to the US GDP, when I think about this Im ask myself, what gives? Robinson argues that its not that the powers at be don't try to help these struggling demographics, it's just that they're doing it the wrong way. To sit a child down and expect them to work on an assignment. They're not interested in diligently and quietly is a difficult ask. It's not that children can't do these things, in fact, there are many children that thrive in these types of environments. But this is not a "one-size-fits-all" solution. Robinson argues that we should be nurturing student individuality, not conformity. Instead of pushing every child to be good at math and science, push them to be interested in these subjects along with social studies, physical education, and education in the arts. If we are to close these gaps, we need to stop looking at schools as a business and looking at schools as a diverse playground to nurture students interests and social lives.

Comments

  1. Kara McElwrathFebruary 5, 2025 at 5:28 PM

    As you've figured out by now, Sir Ken Robinson is a favorite of mine. I love what he says about curiosity being the engine to achievement. If we fostered more curiosity than compliance in schools, our students would thrive. You've already heard me say that learning is not pizza and teaching is not a delivery system. Our schools cannot be greater than the teachers they employ. We need to invest in our teachers because our teachers invest in our students. Death Valley isn't dead; it's dormant. Under the right conditions, Death Valley flourishes. Under the right conditions, our students will thrive.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learn as you teach

Teaching, like many professions, requires a lot of on the job training and experience in order for one to be successful at it. One way to get this on the job training is to ask questions of your veteran colleagues, the difference between a three-year teacher and a first year teacher is immeasurable, I know that even as a paraprofessional. For class this week, we looked at a lot of tips and tricks from veteran teachers for new teachers so that they could be better prepared for their first year. One of the things that stuck out the most to me was the idea that you learn as you teach, which sounds like an oxymoron, but I think there's a lot of wisdom to that. You should own up to your mistakes, you should pay attention to the way you're teaching your lesson and see if the students are interested in what you have to say. Don't enter the classroom as a first year teacher thinking that you know everything you need to know about how to be a teacher. The biggest piece of advice tha...
Read more

Are we teaching math correctly?

For my blog today, I decided to watch the TED talk by Conrad Wolfram who argues for the teaching of math using computers. As someone who has "struggled" a great deal with math I spent my childhood telling myself I wasn't good at math so it could excuse the fact that I didn't understand math the way it was being taught to me. I genuinely used to think that there were people with math oriented brains. Granted, there are people who are just naturally better at math, just like there's people who are naturally better at basketball or tennis. But I wouldn't say there's such a thing as a "math oriented brain". Wolfram talks about the falling interest in math education, however our world is becoming more and more dependent on technology, which consequently means the world is becoming more and more dependent on math. Wolfram argues in this TED talk that the reason why people are feeling the way I just described is because we're not teaching math in sc...
Read more

Minecraft as an educational tool.

With the irony of the Minecraft movie subsiding, I want to talk about how much of a cultural phenomenon this video game really is. I started playing Minecraft when I was 12 years old in 2009 when the alpha version of the game was released, I am now 27 and still play Minecraft. Furthermore, working in a school with children who are the age that I was when I was first playing Minecraft and hearing them still talk about playing the game with their friends is genuinely mesmerizing to me. Video games often have finite life cycles, but Minecraft is different, why is that? I ask myself that question a lot, but I do think I'm sort of reaching an answer, I think what makes Minecraft so fantastic is it capability to lending itself to individual expression. It acts more like a game engine than a game if used in this way and I've recently been thinking about using Minecraft as a tool within schools. The sky is the limit for a game like Minecraft. Of course, it can be used in stem classes t...
Read more