EDU Trending: Teaching? Anyone?
With qualified, certified teachers racing from the classroom as fast as they can, who is teaching our kids? Districts reporting vacancies in the hundreds and even thousands are recruiting substitute teachers (certification not required), college students regardless of subject major, others with zero college credits, most with no teacher training, subject expertise, or classroom management skills. So, who is teaching our kids? It seems that any available, willing, and literate person will do.
We are in this situation because all the reasons that make teaching a gratifying, respected profession have been stripped away. No longer can teachers develop innovative, creative lessons that motivate students by reflecting their interests and voice. Instead, teachers have been ordered to use scripted check lists of facts that might be included on a standardized test but offer little context or reason for students to engage or come to school at all.
Add this to four presidential candidates who - in a recent debate - promised to “eliminate the Department of Education” while two of them declared that “breaking the backs of teachers’ unions” would be a good thing. Maybe good for those who would censor teachers and politicize schooling, state-by-state, with no national norms and measures. But for our students, not good at all.
No wonder that after years of no input, no say, and low pay, teachers have given their notice.
Why squabble about what should be included in a well-rounded, honest curriculum? Or demand that schools fix the stubborn education gap? Why pretend that either is possible without real teachers who know how to cultivate student participation to make curriculum relevant and exciting. If we do not stand up for teachers, our children will be suspended over an ever-deepening abyss of knowledge, critical thinking, social/emotional growth, and lack what it takes to succeed in life beyond school.
Take heart. Despite the educational morass, positive change is underway and taking hold in school after school, city after city. It is an old, proven, and successful approach to education, made new for 21st century students and the world they will inherit. There are many sources and exemplars, many reasons to hope. Here is one. And see News and Views.
News and Views: Everything Old Is New Again
Picture this: In schools across America, teachers are heard, valued and happy. Parents are involved, welcome collaborators. Students are supported, inquisitive, joyous, and thriving. A fairy tale? No. Not science fiction either. This is education – right here in the United States - that is succeeding on every level. Why? Because it is not test-driven. It is student driven, in keeping with 21st century needs.
Whether public or charter, elementary, middle, or high school, schools that are succeeding have removed themselves from the educational firestorm consuming most of the country to practice a pedagogy that has been productive for students since the days of the one-room schoolhouse.
It is schooling rooted in the practical, hands-on, and entrepreneurial values of the past, recalibrated for today through real-world thinking, learning, and doing.
It is a new educational paradigm clearly and eloquently delineated in the book World Class Learners by Dr. Yong Zhao, an internationally renowned author and professor in educational policy and psychology. By viewing old and reliable values through a 21st century lens, in 10 succinct chapters, Dr. Zhao offers an argument and path for students’ academic and personal success that benefits all stakeholders.
Dr. Zhao believes that a good education is one that “liberates, empowers, and enhances” students by “respecting them as human beings and supporting their passions, curiosity, and talent.” Every school that facilitates students to accomplish their goals and grow - personally and academically…that offers children opportunities to independently problem-solve in the real world… that proactively nurtures the whole child - practices the tenets in this book.
One exemplar is embodied in the students at Bulldog Tech Middle School. For specifics on how and why this school works, go to https://www.merleschell.com/blog/bulldog-tech-learning-is-doing. Bottom line: For everything old to be new again, it must be more than a revival. It must be a reinvention, designed purposefully to help our children achieve their own happiness and success in today’s global marketplace.
Question of the Day: One True Thing
Schools that work are not cookie cutter, and often have different primary goals. Yet, they all share the same core values that emanate from one central concept, listed below:
a) Relationship building
b) Social/emotional well-being
c) Collaboration
e) Project-based learning
f) Student voice and choice
For the correct answer, please go to https://www.merleschell.com/blog/bulldog-tech-learning-is-doing
From Me to You: What Do We Do in the Meantime?
Despite the early conversion of retail stores to Halloween paraphernalia, this is not a typical Fall. People have more on their minds than football, crisp, cool evening air, and next month’s trick-or-treaters. Even the coming riot of reds, oranges, and yellows that beckon leaf peepers is not as compelling this year.
We are consumed by the exponential rise of unskilled and unqualified people, bestowed with the title of teacher, who have no idea how to run a classroom, never mind how to teach the students in it.
In the moment, do not hyperventilate. Instead, take a deep breath and check Google for positive, fun, academic options that can turn a dull, scripted lesson into an engaging, interactive learning experience for students K-12. Most come with complete lesson plans, and many have accompanying videos.
Here are a few recommendations to pass along:
The power of words is front and center in a high school English class assignment, asking students to write their own Six Word Memoir. Actually, this is a fun and challenging assignment for all grades. So is slam poetry.
Math Antics videos take the mystery out of all things math with easy to understand graphics.
For inspiring science exploration, tune in to Wards World is a bonanza of fascinating activities and experiments that will make us all want to become scientists. After all, who wouldn’t want to make a naked egg?
These suggestions are not a substitute for qualified real teachers with appropriate training and credentials. Nor a panacea for unruly students. They are stop gap measures to build students’ engagement and tickle their curiosity to explore and enjoy learning new things - no matter who sits behind the desk at the front of the room.
Fortifying the current group of teacher stand-ins is what we do in the meantime. Simultaneously, we should study new learning paradigms that intentionally and purposefully inspire and motivate students not for a few minutes but all day long. For these are the schools where inquisitive children learn how to thrive and grow independently in the real world.