Manna
Today was the 2nd day of the GE Foundation’s Developing Futures in Education 2010 Conference, an invite-only conference for the districts they fund throughout the country. This morning, we had the pleasure of hearing the many schemas for schools from David Jackson, partner in the Innovation Unit, an education futurist non-profit organization in London, UK. I learned a few things that are (for better or worse) irrefutable:
- Many of us are just not ready to think 3.0 when we’re still catching up to 2.0.
- Teachers specifically want something tangible when discussing anything about the immediate or abstract future.
- We have little faith that our colleagues as a whole will want to let go of their power structure within the system.
- Many of us are still waiting for the manna to drop from the sky, or the higher-ups.
By manna, I’m referring to the nutrition that came from the heavens when the Israelites needed some nourishment in their travels through the dessert. But for the purposes of this post, I’m also referring to the idea that someone from the higher-ups, whether it be collegiate think tanks, corporation-funded non-profits, or the Secretary of Education. Believe what you will, the system perpetuates the status quo, and the profit models for education currently support millions of dollars going into third party vendors to move what we call standards wherever those in power see fit.
Therefore, when looking at the models Mr. Jackson provided, I pondered for a bit about the work many teachers are doing across the country to truly move the work forward, and the way we need to think about student learning as a whole. Then, when time for feedback came, I stood up in front of the crowd and said, “Well, this is great, and we’re intrigued by the possibilities, but if we’re really going to do the work, it has to come from us. It has to come from the ground up, not the top down. The status quo is the status quo because of this model. Rarely does real change come from the higher ups; the change has to come from students, parents, teachers, and anyone who considers themselves allies to our cause.”
I got a light applause. Appreciated, yes, but the more I thought about the future, the more it made me wonder the sort of curve we’re going to have to slide down to get true change. I sat down, had a glass of water, and just hoped for the best. Educators are practitioners, yes, but we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.
And if our hands are still cupped waiting outside, we better have a huge canteen as well.
Jose, who’s looking to reflect more on this as we go on this journey …
by Barnett on July 13, 2010
Saturday’s New York Times brought us a fascinating article on robot technology and teaching. In their piece Benedict Carey and John Markoff describe the cutting-edge developments underway where “highly programmed machines” with motion tracking and speech recognition tools can engage humans and “rival” some teaching tasks. In one investigation, reported in the NYT article, a robot named “RUBI” was found to significantly improve the vocabulary of two handfuls of toddlers.
No doubt artificial intelligence can greatly enhance learning opportunities for the growing diversity of students entering our public schools. So many other industries and professions —whether in automobile manufacturing or in medicine —increasingly are investing in technology to enhance productivity and advance professional practice.
But as one executive of a company that makes a remotely controlled robot made perfectly clear: “The problem with autonomous machines is that people are so unpredictable, especially children” and “it’s impossible to anticipate everything that can happen” in a classroom. As Carey and Markoff note, “If robots are to be truly effective guides…they will have to do what any good teacher does: learn from students when a lesson is taking hold and when it is falling flat.”
If you do not quite get this point, just turn to another piece in the Saturday edition of the Times, pointing to the large growth in Teach for America — a high-profile effort to recruit recent young graduates of top-flight universities, who receive only a few weeks of basic training before they enter some of the nation’s highest needs schools. Here’s what reporter Michael Winerip writes about Lilianna Nguyen, a recent Stanford graduate, who is struggling to teach a sixth-grade math class about negative numbers.
(Liliana) prepared definitions to be copied down, but the projector was broken. She’d also created a fun math game, giving every student an index card with a number. They were supposed to silently line themselves up from lowest negative to highest positive, but one boy kept disrupting the class, blurting out, twirling his pen, complaining he wanted to play a fun game, not a math game.
“Why is there talking?” Ms. Nguyen said. “There should be no talking.”
“Do I have to play?” asked the boy.
“Do you want to pass summer school?” Ms. Nguyen answered.
The boy asked if it was O.K. to push people to get them in the right order.
“This is your third warning,” Ms. Nguyen said. “Do not speak out in my class.”
This is where the nuance of knowing your students well as individuals and having a deep understanding of child development, sociological interactions in a classroom, and behavior management — as well as varied pedagogical techniques in math — makes the difference in what gets learned. And no robot can do it all. Nor can an ill-prepared and under-supported teacher.
We need Ms. Nguyen and thousands more like her, but we need them and those who support them to make a full commitment to the preparation, support and ongoing professional development it takes to become an excellent teacher.
