This site–and the larger (book) endeavor it reflects–is about the future. It’s about change. It’s about a massive (re)imagining of how we do teaching and learning. It is, in large measure, about technology and the verbs we use in conjunction with technology: harness, maximize, tailor. I got involved in projects like this, or hear about initiatives like this one, or read comments that champion a wholly new way of structuring education–more and more all the time–and I really want to go off and paint the boat, fist in the air, riding that big white horse of technology into the golden sun(re)rise of public education.
But I have this knee jerk reaction where I also don’t want to do any of those things at all. I want to stay more or less right where I am, both feet on the ground, hands buried wrist-deep in the dark rich mud of teaching and learning. Firmly so. Rigidly (?) so.
And what is the stuff of my strong and strange resistance?
Part of it is rooted in my experience of being a successful teacher. I had four walls, no wireless, 33 desks, and a packet of transparencies. I had a frequently jammed copier, whiteboard markers, and my wits. I taught EL kids and SpEd kids and angry kids and poor kids and I was, by just about any measure devised, very successful. So my knee-jerk to narratives of dramatic-change-now is: Really? and Are you sure? Because I know that I can dramatically improve student achievement in the prevailing educational context, and I know many, many others can do likewise.
My knee wants to take the discussion back to first principles. Do we need to do everything different or do we need to do everything better? Obviously, there’s interconnectivity there, and a lack of mutual exclusivity, but I think it’s an important distinction nonetheless. Like the charter school zealots who believe we should structure an educational system to maximize the principle of choice over the principle of equity, I wonder if we make a mistake of structuring our reform discussions around the principle of change-change-change rather than talk about how to make things better.
My knee wants to say that we’re doing education so poorly right now, that even if we bring about the type of dramatic change to the way kids experience content delivery, or receive services from schools, or interact with adults and each other, it won’t bring about the kind of better results we need so very badly. Those changes will still be run through the filter of an education system that takes kids who start of with less and gives them less of everything, again and again and again. I’m not reading, hearing, seeing enough from the school 2.0 (or 3.0!) folks to convince me that this will change. What we’re giving poor kids and kids of color may change, but I fear they’ll still get less of whatever that it is, exactly.
My knee wants to say it’s a little afraid that the reform 2.0 folks are lining up with those who promote an excellence agenda, one that says our top kids must be prepared to be better than the top kids from other countries, and never mind what’s happening (or not) in Washington Heights, the RGV, or Deep East Oakland. This isn’t necessarily so, and it isn’t unavoidable, but my knee wants to constantly shout that as we try to (re)imagine what the public schools of 2030 will look, we must do so from the perspective of those schools have never well served.
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Great post! I do think the problems in education stem from the fact that we have become increasingly more and more isolated. We worked harder and with a greater diversity of student needs and we continued to do a better and better job with only chalk and determination. So, I agree that the future for our most vulnerable kids…is bleak if we continue to try to educate them in a system designed to filter and sort out the ones who would probably make it without us. If we were fixing boats the system would have us working on the engine…tune it up… replacing parts…updating the mechanics of the system that drives the boat. What we do not see (afterschool and at home here) is the hull that has thousands of tiny holes (and some larger gashes) cut into the structure so that it slowly takes on water until no matter how good the engine the boat begins to sink.
We need to have social services and food banks and health care and the host of “other” groups that are engaged to help kids in on the education. We need to harness technology to assess and help kids from the get go. We are the only institution in place ready to do that and do it in time to help the boat before it if beyond repair.
There is an interesting article on the Boston program “City Connects”, where the schools have figured out how to do this for about $500 per child.
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/interview-when-city-connects-helps-whole-child-achievement-gaps-shrink
So, I have hope but it is not with the way we do business now…but it does involve those with “wrist buried deep in the rich mud of teaching.” I do not think that the dramatic changes some propose are necessary. What is necessary is more communication, a focus on learning and not on political issues and psychosis level litigation avoidance behaviors, and well paid and empowered teaching core that is given the green light and funding to marshal the forces necessary to help kids both in the engine of imagination and learning and to keep the hull strong and sound.
Shannon