Below is an excerpt I wrote for a college class. As a follow up, I need feedback from all of YOU to demonstrate the power of blogging! Please react to my post and comment on the purpose of education from your point of view. Martin Luther King (1947) once said that education has two functions: utility and culture. He goes on to say that “It is intelligence plus character” that is the true purpose of education. I believe that dual purpose is still relevant today. We live in an increasingly complex, global society. Education must prepare students with the skills to live, work and thrive in this environment. This includes subject matter knowledge, but equally important will be skills such as communication, problem-solving, collaboration, information literacy, and character. Education must prepare students to be life-long learners in the truest sense of the term. Fewer and fewer unskilled labor jobs will exist. The future will depend on the ability of all individuals...
During a recent school improvement training we asked, “Why is the wild owl population in India decreasing?” After suspending disbelief that this question had anything to do with school improvement, the audience called out possibilities such as: Pollution Migration patterns Loss of habitat They seem plausible, but to pursue them would be folly as none of those would address the cause for the dwindling owl population. Unfortunately too often school improvement teams, in their sense of urgency to “fix” the problem , forget to study the problem and possible solutions. They forget that they likely need more data to confirm or deny any of their hypotheses. Time consuming work for sure, but better than the alternative… working on solutions that will have little to no effect on the issue. Victoria Burnhart in her article Multiple Measures indicates that Demographic and Achievement data are insufficient to identify root cause e.g. Number of owls this year compared to...
I was going through my in-basket and was about to "file" what I thought was a catalog and but as I quickly scanned the magazine I came across an interview with Carol Ann Tomlinson, the guru of differentiated instruction. Carol Ann was asked to describe the hallmarks of a differentiated classroom. Below is more or less an excerpt of what she said. The first thing I look for are student-teacher connections. Is the teacher really paying attention to the students, does he/she seem to be studying the students to find out what they are thinking e.g. opinions, thoughts, feelings, perceptions etc.... All of the information "feeds into instruction" and drives lesson planning and motivation to differentiate. Another thing I look for is a sense of community in the classroom. Is there a sense of team in the classroom. Baseball is a good analogy. Different players, playing different positions, but all working toward a common goal. It's very important for students to unders...
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