Group items tagged

I was once asked by a group of educational state representatives if the flipped classroom would allow them to hire less teachers.  

They had the misguided notion that teaching is the pouring out of information from one person (the teacher) into another (the student).

teaching is a social interaction between teacher and students and students and students.  Our students need us more than they need a video made by someone they don’t know teaching them something they may or may not want to learn about.

To name a few, the national curriculum now includes coding, schools should now be teaching character, or ‘grit’ alongside subjects,

social learning - the use of peer review through social-media like sites where students can learn from and help each other through peer-review.

Find, Filter, Apply – Students no longer need to know everything, just how to find it, how to filter to get the most relevant info, and to apply it.

According to Code.org, 90 percent of U.S. schools are not teaching any computer science. Eyebrows have been raised this year as the U.K. passed a plan to educate every child how to code (3).

Speak Up 2013 flipped learning findings include: One out of six math and science teachers are implementing a flipped learning model using videos that they have created or sourced online.         16 percent of teachers say they are regularly creating videos of their lessons or lectures to students to watch.    45 percent of librarians and media specialists are regularly creating videos and similar rich media as part of their professional practice.  37 percent of librarians are helping to build teacher capacity by supporting teachers’ skills in using and creating  video and rich media for classroom use. While, almost one-fifth of current teachers have “learning how to flip my classroom” on their wish list for professional development this year,  41 percent of administrators say pre-service teachers should learn how to set up a flipped learning class model before getting a teaching credential. 66 percent of principals said pre-service teachers should learn how to create and use videos and other digital media within their teacher preparation programs.   75 percent of middle and high school students agree that flipped learning would be a good way for them to learn, with 32 percent of those students strongly agreeing with that idea.

Educators, Perkins says, need to embrace these same insights. They need to start asking themselves what he considers to be one of the most important questions in education: What's worth learning in school?

These days, he says we teach a lot that isn’t going to matter, in a significant way, in students’ lives. There’s also much we aren’t teaching that would be a better return on investment. As a result, as educators, “we have a somewhat quiet crisis of content,” Perkins writes, “quiet not for utter lack of voices but because other concerns in education tend to muffle them.” These other concerns are what he calls rival learning agendas: information, achievement, and expertise.

The information in textbooks is not necessarily what you need or would like to have at your fingertips.” Instead, even though most people would say that education should prepare you for life, much of what is offered in schools doesn’t work in that direction, Perkins says. Educators are “fixated” on building up students’ reservoirs of knowledge, often because we default to what has always been done.

Data from the NAIS Snapshot surveys of varying groups of independent school leaders reveal that 61% of schools have increased their expense budgets for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, while 58% are projecting a loss for the same time period.

Determining what motivates your parents can help your school focus its offerings and rein in expenses, helping you focus on what matters most to families.

Sixty-seven percent of schools have already implemented revenue-increasing strategies, and 76% plan to do the same in 2021-2022. Schools most commonly plan to rely on summer programs, with 67% already offering them and 79% likely to for the next summer.

It is the responsibility of educators to be aware of executive functioning and to create environments that support all students.

Educators should also teach executive functioning language to all classroom learners, not just those who show deficits. When educators assist students with identifying their executive functioning strengths and areas of need, they also teach them how to advocate for their own needs in the classroom and beyond.

Executive functioning comprises both the skills that involve thinking, or cognition, and skills that involve doing, or behavior. Here’s a breakdown of these skills and how some might look in the classroom:

Privilege is passed on like inheritance. Therefore, we must educate the children of people currently in power so they won’t replicate the systems of the past. Undoing the racism that muffles achievement requires teaching the scions of privilege who will likely end up running systems that fail students of color.

Cultural differences influence teaching efficacy, however. “Most results show that when black teachers teach black students, black students achieve more than when taught by white teachers,” writes Andy Porter in Rethinking the Achievement Gap.

Teachers are, by nature, protective of their practice and their space. In this way, even before I enter a teacher's room, I must establish the requisite rapport to garner the invitation. From there, the teacher picks the class, the day, and the time. Then she gives me a sense of what she's doing, has just finished, or will be doing soon. Finally, I show up and get to work.

Ultimately, I had no idea if anyone would invite me in. Moreover, I didn't know if the lessons would work once I was invited. What I learned, however, is that only the former matters. Like an educational grandparent, if I show up and the lesson bombs, I get to leave and let the teacher move on without me. But the fact that teachers are willing to give up control of their rooms -- to an administrator -- without so much as a hint about what will happen when I get there, well, that's how I know the flashes are working.

For all but one, I admit to having only a Google-search-based knowledge of the content, yet teachers keep inviting me in