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I like how this article focuses on ways students and teachers can work together to improve student engagement in high schools. I'm also impressed by how much of what it suggests is already being done in IGSS! 

This article delves into the idea that a successful learning experience that has a positive relationship with the student must be individualized. Every student is different, and every student has unique talents and strategies of learning. The author explains that Gardner's Multiple Intelligences should be applied in the classroom. The current school system only fits linguistic and mathematic learners, and forces the other types to fit in anyway, damaging their self esteem and promotes a negative relationship that child has with school. If teachers took advantage of the multiple intelligences to approach learning, then all students would learn more efficiently and society would benefit from these students' contributions; not losing them as casualties to our current school system.

This article, written by Eric Sheninger (a high school principle), discusses the wide-spread standardization of our education system and how it is steadily destroying it. It talks about how the system of standardization is based off the century-old model focused on industrialization, which produces students that lack creativity, fear failure, and work to do only as they are told. The focus is on test scores, viewed as the only determinant of success. Students are leaving school unprepared for the world awaiting them. The solution according to Sheninger lies in intrinsical motivation. If students and teachers are motivated not by test scores or pay raises, but by creativity and innovation, students will find relevancy and meaning in their education.

A Montessori school is a type of school that implements the idea of alternative learning. This type of learning is embraced on 6 continents and all over the United States. The ideology behind this system encourages an environment with more freedom and individuality.

There is a difference between education and schooling that was brought to my attention by this piece. To go to school and learn is a separate action from receiving an education. Education is a self-initiated action, an endeavor undertaken to better understand the world around you and grow as a person. Trough education t You learn the value of human life and how to think as an individual. schooling is a task controlled by others, where you are fed others opinions and others ideas and it is for the purpose of others. Gatto argues that the problem with education in America is that we are schooling our children rather than educating them.

A good example of an ERJ project.

This is a great piece for anyone interested in the controversy surrounding standardized tests. The article discusses a topic that is very sensitive to parents; testing their preschool year-old children with standardized tests in order to provide information that ranks their preschool among others in the D.C. area. The article includes quotes from concerned parents which adds an interesting narrative side to the piece.

While the author, Tom DeWeese, goes a bit overboard in his effort to bash our public education system, he is very thorough. I found this interesting because he rejects the usual view that our schools need smaller class sizes and more money, and he includes the evidence to back up his claims. He offers no real solution, however I think that leaves our minds to think about how we would change education, which is exactly what our paper is about.

On this page, it discusses Howard Gardner, a Harvard graduate, and his philosophy of Multiple Intelligences. All six different intelligences, according to Gardner, are equally important and should all be explored in schools. I find this interesting and thought provoking because in many schools, only mathematical and linguistic intelligences are explored and expanded upon, even though not every student learns best that way.

A brief (11-page) summation of a new way of teaching called Learning in Depth, created by Kieran Egan. The general idea is that in first grade a child will be given a simple, broad topic such as spiders or rocks. Then, that child will study and do projects on that subject for the next 12 years of their school career. It's quite radical, but I think it has a chance of revolutionizing the way we learn. Some of the benefits that they mention are its capacity to build a community of scholars and experts, its emphasis on individual responsibility through independent research, and the fact that it gives the students something to be proud of (their expansive knowledge). I'm especially interested in this idea because I have begun to question the depth of the learning we receive in school and this seems to be at least a STEP in the right direction.

I read Zhao's book, "Catching Up or Leading the Way", before applying to the IGSS. The book is about how American students are still on top because the US creates more innovative students while China only creates good test takers. In this video, Zhao discusses why testing is a poor way of measuring education. He goes on to talk about how only testing math, science, and reading does not accurately measure education because many students may be proficient in creative writing or art, two very important skills for any citizen who cares to be an active member of society. He adds at the end that schools should not be rewarded for better test scores, but they should be rewarded for using innovative ways of education. This is important because this is what IGSS is doing and although we may not have the perfect solution to all education reform right now, it is critical that we keep shooting the subject from different angles.

This study on the effect teacher and peer relationships have on academic achievement is rather wordy and full of citations, but it has interesting implications about the learning environment. It connects a student's social life to the classroom by considering students of different ages and how they interact with others.