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Within minutes of arriving at Sahuarita Intermediate School, both Dr. Peggy George and I, we were greeted by two very poised 5th grade students who lead us to a classroom filled with evidence of constructivist learning- a fertile ground for nurturing the infinite thinking machine.

I wish I could share all of the great ideas and websites, I learned about during my visit to Sahuarita Intermediate School, but I think I will follow Jackie's philosophy of letting the students be the guides and leaders. Follow their evolving project pages at weewebwonders.pbwiki.com/ and see for yourself the evidence of student centered learning, and if that doesn't blow you away, brace yourself and visit their fantastic role model of self-directed learning by visting Dr. Gerstein's own learning space.

a backdrop of daily newspaper articles featuring stories of budget woes by surrounding Arizona schools, aging computers, inadequate bandwidth, and exhausted supplies where students are bringing in printer ink and paper from home to be able to continue using classroom printers.

Within minutes of arriving at Sahuarita Intermediate School, both Dr. Peggy George and I, we were greeted by two very poised 5th grade students who lead us to a classroom filled with evidence of constructivist learning- a fertile ground for nurturing the infinite thinking machine.

Two fifth grade boys huddled around an aging computer debating the plot of the digital story they were writing using Tikatok's online book publishing site. At other computer stations, students were exploring Tux Paint – an open source software. Others were using the forums in Think.com to critically analyze the potential of Web 2.0 sites for learning.

Tikatok's online book publishing site. At other computer stations, students were exploring Tux Paint – an open source software. Others were using the forums in Think.com to critically analyze the potential of Web 2.0 sites for learning

One classroom wall was lined with student created newspapers as evidence that the students had developed interviewing skills to learn more about each other. Another wall was lined with colorful 3-D representations of FIVE word questions that was to guide a self directed research project. In the middle of it all hung a student created hand painted Wordle that captured the essence of the type of learning that filled their day and avatars of the students who drove that learning. The avatars were enlarged versions that the students had traced and colored of the actual avatars these students use to safely participate in collaborative learning environments outside their classroom using a variety of Web 2.0 tools made available to them through their classroom wiki- Wee Web Wonders. Here are just five of the many web sites we saw student using during our visit with Dr. Gerstein and her incredible infinite thinkers.

One classroom wall was lined with student created newspapers as evidence that the students had developed interviewing skills to learn more about each other. Another wall was lined with colorful 3-D representations of FIVE word questions that was to guide a self directed research project. In the middle of it all hung a student created hand painted Wordle that captured the essence of the type of learning that filled their day and avatars of the students who drove that learning. The avatars were enlarged versions that the students had traced and colored of the actual avatars these students use to safely participate in collaborative learning environments outside their classroom using a variety of Web 2.0 tools made available to them through their classroom wiki- Wee Web Wonders. Here are just five of the many web sites we saw student using during our visit with Dr. Gerstein and her incredible infinite thinkers.

art of something greater than the weekly “Friday Folder” that is being sent home to show their learning progress (or lack thereof).

Start practicing these skills in  Pre-Kindergarten (4 year olds). Allow students to share an experience by recording (articulate, create) or  illustrate (create) a picture about it Then take the time to listen or view it (listening) as a class and talk about it as a group (share) . Ask students to give their opinions (reflect & respond). Record the students’ responses or let them dictate you while you type them directly into the blog. Kindergarten teachers incorporate a “blogger” center in their center rotation. The blogger writes (free or from a prompt). Share the blog entry and write comments to the authors as a class. Upload First graders insect reports (illustrations, PowerPoint, recording, etc). Extend the learning… don’t let it end with the presentation. Create an online research center for bugs. Upload any kind of traditional student work, then allow classmates to record or write comments Second graders can become science, history, etc. or classroom happening reporters…being on the lookout for “their” topic coming up in class or resources…collecting information…images… Allow each student in third grade  to become an expert of one of the curriculum areas or topic of their choice. They share their research and expertise with the rest of the class throughout the year on the blog Fourth graders are writing different book reports throughout the year. Find a way to use these reports to create a collaborative space on your blog. How can we get the students to “own” the learning that is taking place while they are learning and practicing to produce these “required” reports? Students divide into groups to become the knowledgeable about the state of Florida. They become responsible to inform others about their area. Allow different media of their choice to deliver that content. Make sure the feedback for their efforts on the blog does not get neglected. Repeated practice becomes routine. Incorporate reflection and feedback into the learning process. Fifth and sixth graders are old enough to have their own username and password AND be responsible with its use. Use the blog as a space to incorporate their interests. Teach them to make connections between the curriculum and these interests… Be proud to share them… Allow them to make mistakes…they are perfect learning opportunities… Students should be challenged by higher level thinking questions… use prompts and feedback in your comments to guide… given more freedom in choosing their creative outlet to present a point of view, experience or lead discussion in new directions. Bottom line: Involve students in their own learning. Let them become teachers, let them edit each other, let them learn the value of collaborative knowledge. Guide them through the process of becoming life long learners. Learning does not stop because the chapter or unit is over. Make them aware of the connections that are all around us. Share and collaborate on your blog. View your blog as your classroom’s Learning Space.

Depending on your students age, you can : have one classroom blog one username and password for all students students sign their comment with their first name or avatar name give each student their own username and password as “Subscribers” to post comments on your posts give each student their own username and password as “”Contributors” to add posts that will need to be approved by you create a blog for each one of your students, where they create their own space to document and reflect on their learning, receive comments from you, classmates or blog-pals around the world.

not help to develop young minds, contribute to a robust democratic life, or aid the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens.

By shifting the locus of authority to outside bodies, it undermines the capacity of schools to instruct by example in the qualities of mind that schools in a democracy should be fostering in kids–responsibility for one’s own ideas, tolerance for the ideas of others, and a capacity to negotiate differences.

externally imposed expert judgment.

Standards-based reform systems

first, an official document (sometimes called a framework) designed by experts in various fields that describes what kids should know and be able to do

second, classroom curricula–commercial textbooks and scripted programs

third, a set of assessment tools (tests) to measure whether children have achieved the goals

fourth, a scheme of rewards and penalties directed at schools and school systems, but ultimately at individual kids, who fail to meet the standards as measured by the tests.

School administrators (and possibly teachers) are fired if schools fail to reach particular goals after a given period of time, and kids are held back in grade, sent to summer school, and finally refused diplomas if they don’t meet the cut-off scores.

the tests are intended to serve as the sole criteria for rating schools, for admission to public colleges, and for as many other rewards and sanctions as busy state officials can devise.

an inch deep and a mile wide

embody a fundamentally misguided approach to school reform.

Six basic assumptions

1. Goals:It is possible and desirable to agree on a single definition of what constitutes a well-educated 18-year-old and demand that every school be held to the same definition.

2. Authority: The task of defining "well-educated" is best left to experts–educators, political officials, leaders from industry and the major academic disciplines

3. Assessment: With a single definition in place, it will be possible to measure and compare individuals and schools across communities–local, state, national, international.

objective tests that provide a system of uniform scores for all public, and if possible private, schools and districts. Such scores should permit public comparisons

4. Enforcement: Sanctions, too, need to be standardized, thus removed from local self-interested parties–including parents, teachers, and local boards.

. Equity: Expert-designed standards, imposed through tests, are the best way to achieve educational equity. While a uniform national system would work best if all students had relatively equal resources, equity requires introducing such a system as rapidly as possible regardless of disparities. It is especially important for schools with scarcer resources to focus their work, concentrating on the essentials. Standardization with remotely controlled sanctions thus offers the best chance precisely for underfunded communities and schools, and for less well-educated and less powerful families.

6. Effective Learning: Clear-cut expectations, accompanied by automatic rewards and punishments, will produce greater effort, and effort–whether induced by the desire for rewards, fear of punishment, or shame–is the key to learning.

compassion requires us to stand firm, even in the face of pain and failure in the early years.

standards-based reform movement took off in 1983

When teachers as well as students know what constitutes failure, and also know the consequences of failure, a rational system of rewards and punishments becomes an effective tool. Automatic penalties work for schooling much as they do for crime and punishment: consistency and certainty are the keys. For that reason

Nation At Risk–launched an attack on dumb teachers, uncaring mothers, social promotion, and general academic permissiveness. Teachers and a new group labeled "educationists" were declared the main enemy, thus undermining their credibility, and setting the stage for cutting them and their concerns out of the cure.

Two claims were thus made: that our once-great public system was no longer performing well, and that its weaknesses were undermining America’s economy.

weak (see Richard Rothstein’s 1998 book, The Way We Were?).

The constituents who originally coalesced around A Nation at Risk began to argue that the fault lay either in the nature of public schooling itself or in the excesses of local empowerment.

cure would have to combine more competition from the private or semi-private sector and more rigorous control by external experts who understood the demands of our economy and had the clout to impose change. This latter viewpoint has dominated the standards-based reform movement.

Now, fifteen years after analysts discovered the great crisis of American education, the American economy is soaring, the productivity of our workforce is probably tops in the world, and our system of advanced education is the envy of the world.

Constructive debate about reform should begin by acknowledging this misjudgment.

we have the lowest voter turnout by far of any modern industrial country; we are exceptional for the absence of responsible care for our most vulnerable citizens (we spend less on child welfare–baby care, medical care, family leave–than almost every competitor); we don’t come close to our competitors in income equity; and our high rate of (and investment in) incarceration places us in a class by ourselves.

acknowledge the absence of a sense of responsibility for one’s community and of decency in personal relationships. An important cause of this subtler crisis, I submit, is that the closer our youth come to adulthood the less they belong to communities that include responsible adults, and the more stuck they are in peer-only subcultures.

We’ve created two parallel cultures, and it’s no wonder the ones on the grown-up side are feeling angry at the way the ones on the other side live and act: apparently foot-loose and fancy-free but in truth often lost, confused, and knit-together for temporary self-protection. The consequences are critical for all our youngsters, but obviously more severe–often disastrous–for those less identified with the larger culture of success.

Our schools have grown too distant, too big, too standardized, too uniform, too divorced from their communities, too alienating of young from old and old from young. Few youngsters and few teachers have an opportunity to know each other by more than name (if that); and schools are organized so as to make "knowing each other" nearly impossible. In such settings it’s hard to teach young people how to be responsible to others

until they are reconnected no list of particular bits of knowledge will be of much use.

Because of the disconnection between the public and its schools, the power to protect or support them now lies increasingly in the hands of public or private bodies that have no immediate stake in the daily life of the students.

Site-based school councils are increasingly the "in" thing, just as the scope of their responsibility narrows.

expected to conform to the intelligence of some central agency or expert authority.

The locus of authority in young people’s lives has shifted away from the adults kids know well and who know the kids well–at a cost.

The big trouble lies instead in the company our children keep–or, more precisely, don’t keep. They no longer keep company with us–the grown-ups they are about to become.

alternative set of assumptions.

1. Goals: In a democracy, there are multiple, legitimate definitions of "a good education" and "well-educated," and it is desirable to acknowledge that plurality

2. Authority: In fundamental questions of education, experts should be subservient to citizens.

need to see how responsible adults handle disagreement

3. Assessment: Standardized tests are too simple and simple-minded for high stakes assessment of children and schools.

based on multiple sources

public, constitutionally sound, and subject to a variety of "second opinions" by experts

allowing schools maximum autonomy to demonstrate the ways they have reached such norms through other forms of assessment.

4. Enforcement: Sanctions should remain in the hands of the local community, to be determined by people who know the particulars of each child and each situation.

5. Equity: A more fair distribution of resources is the principal means for achieving educational equity.

publicly accessible comparisons of educational achievement should always include information regarding the relative resources that the families of students, schools, and communities bring to the schooling enterprise

6. Effective Learning: Improved learning is best achieved by improving teaching and learning relationships, by enlisting the energies of both teachers and learners.

Human learning, to be efficient, effective, and long-lasting, requires the engagement of learners on their own behalf, and rests on the relationships that develop between schools and their communities, between teachers and their students, and between the individual learner and what is to be learned.

human learning is less efficient when motivated by rewards and punishments

in the absence of strong human relationships rigorous intellectual training in the most fundamental academic subjects can’t flourish.

fear is a poor motivator,

estoring a greater balance of power

our hope lies in schools that are more personal, compelling, and attractive than the internet or TV, where youngsters can keep company with interesting and powerful adults, who are in turn in alliance with the students’ families and local institutions.

the worst thing we can do is to turn teachers and schools into the vehicles for implementing externally- imposed standards.

less than 200 students ages five to thirteen–so that the adults could meet regularly, take responsibility for each others’ work, and argue over how best to get things right. Parents join the staff

a school-wide interdisciplinary curriculum

We invented our own standards–not out of whole cloth but with an eye to what the world out there expects and what we deem valuable and important. And we assessed them through the work the kids do and the commentary of others about that work.

Our standards are intended to deepen and broaden young people’s habits of mind, their craftsmanship, and their work habits.

a place that lives by the same standards it sets for them

school itself can negotiate the needed compromises.

that these differences can be sources of valuable education when the

most youngsters have a sufficiently deep hunger for the relationships these schools offer them

the hunger for grown-up connections is strong enough to make a difference, if we give it a chance.

But as Ted Sizer, who put the idea of standards on the map in the early 1980s, also told us then: we need standards held by real people who matter in the lives of our young.

anything public must be all things to all constituents (characterless and mediocre by definition), and from various elites who see teachers and private citizens as too dumb to engage in making important decisions. That’s a heady list of resisters.

Americans invented the modern, standardized, norm-referenced test. Our students have been taking more tests, more often, than any nation on the face of the earth, and schools and districts have been going public with test scores starting almost from the moment children enter school

public schools have been required to produce statements attesting to their financial integrity–how they spend their money–at least as rigorously as any business enterprise

In short, we have been awash in accountability and standardization for a very long time. What we are missing is precisely the qualities that the last big wave of reform was intended to respond to: teachers, kids, and families who don’t know each other or each other’s work and don’t take responsibility for it. We are missing communities built around their own articulated and public standards and ready to show them off to others.

portfolios

examined

and in the case of high school students, judged) by tough internal and external reviewers

oral exam.

The standards by which a student is judged are easily accessible to families, clear to kids, and capable of being judged by other parties. In addition such schools undergo school-wide external assessments which take into account the quality of their curriculum, instruction, staff development, and culture as well as the impact of the school on student’s future success (in college, work, etc.).

What is missing is balance–some power in the hands of those whose agenda is first and foremost the feelings of particular kids, their particular families, their perceived local values and needs. Without such balance my knowledge that holding David over in third grade will not produce the desired effects is useless knowledge.

what kind serves us best. I believe standardization will make it harder to hold people accountable and harder to develop sound and useful standards. The intellectual demands of the 21st century, as well as the demands of democratic life, are best met by preserving plural definitions of a good education, local decision-making, and respect for ordinary human judgments.

There will always be a party of order and a party of messiness.

two indispensable traits of a democratic society: a high degree of tolerance for others, indeed genuine empathy for them, and a high degree of tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity, and puzzlement, indeed enjoyment of them.

schools can make a difference, that they can alter the odds.

factory-like schools we invented a century ago to handle the masses were bound to enlarge the gap. But trained mindlessness at least fit the world of work so many young people were destined for. We seem now to be reinventing a 21st century version of the factory-like school–for the mindworkers of tomorrow.

a little more commitment to democracy.