It’s never ceased to amaze me how many people honestly believe that making something off-limits will protect others. It rarely works that way, mainly because forbidding something just triggers the innate curiosity we’re all born with.
Rather than block access to something you perceive as dangerous, teach the people you’re trying to block out. Teach them what the blocked item is, and then explain why you feel they shouldn’t go near it. It’s far easier to get a toddler to not touch a hot stove if you help them understand why than to just tell them not to do it.
Adults are much the same way. If you tell someone to not do something, and the best reason you can come up with is some variation on either, “Just don’t do it,” or, “Trust me,” you can rest assured the other person will do it. You haven’t given them an actual reason to listen to your advice. School districts are learning this the hard way as they’re slowly coming to realize their students will be far safer with lessons on how to live online safely than if they block MySpace and Facebook from school networks.
People, regardless of their age, respond best to reason. Even those crazy, rebellious teenagers are more likely to actually listen if you can give them actual reasons. If you forbid, regardless of the age, you’ll lost your audience.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 7:44 AM EST
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Before you get your hopes us, I haven’t suddenly become a Wikipedia convert. I just want to draw everyone’s attention to valid ways to use Wikipedia when doing research for a paper or project.
Wikipedia should never be used as a primary source, but it can be used to find a jumping-off point when you can’t find any other way to get started researching your topic.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 7:50 AM EST
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I don’t recall who shared this link with me originally, but this letter to teachers is just dead on.
Let’s start with the obvious: children are not short adults. A child’s job is to have fun, to learn everything they can, and to make mistakes in a safe environment. They have some valuable life experiences, but they are still gaining them. Many of them haven’t had many opportunities to find out what they can and can’t do yet, because they’re children.
The person they are in kindergarten is not the person they are in fifth grade is not the person they are in middle school or high school. Like adults, children change as they go through their life. Like adults, they may try on different hobbies and attitudes until they find the one that actually fits them.
When a child says, “Hey, I want to try something,” and it’s outside what they’ve done in the past, a parent (or teacher) trying to protect the child from failure often talks the child out of it. But why? Maybe that new direction is the one that will lead the student on to the path that will make them a successful adult. Why not let the child experiment while the parent (or teacher) is there to help them learn to handle either the resulting success or failure?
Children are not short adults. They should be given the chance to experiment within safe boundaries. Give a child a chance. Let them make their mistakes. Let them surprise you with their successes. Be a guide, not a bunker.
The future deserves that much.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 8:05 AM EDT
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It would appear everyone is looking for a better way to assess students. England is now considering getting rid of their national test, following the lead of neighboring country Wales.
What are these tests being replaced with? Teacher-led assessments. (Does this sound a bit familiar?)
The concern in Wales and England, not unlike here, is that rather than being taught what they need to succeed at the next level, students are being taught to pass a test. That’s never beneficial for anyone. The point of going to school is to learn the basics you’ll need to become a competent adult, but learning cannot take place when it’s crammed in.
Are these localized assessments going to serve as the key to improving education? I really don’t know right now, but I’ll be interested in following this.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 7:48 AM EDT
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With everyone so worried about meeting the demands set forth by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it’s nice to see a state that’s looking to bring their students up to standards without making that their only academic activity.
In this changing world, it is important to help our students become masters of reading and math so they can keep up with the demands of society. In trying to prepare students to pass their test, many schools forget that the students need these basic skills to stay with them throughout school and out into the real world. Nebraska, however, is granting the teachers the freedom to teach the skills to their students, and then to assess on their own. This has led to the development of an assessment program that relies on multiple choice testing, but also includes an authentic component that can catch more than a multiple-choice assessment alone. Apparently, it really works for Nebraska.
There are a couple of things to remember. The first is that no matter what, a school’s primary goal is to educate students, to prepare them for the next level of their education and for their life. If a child has their head jammed with what they need to pass a test, instead of allowing them to authentically learn the material that will be showing up for the rest of their life, then like all information crammed for a test, the student will more than likely forget the material. The next year, the teacher is forced to not only cram new information into the student’s head, but they lose time having to refresh the lost skills. The second is that preparing children to pass assessments leads to an inaccurate picture of how those students are doing. The point of the testing is to demonstrate what level the child is actually operating at, but it often doesn’t reflect that. A student who passes a test one year might fail math the next year because of that aforementioned forgetting of what’s been crammed into their head, or even worse, they may only know how to answer test questions.
Authentic curriculum leads to more authentic assessment results, which in turn could lead to producing the effect we want in all children- that they’ve learned the skills they need to move on.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility, Teaching methods at 7:52 AM EDT
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I’ve been doing a lot of research lately into resumes, portfolios, and networking, and one thing I’ve noticed time and time again is that employers are looking to hire people capable of critical thinking. They’re looking for people capable of analyzing a situation and reacting to that analysis in a reasonable way. They’re looking for people who can think three steps ahead, who can problem solve, who can think for themselves.
While the ability to analyze and synthesize are part of Maslow’s hierarchy, I wonder how many students are actually being encouraged to work to that level. High schoolers are confronted with a year-long project, but is that all there is to developing those higher skills?
The right answer might or might not be these culminating projects where the students are led through deadline after deadline. It may or may not giving them real-world situations to develop and solve math and science problems for. It may or may not be anything we’re doing in school.
Somehow, we have to convince children that it’s okay to have your own thoughts, that it’s all right to be original in your thinking, even if you’re backing up your own thinking with research. Somehow, we need to convince them that this is pretty much how they’ll be expected to operate as college students and in the work force.
We need to eliminate the question, “What’s the answer you want to hear?” from their repertoire by responding to it consistently with, “I want to hear what you think,” regardless of the student’s perceived level. We need to encourage students’ thinking through questioning and activities that force them to come at topics from their own personal worldview.
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 8:24 AM EDT
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It often amazes me how many parents complain that schools aren’t doing anything to teach their child to be a responsible person. In all fairness, we see your child for anywhere from one to five hours one to five times a week (depending on their). We can encourage them to be responsible for the duration of our class, but we can’t control what happens to them the two to seven hours (weekdays) that they spend out of school.
We give them assignments. We give them deadlines. We can tell them what the consequences will be in within our own class if they don’t actually meet our expectations and invoke them during our own class time. That’s really all we can do.
When a child fails, and the school promotes them anyway, the child has learned that there’s no need to be responsible, that someone will just let them do what they want. When parents fail to expect anything of their child at home and give no consequences for a child’s lack of judgment, the child’s understanding that they never have to actually do anything is reinforced.
In this day and age, taking a child and turning them into a responsible citizen is becoming more and more the responsibility of the community…except it’s always been the duty of the community. Somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that. When we were children, we knew better than to mouth off to a teacher, because we knew Mom would be getting a call, and there’d be hell to pay when we got home. When we were children, we learned very quickly not to lie about our teachers because Mom would go talk to the teacher, and again, there’d be a world of trouble if our lie was discovered.
This is a community problem, not one to be pushed off onto others.
The schools have to do what’s in the child’s best interest, even if that means keeping the star quarterback from playing in the big game because he hasn’t studied for a history test all year. He’ll miss being scouted, but he has to understand it was his decision not to take his classes seriously that cost him that opportunity.
The teachers have to do what’s in the child’s best interest. If that means constantly emailing and calling parents to let them know their student isn’t turning in homework or is doing poorly on tests, then that’s what’s necessary.
The parent has to do what’s in the student’s best interests, even if that means taking away cell phones, the internet, and the ability to go out with friends for a period of time. Who cares if the child claims to hate you? They never mean it. They’re just upset. (Seriously, I have a number of students who have told me I’m mean and that they hate me, and then come running straight to me for everything because they know I’m going to set and enforce boundaries with them.) The child has to learn what it means to actually have consequences, or they’ll act like the world owes them a living they haven’t earned.
Bringing up responsible children is a team effort, and when one part of that team doesn’t do its part, the whole effort is an uphill climb that stands a very good chance of being lost. Don’t let a child get lost like that!
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 8:10 AM EDT
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Most of my students are in the middle of taking the state math test this week. This test is a fairly embattled event, with attempts being made form all sides to either shape it up or ship it out. Last year, this same test was thrown out when over half the state’s sophomores failed it.
As the test is still a graduation for this year’s sophomores, my students are naturally very nervous (and very hopeful the test will be thrown out yet again).
These same kids have taken the state exams nearly every year since they were eight years old. These same kids not only sit for two to three weeks of testing per year, but in high school (and more and more junior highs), they are also completing a culminating project each year that is supposed to demonstrate in some way shape or form what they’ve learned during the year.
It makes me wonder…is it really necessary to put these kids through both a standardized test and a culminating projects? Are we maybe asking too much of these kids? What can a standardized test tell us about our students that a directed year-long project can’t, especially if parts of the project are created in response to class assignments?
What are we really trying to accomplish? What do we want the students to come away with?
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 8:21 AM EDT
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I’m asked that fairly frequently by my students. They figure if overly smart Rebecca doesn’t use the skill they’re working on when she isn’t teaching it to them, that’s grounds for them to not have to learn it.
Usually, I ask them what they plan to study in college. The majority of my students are high schoolers who really haven’t given it much thought, so I win the argument on the fact they’ll need the math class to have fewer classes to take in college (Let’s face it, those remedial classes take up a lot of time.) For those who have decided a major already, it’s a matter of convincing them they need the class to get accepted to college.
Either way, it’s a real fight.
I wish I had a far better answer for my students, but the simple fact of the matter is that knowing an inscribed angle is half the measurement of its corresponding arc probably won’t come up in their normal lives. Upper level math is hard to defend, unlike science and English.
Of course, while my students are learning how to interpret what they read, how the world works, and how to take a differential, they aren’t necessarily learning life skills that already come into play on a daily basis. There’s something wrong with that. If it’s something that will help them succeed in life, it should be incorporated into their schooling somehow. (I feel like a traitor to my content area as I say that. In my defense, I get the necessity of algebra and geometry because they teach necessary reasoning skills, but beyond that is just nice to have completed before the rigors of college.)
Posted by Rebecca as Responsibility at 8:17 AM EDT
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We live in a world super-saturated by available information. It’s just one side effect of living in a world connected by the world wide web.
While the web provides us with the ability to find all kinds of information on topics we find interesting, it also provides us with a new conundrum- how do we know we can trust the source of our information?
What’s truly scary in this new world is that students who once learned how to judge information through school-induced research projects are now being bombarded this information with very little guidance in how to evaluate what they’re finding. An amazingly high number of students will research a topic for a school project strictly by querying Wikipedia. Many of these students have no idea how to find information the need in a book or journal.
Information literacy is a skill these students are going to need in order to survive this new information-rich world. In order to make good decisions, to learn what’s real, they need to be able to determine what information was generated to pass along correct information, and what was created to entertain people. They have to learn it from somewhere, and schools seem to be finding it hard to squeeze it into an already impossibly packed schedule.
What’s the right response? How do we help students learn how to discern a good source of information? No one really seems to be certain yet, but steps are being taken to help create a new breed of information literates ready to take on the world.
Posted by Administrator as Responsibility, Information Architecture at 8:19 AM EDT
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