tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27077030663005308592024-03-15T02:09:24.842-06:00for the love of learningAssessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.comBlogger1463125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-80152410933309488162017-01-20T20:57:00.000-07:002017-01-20T20:57:10.026-07:00You Say you want this, so why are you doing that...Redux<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is with mixed emotions that I write on Joe’s blog today. His wife Tamara has asked me to do this, and I feel ready just after a year of losing my best friend. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Joe Bower will always have a profound impact on my life, just like he has on many people he came into contact with and I am a better teacher and person for knowing him for over 15 years. Joe and I talked about so many topics over that time, most of those represented well in his blog. Joe was a prolific writer, and suggested I pen some of my own thoughts. We would be talking and he would yell “That’s a blog post Kelly!” so here I go…</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 21.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You Say you want this, so why are you doing that… Redux</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2011, Joe wrote a blog post about this topic and I aim to expand it a little. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After teaching for 27 years, I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people in education are in it for the right reasons and are principled in their intentions. I also find, however, that there are many educational practices that do not jive with what I feel kids really need. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Now, I am not SO arrogant that I think all share my progressive values, so I try my best to have conversations with my colleagues from time to time about educational philosophy. Most of the time, the dialogue is engaging, messy, and thought provoking ( at least to me…). I see the passion in these people, they love kids, they love teaching. They DO see the chasm between what they know kids need and what schools often deliver- and it often makes them sad.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So….If teachers want to make changes, why don’t they act on it? Some of the answers, I believe, are:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They think they need permission</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They do not want to hurt peoples feelings or feel they are being unprofessional by not doing what others are doing</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They often do not have a forum for such discussion </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> For the sake of brevity, I will focus on the last point.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I find it interesting that we find it important to have teacher education programs that include philosophy of teaching and learning, but once student teachers graduate, we seem to limit the discussion to pedagogy. Good teaching practice is important, but if we are not sure of the REASONS for doing things, we can drift from some of our main goals of education like ensuring children love learning. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alfie Kohn writes:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We need to be transparent about our premises and goals. If we don’t bring them to the surface and defend them, others will take their place by default. If we don’t ask, “what are we looking for here? What matters most to us,and how can we tell if we have been successful?” Then we’ll just be evaluated on the basis of standardized test scores.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we are to have these discussions about what is important to us in education, we must also discuss what is NOT important and try to get rid of those things. Many things we do as teachers and teacher leaders, are being done because they seem to have always been done that way or we want to do as much as humanly possible for children and parents. The problem is, we don’t have that much capital to spend. We are maxed out. We need to put our energy into what matters most and there is only so much time in the day. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These will be difficult conversations, but ones that will help steer you back to why you got into this awesome profession in the first place. We all cannot be like Joe, but we can and should talk about things that matter to us.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is hoping that loads of you have many messy, engaging, enraging, philosophical education talks with your colleagues. I sure miss mine with Mr. Bower</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kelly</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">P.s. I would love to hear your thoughts about my post or respond to me on Twitter @flamesstamp</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-79903783150761250892016-02-18T18:13:00.001-07:002016-02-18T18:13:34.272-07:00What My Husband Taught Me<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What My Husband Taught Me</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-94d5af9a-f70c-34ce-d636-847656466be7" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m Tamara, Joe Bower’s wife (widow is just too messed up to say most days still). First of all I want to thank everyone for their well wishes and prayers through that horrid six days after Joe had a Cardiac Arrest. The support, love and heartfelt emotions were very comforting through the dark times as we spent time with Joe during his last days in the hospital. After Joe died there was and still is an outpouring from people sharing their experiences and stories. So many people tweeted, facebooked or called telling tales of how they met Joe or how they learned from him, how his blog affected them or influenced them, how Joe was as a teacher or as a friend. These are memories me, our kids, nieces and nephews and all of our family and friends will cherish.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many people have followed my husband's blog or twitter for his ideas and beliefs in the education world, they followed him for his stand in his own teaching and his pride in not following the norm for conventional teaching. He also undoubtedly had charismatic humour that people got when speaking with Joe or through tweets and messages. Joe definitely had an ardor for learning that has overflowed into my life. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I don’t blog, I have never had the desire to blog, but with Joe's passing away I do want to share what my husband taught me personally so far, as a tribute to him. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ever since Joe has passed grief has entered my life and the life of our two children. In this short time grief has been a learning experience for me that I am trying to work through for myself as a wife and as a mother to our children. Losing Joe has been akin to having my soul torn in two; he literally was my other half. It's a giant gash that will heal in its own way but with lord knows how much scar tissue and the process will be there for the rest of my life, I believe it will shape and change me and know that it already has. Our two children cry for their daddy and have the biggest hole in their hearts that no one can fill. Watching my children grieve for their father every day brings so much pain to the depths of my soul and I console them to the best of my ability but it's not daddy holding them in his arms and he never will again. I feel like grief is like eeyores rain cloud, it follows you everywhere relentlessly. Grief will destroy you, it will strip you to the last fibre of your being and that's where I get to decide if I will build myself back up a little stronger each time or grief will keep me down. Destroyed. A mere shadow of who I am. With Joe as my husband, I know that he would say that option is not a choice, it's not even on the table. Joe would disapprove of rolling over whole heartedly, he fought for change, he fought for better, he fought and protected those he loved and I love and respect him enough to not tarnish what we shared together and instead I am trying to learn how to work through this grief and grow to become a better person.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At first when Joe died, I just tried to stay afloat, I tried not to drown in grief, and so I started researching it. I started learning what to do so that I could deal with the turmoil within me, so that I could start to heal and appreciate all Joe had given me and how to help our kids. Yes our life together was 60 years too short but he gave me so much love, companionship and experiences in 17 years I don't want to lose the beauty of those memories. Joe was an amazing husband, he was my pillar, he was a man who unconditionally loved me (lord knows no one is perfect) and through that love taught me what true unconditional love is. Joe taught me self confidence and awareness to a level I didn't realize I had achieved, until sadly I no longer had him to fall back on. You can’t be with someone as long as we were together and not have them rub off on you (I know I made Joe pretty amazing too!!) Joe taught me how to research to the deepest level on a topic that is sitting in your craw and feels horrid and you just have to fix it. Joe was obsessed with figuring out how to do it better and then cross examined it to make sure it was backed up and made sense and fit the situation and then he figured out how to apply it to everyday life. I have learned from Joe that your emotional life is in your power, Joe was huge on CBT, retraining your brain, physical activity to get the mind healthy, social workers and psychologists aren’t your enemy (assuming they are knowledgeable and advocating for the right reasons), finding a hobby that draws you like a magnet and friends and all of our family being crucial for support. I have done lots of research and my learning will continue to do so as things change. I have decided that the days that I can manage it grief is my companion and I can cry, tell stories, look at pictures and read his blogs but I can still live, I can still laugh, and I am learning how to deal with grief so it doesn't control me. Grief and I are walking through a new, lonely, scary life as companions. My hope is that as I learn more and heal that grief starts to take even more of a back burner and is a memory not a companion and a new stronger me evolves from this that can remember all the awesome times Joe and I had together, all of our memories together good and bad are what made us a couple, what made us love each other.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because of Joe I have become a stronger person and I am weathering the worst storm I could have imagined, and even though some days I feel as if I was drowning I haven't yet. Joe was larger than life I loved his charismatic power, his assertive self confidence, I loved the affectionate man he was with me, he was my best friend and I will miss him everyday and until the day I die. I love and adore Joe, I was his and he was mine. To the best man I know, thank you for being in my life and I love you. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Someone posted this quote on Facebook and I thought it was something Joe would have liked (heck maybe he has already posted it somewhere!)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Josh Shipp</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You either get Bitter or you get Better.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-17671931071630428632015-12-17T20:56:00.000-07:002015-12-18T12:46:36.562-07:00Assessment and measurement are not the same thing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Too many people confuse measurement with assessment as if they were the same thing.<br />
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They are not.</div>
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Some things are made to be measured. For example, I'm 6'1''. Height is a one-dimensional thing that can be reduced to a measurement in standard units. We need standard units for height or we would have all kinds of mass confusion.</div>
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Some things in life, however, are not made to be measured. While my height can be accurately described as 6'1'' without debate, my personality, character, intelligence, athleticism and <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/04/one-average-to-rule-them-all.html">learning</a> can not be meaningfully reduced to a symbol. When we reduce something as magnificently messy as learning to a number, we always conceal far more than we ever reveal.</div>
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The most important things that children learn in school are not easily measured. The most meaningful things in life may, in fact, be immeasurable. The good news, however, is that the most important and meaningful things that we want children to learn and do in school can always be observed and described. This is precisely why it is so important to remember that the <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/08/to-sit-beside.html">root word for assessment is <i>assidere</i> which literally means 'to sit beside.'</a> Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation.</div>
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<a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/05/folly-multiple-choice.html">Testsandgrades should be replaced</a> with projects and performances collected in portfolios.</div>
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When student learning is made visible to parents through portfolios, <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/09/blogging-with-my-grade-8-students.html">blogs</a>, student-led conferences and <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/10/parent-teacher-interviews-without.html">parent-teacher interviews</a> then they are not nearly so desperate for less meaningful information such as testsandgrades.</div>
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<a href="http://thewalrus.ca/standard-issues/">This is my 16th year of teaching</a> in <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/03/culture-of-public-education.html">public schools</a>. I threw <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/07/grading-without-grading.html">my gradebook away in 2006</a>. For those who are interested in learning more about what school and<a href="http://www.joebower.org/2013/01/heres-what-learning-looks-like.html"> learning looks</a> like <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/03/i-want-to-abolish-grading-but-where-do.html">without testsandgrades</a>, you can read my chapter from my book for free <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/03/heres-my-chapter-from-book-de-testing.html">here</a>. And you can read all of my blog posts about abolishing grading <a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/abolishing-grading.html">here</a>.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-72658066593190646882015-11-20T12:02:00.001-07:002015-11-20T14:16:43.668-07:00Refusing to help is an act of terror<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"In everyday thought about especially complex and emotionally charged situations oversimplified generalizations are apt to be actively treasured."</div>
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- Dorothy Dinnerstein, <i>The Mermaid and the Minotaur</i></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks">September 11, 2001.</a></div>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks">November 15, 2015.</a></div>
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Terrorism and atrocities against humanity is not new. How it will end will have a lot to do with how we respond to hatred, terror, cruelty and murder.</div>
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John Spencer, a teacher in Arizona, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/johntspencer/posts/10206577821636064">posted on Facebook</a>:</div>
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After a tragedy, I get why some people will feel angry. Others will feel sad. Still others will feel scared. Many will feel all of the above. But my hope is that, in the midst of all those feelings, we choose love instead of xenophobia.</blockquote>
Xenophobia [zen-uh-foe-be-uh]<br />
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In his book <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1345962/Alphabet-Human-Heart-Matthew-Johnstones-book-toxic-emotions.html">The Alphabet of the Human Heart</a>, Matthew Johnstone reminds us:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nwZfyS9Kqyc/Vk9ctxfUUII/AAAAAAAACgg/OQHlX4Lie0I/s1600/xenophobia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nwZfyS9Kqyc/Vk9ctxfUUII/AAAAAAAACgg/OQHlX4Lie0I/s400/xenophobia.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Matthew Johnstone's Alphabet of the Human Heart</td></tr>
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Xenophobia is an ugly word. Xeno means foreigner. Phobia is fear. </blockquote>
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Together they mean racism, bigotry, intolerance, injustice. </blockquote>
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Yet, if we embrace the differences in this world, the world looks different. </blockquote>
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More interesting, more rewarding, more colourful.</blockquote>
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While its true that terror is scary and can induce panic, we must remind ourselves that this is what terrorists want. We must resist the natural urge of <a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/opinion/fearing-fear-itself.html?_r=1">fearing fear itself</a>. Paul Krugman writes:</div>
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The point is not to minimize the horror. It is, instead, to emphasize that the biggest danger terrorism poses to our society comes not from the direct harm inflicted, but from the wrong-headed responses it can inspire. And it’s crucial to realize that there are multiple ways the response can go wrong.</blockquote>
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When horrific things happen, it's tempting to focus on who to hate and who to be scared of -- the real challenge, however, is to figure out who to love and who to help. Those of us who are following the news of terror from the safety of our devices need to spend less time pondering policies that further isolate and ignore refugees who are fleeing for their family's lives and more time figuring out how we can help.</div>
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Constructing xenophobic walls to keep people out of our privileged paradise will teach the next generation of children that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/02/a-dead-baby-becomes-the-most-tragic-symbol-yet-of-the-mediterranean-refugee-crisis/">we could have helped but chose not to</a>. This is precisely <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-strategic-value-of-compassion-welcoming-refugees-is-devastating-to-is/article27373931/">what terrorists want.</a><br />
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"It is not the refugee outflows that cause terrorism; it is terrorism, tyranny and war that create refugees," <a href="http://www.unhcrwashington.org/media-news/press-releases/un-refugee-agency-urges-continued-us-leadership-welcoming-refugees">said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Gueterres.</a></div>
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Refusing to help those who need it the most is an act of terror.</div>
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We must refuse to give in to fear.</div>
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We must reject xenophobia.</div>
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Antoine Leiris lost his wife Helene in the Bactaclan theatre in Paris. <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34862437">In his Facebook tribute to his wife</a> and challenge to her killers, Antoine writes:</div>
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I will not give you the gift of hating you. You have obviously sought it, but responding to it with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that has made you what your are. </blockquote>
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You want me to be afraid? To cast a mistrustful eye on my fellow citizens? To sacrifice my freedom for security? </blockquote>
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You lost. Same player. Same game.</blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0jS_fpTHG5A/Vk9oMx2ZEgI/AAAAAAAACgw/rThx7s265Sc/s1600/deadbaby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0jS_fpTHG5A/Vk9oMx2ZEgI/AAAAAAAACgw/rThx7s265Sc/s320/deadbaby.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/02/a-dead-baby-becomes-the-most-tragic-symbol-yet-of-the-mediterranean-refugee-crisis/">A dead baby becomes the most tragic symbol<br />yet of the Mediterranean refugee crisis.</a></td></tr>
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Refugees are people. </div>
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People who are trying to save their families from the terror and cruelty that we would all run from. We have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQTviKM9Mx0">a responsibility and moral obligation to help refugees</a> because refusing to help is an act of terror.</div>
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And we must be better than that.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-21795766917677275772015-11-18T16:40:00.000-07:002015-11-18T16:40:00.746-07:004 Great Board Games I play with students and family<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There are lots of ways to get to know someone -- my two favourite ways are going for a walk & talk and playing a game. Board games are a wonderful way of developing a relationship with someone, and also a great way of assessing a child's skills including their creativity, collaboration, adaptability, resiliency, critical thinking, problem solving, patience, literacy and numeracy. Board games often require a broad range of knowledge, skills and abilities so they are a great way of assessing what someone knows and what they can do with what they know.<br />
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Because I have returned to teaching in a<a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/06/this-will-be-my-last-year-teaching-in.html"> Children's Inpatient Psychiatric Assessment Unit</a>, I find it helpful to play a game with a child so that we can start a casual, caring relationship before I help them with their <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2013/08/education-triage.html">anger, depression, self-harm, addictions</a> and other problems. These kinds of problems are easier to work on after you've worked together to build a train, conquer Tokyo, cure a disease or bury treasure.<br />
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Here are four games I like to play with students and my family:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zu_XuzHeSh8/Vkz7z04-uUI/AAAAAAAACbg/pbHBPp4lzUU/s1600/tickettoride.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zu_XuzHeSh8/Vkz7z04-uUI/AAAAAAAACbg/pbHBPp4lzUU/s200/tickettoride.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<b>1. <a href="http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/en/usa/">Ticket to Ride</a></b> is a 5 player game where you score points by placing trains that connect cities. This is a wonderful game that is simple enough for those unfamiliar with games but challenging enough to keep everyone involved. The original game features cities in Canada and the United States, but there are many expansions and other stand-alone games that feature <a href="http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/en/europe/">Europe</a>, <a href="http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/en/nordic/">Nordic countries</a>, <a href="http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/en/maps/india/">India</a> and <a href="http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/en/maps/africa/">Africa</a>. This game could be played in about 60 minutes. My daughter Kayley learned to play this when she was 6. Watch a review of Ticket to Ride <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0od4NBvnBc">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_39tFEdTbL8/Vkz7Q2DCOxI/AAAAAAAACbY/wBFUThhzfQ8/s1600/kingoftokyo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_39tFEdTbL8/Vkz7Q2DCOxI/AAAAAAAACbY/wBFUThhzfQ8/s200/kingoftokyo.jpg" width="194" /></a></div>
<b>2. <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/70323/king-tokyo">King of New Tokyo</a></b> is a 6 player dice game where your monster scores points by conquering Tokyo and other monsters. This game plays like Yahtzee where you roll and re-roll the dice to achieve special monster abilities. Players must balance short-term gains with long-term objectives. <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/160499/king-new-york">King of New York</a> is another similar stand-alone game with a few more ways for monsters to destroy buildings and score points. Both are excellent games that can be played in about 30 to 45 minutes with children as young as 6. Watch a review of King of Tokyo <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqBMTsO6T8Y">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SKAdhEJoSCQ/Vk0Dhe_DsMI/AAAAAAAACbw/8NesveVzDZM/s1600/pandemic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SKAdhEJoSCQ/Vk0Dhe_DsMI/AAAAAAAACbw/8NesveVzDZM/s200/pandemic.jpg" width="145" /></a></div>
<b>3. <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30549/pandemic">Pandemic</a></b> is a cooperative game where players work together to fight 5 diseases from spreading across the world. Each player has unique special abilities that require them to collaborate in creative ways. The expansion <a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/137136/pandemic-lab">Pandemic In the Lab</a> makes for an even more enjoyable game as petri dishes are used to manipulate the diseases to find the cure. I spend a majority of my time as a teacher and a parent teaching children to collaborate with others, so I'm excited to see more and more cooperative board games being published. Pandemic is a slightly more complex game that requires more understanding for the rules than the other games on this list. Watch a review of Pandemic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIpoDcPj8VU">here</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzWv1faEg9I">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HDldhSJ7kCY/Vk0FSniqNYI/AAAAAAAACb4/hNxj857HAvc/s1600/blackfleet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HDldhSJ7kCY/Vk0FSniqNYI/AAAAAAAACb4/hNxj857HAvc/s200/blackfleet.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<a href="https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/157403/black-fleet"><b>4. Black Fleet</b> </a>is a four player game where players use their merchant ship to deliver goods around the Caribbean while using their pirate ship to steal and bury treasure to earn doubloons to purchase special abilities and win the game. This is a casual child friendly pirate game that can be played in 40 to 60 minutes. You can watch a review of Black Fleet <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxMAfT7PfX0">here</a>.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-237920298020630132015-11-10T13:26:00.000-07:002015-11-10T13:26:40.202-07:00Watchwellast<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here is a collection of media that can be used to work with and engage students around a wide range of everyday problems. These videos all come from a pretty cool YouTube Channel called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHXs8_HRDm33vFtVuSLKrCw">Watchwellcast</a>. This is a part of <a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/engaging-activities.html">a project focused on working with and engaging students</a> in ways that help them make positive changes and/or informed choices in their lives.<br /><br />I hope to add more content to this page. Please consider leaving a comment with your suggestions for more video, poetry, short stories, still images, quotes, music videos and lyrics, art and books.<div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-60367169097233827652015-11-06T08:25:00.002-07:002015-11-06T08:25:55.380-07:00Joel Westheimer's talk on citizenship and education<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I had the pleasure of skipping hockey tonight to listen to Joel Westheimer talk about citizenship and education. Here is some of what I learned:<br />
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<li>Students may rarely see teachers being human because they see them so often just in their classroom teaching. Students rarely get to see teachers engage with other adults and agree and disagree in a way that model citizenship.</li>
<li>In the last few decades, we have seen a narrowing of the curriculum to literacy and numeracy. We have moved away from broad goals of schooling to very narrow academic goals that can be measured on bubble tests.</li>
<li>Imagine you were visiting a school in a totalitarian nation governed by a single-party dictatorship. Would the educational experiences be markedly different from the ones experienced by children in your local school?</li>
<li>Should anything be different from schools in a totalitarian dictatorship and a school in a democracy?</li>
<li>What responsibility do schools have to be democratic so that children can grow up to be adults who are democratic?</li>
<li>Having <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/01/standards-and-standardization.html">standards is not the same as standardization</a>. </li>
<li>Census testing is an unnecessary burden. <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/06/sample-testing.html">Sample testing</a> tells what we need to know and more efficiently. </li>
<li>There is no teacher who belongs to the group of teachers who don't care about whether children learn how to read, write or do arithmetic. Most teachers want more than the basics for every child they teach. The back to basics movement is a straw man argument that needlessly attacks teachers.</li>
<li>The Alberta Teachers' Association's<a href="http://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/PD-86-26%20A%20Great%20School%20for%20All-Transforming%20Education%20in%20Alberta.pdf"> A Great School for All</a> is impressive. </li>
<li>We don't remember teachers who successfully made their classroom more uniform or standardized with other teachers.</li>
<li>Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/10/sir-ken-robinson-and-adhd.html">Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) </a>may be an unintended consequence to standardization of curriculum and assessment in schools. </li>
<li>There is a disturbing trend among <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/03/dysfunctional-plcs.html">teachers' professional learning communities</a>. Standardization is trumping quality.</li>
<li>Teacher's "subjective" grades are a better predictor of students' successes in post-secondary than the "objective scores" from standardized tests and the SAT.</li>
<li>Opt out movement from standardized testing in the United States is picking up remarkable steam.</li>
<li>Economists don't know much about the economy and yet they speak about education like they know what they are talking about.</li>
<li>Less of life is about individual accomplishments and more about collective teamwork.</li>
<li>In the workplace, people who work together are called collaborative. In school, students who help each other out are called cheaters.</li>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-70866363340333712302015-11-05T15:23:00.001-07:002015-11-05T15:23:43.232-07:00Students from a totalitarian nation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-67348425567681787002015-11-04T16:12:00.000-07:002015-11-04T16:12:37.420-07:00No Child Left Thinking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This was written by Joel Westheimer who is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Citizen-Educating-Children-Common/dp/0807756350">What Kind of Citizen?</a> Westheimer tweets <a href="https://twitter.com/joelwestheimer">here</a>.<br />
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This is an excerpt from Westheimer's book.<br />
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by Joel Westheimer<br />
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Imagine you were visiting a school in a totalitarian nation governed by a single-party dictatorship. Would the educational experiences be markedly different from the ones experienced by children in your local school? That may sound like a facetious question, but I do not intend it that way. It seems plausible that good lessons in multiplication, chemistry, or a foreign language -- perhaps with some adjustments for cultural relevance and suitability -- would serve equally well in most parts of the world. So if you stepped into a school somewhere on the planet and politely asked to observe some of the lessons, would you be able to tell whether you were visiting a school in a democratic nation or a totalitarian one? Or, conversely, if students from a totalitarian nation were secretly transported to a school in your neighbourhood to continue their lessons with new teachers and a new curriculum, would they be able to tell the difference?<br />
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The children in your local school would probably learn how to read and write, just like students do in, say, North Korea or China. Students in your local schools might learn to add numbers, do fractions, and solve algebraic equations. But that's what students in Uzbekistan learn too. Maybe students in your local school learn how not to hit one another, to follow the rules, and not to break any laws. They might sing the national anthem and learn about steroids and the life cycle of the glowworm. Maybe they even put on plays, learn a musical instrument, and paint pictures. I know of schools in Eritrea and Belarus that do those things too.<br />
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My point is that citizens in nondemocratic countries governed by a single-party authoritarian regime, or even a military junta, learn a lot of the same things in school that our children learn. So what goals would be different for schools in a democratic society? For example, do students in democratic countries learn how to participate in public decision-making (the kind of participation that is required for democracy to function properly)? Are they taught to see themselves as individual actors who work in concert with others to create a better society? Are they taught the skills they need to think for themselves and to govern collectively?<br />
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Most of us would like to believe that they do. While a school in North Korea or China might be teaching students blind allegiance to their nation's leaders and deference to the social and political policies those leaders enact, we would expect that schools in the United States or Canada or Finland would teach students the skills and dispositions needed to evaluate for themselves the benefits and draw backs of particular policies and government practices. We would not be surprised to learn, for example, that North Korean children are taught to abide by an "official history" handed down by the single-party authoritarian regime. After all, a school curriculum that teaches one unified, unquestioned version of the "truth" is one of the hallmarks of totalitarian societies. Democratic citizens, however, should be committed to the principles and values that underlie democracy -- such as political participation, free speech, civil liberties, and equal opportunity. Schools might develop these commitments through lessons in the skills of analysis and exploration, free political expression, and independent thought.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-56742747801842565872015-11-03T05:00:00.000-07:002015-11-03T05:00:01.759-07:00What Kind of Citizen? Educating Our Children for the Common Good<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Joel Westheimer is the author of the book What Kind of Citizen: Educating Our Children for the Common Good and is speaking in Red Deer this Thursday, November 5, 2015.<br />
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Joel's book asks us to imagine the kind of society we would like to live in and shows how schools might best be used to make that vision a reality.<br />
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Westheimer challenges us to answer some pretty tough questions about our schools:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>What does an ideal school look like in your mind?</li>
<li>What lessons are being conveyed?</li>
<li>How are children and teachers interacting?</li>
<li>What kinds of responsibilities are students being asked to take on?</li>
<li>What vision of the "good" society is this school asking students to imagine?</li>
<li>Are they learning the skills and habits they would need to help bring that society into being? Are they learning to recognize injustice and work with others in their communities to diminish it?</li>
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Westheimer writes:</div>
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I prefer to think about schools, not as vehicles of transmission of knowledge (though they are that too), but as places where children learn about the society in which they are growing up, how they might engage in productive ways, and how they fight for change when change is warranted. </blockquote>
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Schools have always taught lessons in citizenship, moral values, good behaviour and "character". Even before there was formal schooling, informal education was replete with these kinds of goals. Contemporary schools inevitably teach these lessons as well. For example, schools teach children to follow rules, and to be sure, sometimes following the rules is necessary. But does being a "good" citizen ever require questioning those rules? What is the proper balance between rule following and thinking about the origins and purpose of those rules? We can imagine classrooms that aspire to that balance.</blockquote>
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Teaching children content like reading, writing and arithmetic in isolation of morals is developmentally inappropriate. </div>
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I did not become a teacher so that I could merely prepare children to live in a cruel and unjust world. I became a teacher so that I could help children grow up and make the world a better place.<br />
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The real world is not a fixed and known place -- the real world can be made and unmade by the people who live there. I want to teach my students to be prepared to live in the real world while inspiring them to make it better.<br />
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I'm reading Joel Westheimer's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Citizen-Educating-Children-Common/dp/0807756350">What Kind of Citizen?</a> and looking forward to<a href="http://www.joebower.org/2015/11/joel-westheimer-in-red-deer-november-5.html"> hear him speak this Thursday, November 5, 2015 in Red Deer. </a></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-24948839157750089142015-11-02T15:30:00.000-07:002015-11-02T15:30:00.205-07:00Joel Westheimer on Citizenship & Education.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.joebower.org/2015/11/joel-westheimer-in-red-deer-november-5.html">Joel Westheimer will be in Red Deer</a> on Thursday, November 5, 2015. Joel tweets <a href="https://twitter.com/joelwestheimer">here</a>.<br />
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Register for this free event <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2015/11/joel-westheimer-in-red-deer-november-5.html">here</a>.<br />
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Here are the highlights from this 8 minute video featuring Joel Westheimer discussing citizenship and education:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Students should be inspired to talk an active role in our democracy, taking an important place in history as more than an audience member.</li>
<li>Democracy is not a spectator sport -- it's a participative sport.</li>
<li>Schools should be more than job-training institutions.</li>
<li>If citizens are not well educated enough to govern their own affairs, the solution is not to take that power of governance away from them but to educate them. </li>
<li>It is a popular trend for schools to focus less on critical and creative thinking and more on making sure that all students are learning the same thing.</li>
<li>There is a <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/01/standards-and-standardization.html">big difference between standardization and having high standards</a>.</li>
<li>There are some unintended consequences with <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/05/do-standards-subjugate-students.html">obsessing over higher standards.</a></li>
<li>We have to stop pretending that we can meet all student's needs by treating them all the same.</li>
<li>There are no teachers who do not want students to learn the "basics". </li>
<li><a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/01/should-schools-just-get-back-to-basics.html">Should schools just get back to basics? </a>When did we ever leave?</li>
<li>The child who can read but chooses not to holds no advantage over the child who can't read.</li>
<li>We need to care about whether <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/03/is-reading-good-homework.html">children <i>want</i> to read at least as much as whether they can read.</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/rethinking-standardization.html">Standardization</a> has become the tail that wags the education dog.</li>
<li>Just like how mandated sentences strips judgement from judges, so too does <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/04/illusion-of-standardization.html">standardization deny teachers the ability to teach.</a></li>
<li>It is important to teach controversy in our schools. It is important that children understand that intelligent and successful adults disagree about important things.</li>
<li>We have to teach kids that intelligent, well-meaning adults differ on important matters of social concern.</li>
<li>Politics is how we come together as a democratic society to work together through our differences and make good decisions for us all. In that sense, we shouldn't get politics out of our schools, we need to get more politics in.</li>
</ul>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-19607262744485757472015-11-01T09:45:00.000-07:002015-11-01T09:45:25.741-07:00Joel Westheimer in Red Deer November 5<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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On Thursday, November 5, Joel Westheimer will be speaking in Red Deer, Alberta. Joel is an education columnist for CBC Radio and professor of democracy and education. Joel is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Citizen-Educating-Children-Common/dp/0807756350">What Kind of Citizen?</a> and he tweets <a href="https://twitter.com/joelwestheimer">here</a>.</div>
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To attend this free event, register <a href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CZ56XZF">here</a>.</h2>
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I'll see you there!</div>
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Here is a nice preview of <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/joel-westheimer-book-our-ottawa-1.3243853">Joel Westheimer's message around Citizenship</a>:</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-52303453093691815932015-10-28T12:20:00.000-06:002015-10-28T12:20:06.032-06:00Gabor Mate on The Biology of Loss<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I listened to <a href="http://drgabormate.com/">Gabor Mate</a> talk about The Biology of Loss: Recognizing the Consequences of Impaired Attachments and Fostering Resilience. Mate is the author of <a href="http://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/">In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts</a>, <a href="http://drgabormate.com/book/scattered-minds/">Scattered Minds</a> and <a href="http://drgabormate.com/book/when-the-body-says-no/">When the Body Says No</a>. <br />
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Here is some of what I learned:<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gabor Mate</td></tr>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Children are being diagnosed and medicated for mental health disorders at an alarming rate.</li>
<li>We have a massive social experiment where we are using anti-psychotic medications to control their behaviour.</li>
<li>We are now treating the side effects and unintended consequences of all this diagnosis and medicating of children.</li>
<li>The medications we are using are changing the biology of children's brains.</li>
<li>When we say this person is behaving this way because they have depression, ADHD or OCD. These are not explanations -- these are merely descriptions of their behaviours. A diagnosis is a description, not an explanation.</li>
<li>We too often see misbehaviours as the problem. Misbehaviour is the symptom of a larger problem. Treating the misbehaviour ignores the larger problem. Using punishments to force behaviour to change makes the problem worse.</li>
<li>Punishing children for misbehaviour by isolating them and rupturing relationships is like taking books away from children who can't read.</li>
<li>There is nothing wrong with acting out. When we act out it is a signal that we lack the skills to communicate our needs and problems. Think of the crying baby who is hungry or has a dirty diaper. Misbehaviour, acting out and temper tantrums are a primitive way of communicating that there is a problem.</li>
<li>We can't separate biology and physiology. We can't separate nature and nurture.</li>
<li>Stress is learned and passed on from one generation to the next.</li>
<li>Seeing people with only a medical lens holds up back from seeing whole people. It is a mistake to separate the mind from the body and physical health from social experiences.</li>
<li>We treat so many physical illnesses with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol">cortisol</a> which treats stress but then we never inquire into the effects of stress that contributed to our physical illness.</li>
<li>Isolation kills.</li>
<li>Cancer is not the disease of an individual. It is a disease of the individual's environment.</li>
<li>It is a mistake to see ADHD, depression and other mental health issues as genetic. Because these diagnosis are increasing, but our genes are not changing, tells us that it can't be genetic.</li>
<li>Our attention has to be selective. We must ignore other things to pay attention to something.</li>
<li>If stress is too much, tuning out becomes a coping strategy. </li>
<li>Adaptations that a child resort to in order to survive stress and trauma will cause long-term problems as they grow and develop. Necessary short-term solutions cause long-term problems. A child who tunes out to save themselves from stress, trauma and danger has a hard time turning back in when in a safe environment.</li>
<li>Addicts' brains lack the dopamine and chemistry that they can get from substance abuse. What happened in their life that affected their brain chemistry?</li>
<li>The prevention of ADHD, depression, OCD and others should happen at the first pre-natal visit. The stress of pregnant mothers are already affecting their baby's brains.</li>
<li>We need a preventative healthcare system that understands that we need to raise children's brains that don't need drugs from birth.</li>
<li>Emotionally and physically available parents who are not stressed that spend quality time with children are the best way to prevent addiction.</li>
<li>The hunter/gather tribe is one of the best environments to raise children because they have more than one set of adults to raise them. It takes a village to raise a child.</li>
<li>Parents can be stupid, so children need more than one set of adults to turn to.</li>
<li>Allowing young children to cry it out we are building their brains to not trust and defensive. Crying children learn that you don't care. They learn that the world doesn't care.</li>
<li>Infants cry because they have no other way to connect with people other than to be hold. Attachment is literal and requires physical touch.</li>
<li>When we use our love or absence of love as reward and punishment we teach children that they must please people at any cost to be loved.</li>
<li>If you have a 2 year old that isn't frustrated or mad at you, you're not parenting them.</li>
<li>When we convince children that angry little girls don't get love, they will learn to depress their feelings -- and then we diagnose them with depression. </li>
<li>We need to move from punitive to supportive.</li>
<li>The greatest loss in life is not that there is no love or support -- the greatest loss is that we lose our sense of self. The good news is that reconnection with our true self is always possible. And the best way to help people find themselves is to provide them with unconditional acceptance and connection.</li>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-27898893361392345252015-10-27T12:24:00.000-06:002015-10-27T12:24:14.357-06:00Theo Fleury and Kim Barthel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I listened to Kim Barthel and Theo Fleury discuss Trauma, Healing and the Brain. Together they wrote a book <a href="http://www.influencepublishing.com/theo-fleury-kim-barthel/">Conversations with a Rattle Snake</a>. Here is some of what I learned:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dVp-zHap00M/Vi-26G2g_GI/AAAAAAAACZI/SlsOEtxHPe8/s1600/theokim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dVp-zHap00M/Vi-26G2g_GI/AAAAAAAACZI/SlsOEtxHPe8/s320/theokim.jpg" width="320" /></a>
<li>There is always a reason for the behaviour.</li>
<li>If a care giver is preoccupied or unavailable then a child will feel rejection, abandonment and feeling not good enough which for a child is trauma.</li>
<li>In 2009, Theo Fleury wrote a book called <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Playing-With-Fire-Highest-Lowest/dp/1554682401">Playing with Fire</a>.</li>
<li>The fear of vulnerability holds us all back from living a whole life.</li>
<li>Trauma comes in many different shapes and sizes and it doesn't have to be just physical.</li>
<li>One of the most dangerous things for the brain is cortisol. Cortisol is our brain's pharmacy for stress. When we feel rejected, abandoned and not feeling good enough our brain is having a bath in cortisol.</li>
<li>Your brain can change until you stop breathing.</li>
<li>Trauma can harm the right side of the brain which can </li>
<li>A care givers body language and facial expressions have huge impact on children's well-being. </li>
<li>It is not necessarily helpful to retell the story of trauma. It's how we tell the story that matters in a relentlessly positive frame.</li>
<li>How parents interact with each other has a profound affect on children.</li>
<li>Trauma creates trauma. Hurt people, hurt people.</li>
<li>People who experience trauma often feel forced to pay attention to potential danger at the cost of mindfulness.</li>
<li>People who experience trauma sometimes cope by not being present and disassociating. It can be a safety mechanism to avoid further trauma.</li>
<li>Mindfulness teaches us to recognize our triggers for feeling not good enough, abandoned or rejected. The anecdote to these feelings is vulnerability and being aware of the here and now.</li>
<li>Our brains like balance to find our zone of comfort. Trauma changes our sense of balance so we engage in coping strategies to create a sense of balance.</li>
<li>People who struggle with regulating their brain chemistry self-medicate to regulate their brain chemistry. When mothers abuse substances, babies are born with brains that struggle to regulate their brain chemistry (dopamine).</li>
<li>Connection begets connection. Vulnerability is a two-way street between a mentor and mentee, parent and child, teacher and student.</li>
<li>Conversations with a Rattle Snake was almost called You're not a therapist, I'm not a patient, now let's just have a conversation. </li>
<li>Sometimes when we don't feel good enough, it is sometimes a sign that we are not being authentic enough. People who are the most authentic are the most vulnerable and they might be the ones who feel good enough.</li>
<li>Childhood experiences and trauma can lead us to feel abandoned, rejected, unloved and to feel not good enough.</li>
</ul>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-85912950831543992802015-10-27T09:57:00.002-06:002015-10-27T09:57:56.246-06:00Trauma, Healing & the Brain with Dr. Earl Henslin<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I attended a Trauma, Healing and the Brain conference. Here is some of what I learned from <a href="https://drhenslin.com/">Dr. Earl Henslin.</a><br />
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Dr. Earl Henslin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Earl has a doctorate in clinical psychology. </li>
<li>Author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Love-Breakthroughs/dp/0785228756">This is your Brain in Love</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/This-Your-Brain-Joy-Revolutionary/dp/0785298371/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0H1VDSZJ5CSPBENZJX04">This is your Brain on Joy</a></li>
<li>Is there a normal brain? How can there be when we all experience such different things.</li>
<li>Bumps to our head can change a lot about our lives.</li>
<li>The real reason to not do drugs: They damage your brain and limit your potential.</li>
<li>Everything we put in our mouth has an affect on our brain.</li>
<li>Prefrontal cortex: front part of the brain that runs executive functioning. It is the "adult on board" that helps us make good decisions. Drug and alcohol abuse damages the prefrontal cortex.</li>
<li>Any 12 step addiction program tells us that recovering addicts shouldn't make any life altering decisions inside of the first year of being sober. A sponsor and mentor is needed to help make up for the damage done to the prefrontal cortex.</li>
<li>Exercise and movement is the best thing we can do for the brain. Sleep is the second best thing we can do for our brain.</li>
<li>10 years of alcohol and nicotine abuse quadruples the risk of Alzheimer's and dementia.</li>
<li>Head trauma can be the cause of depression, anxiety, anger, etc.</li>
<li>Neuroplasticity = the brain can change</li>
<li>Before we jump into education and therapy, we should make sure the child's basic needs and health are being met. Eat, sleep and movement. There may be organic brain damage that we need to address.</li>
<li>Basal ganglia is the part of the brain responsible for anxiety</li>
<li>Heal the brain, help the soul.</li>
<li>Without a healthy brain, the half-life of talk therapy and education can be from the classroom/office to the playground/parking lot.</li>
<li><a href="http://matthewjohnstone.com.au/courses/quiet-the-mind/">Quiet the Mind </a>is a great book on calming our thoughts</li>
<li>Energy drinks are doing more damage to our brains than we understand.</li>
</ul>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-27114271100895052482015-10-26T15:33:00.002-06:002015-10-26T15:33:57.930-06:00Healthy Eating<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here is a collection of media that can be used to work with and engage students around healthy eating. This is a part of <a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/engaging-activities.html">a project focused on working with and engaging students</a> in ways that help them make positive changes and/or informed choices in their lives.<br />
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I hope to add more content to this page. Please consider leaving a comment with your suggestions for more video, poetry, short stories, still images, quotes, music videos and lyrics, art and books.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-401664441212075712015-10-09T14:31:00.000-06:002015-10-09T14:31:14.582-06:00Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1XQTjsplt6Q/Vhgam_w1qzI/AAAAAAAACYg/qj-K9_tMwmM/s1600/wells.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1XQTjsplt6Q/Vhgam_w1qzI/AAAAAAAACYg/qj-K9_tMwmM/s1600/wells.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kristopher Wells</td></tr>
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I listened to Dr. Kristopher Wells who is an Assisstant Professor and <a href="http://www.ismss.ualberta.ca/KrisWells">Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services (iSMSS)</a> University of Alberta. He spoke about Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Canadian Schools. You can follow Kristopher on Twitter <a href="http://www.twitter.com/KristopherWells">here</a>.<br />
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Here is some of what I learned:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>After decades of silence, more and more of our public institutions (like our schools) want to have a better understanding for gender identity and sexual orientation. </li>
<li>Kristopher started <a href="http://www.nohomophobes.com/">www.nohomophobes.com</a>. Homophobic language isn't always meant to be hurtful, but how often do we use it without thinking?</li>
<li>Kristopher worked with the Alberta Teachers Association to author a <a href="http://www.teachers.ab.ca/For%20Members/Professional%20Development/Diversity%20and%20Human%20Rights/Sexual%20Orientation/Safe%20Spaces%20Initiative/Pages/Index.aspx">Safe Spaces Initiative</a>.</li>
<li>For the longest time, the Edmonton Oilers would have nothing to do with supporting LGBTQ until Andrew Ference marched in the Edmonton Pride Parade with his Oilers jersey.</li>
<li>Understanding and allying with LGBTQ is about inclusion and humanizing schools.</li>
<li>What is LBBTTTIQQAAP? Lesbain, gay, bisexual, transgender, two spirit, transexual, intersex, queer, questioning, asexual, ally, pansexual.</li>
<li>Those who are not LGBTQ may be in the best position to use their privilege to ally and advocate for those who are LGBTQ.</li>
<li>LGBTQ are sexual and gender minority, an invisible minority, are disproportionate targets for violence and victimization, and are coming out at younger ages.</li>
<li>People who say "there are no gay students in my school" are really saying "there are no visible gay students in our school" because the school is likely not a safe space for them to be visibly gay.</li>
<li>Confidentiality for students is important especially when it comes to their sexual orientation and gender identity. When students are "outed" by breaches of their confidentiality they are put at risk.</li>
<li>Some parents might say "if the school knows my child is gay, I demand they tell me. I have a right to know". The real issue here is if a child is gay, and you are their parent, why don't you already know?</li>
<li>The most victimizers and victims of hate crimes are youth.</li>
<li>Are schools suppose to challenge our society's status quo or maintain it?</li>
<li>Boys and girls tend to become aware of their sexual orientation around 10. They tend to disclose this around 16. LGBTQ children can become aware of their gender identity around 6. </li>
<li>What message are we giving children if they are told they just have to survive in isolation until they can grow up and find their own safe place elsewhere?</li>
<li>Generation Queer is the first generation of children who are aware and disclosing their gender identity and sexual orientation while still in school.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/04/wildrose-and-pcs-vote-against.html">After Alberta had policies around Gay-Straight Alliances</a> far more schools had Gay-Straight Alliances. Policy is important. It can liberate us or it can hold us back.</li>
<li>LGBTQ is our present day civil rights movement.</li>
<li>In schools, we should not be trying to "fix" our students. We should be supporting them.</li>
<li>If you want to know how dangerous it can be to be LGBTQ, hold hands with a same sex friend and walk around public places.</li>
<li>We have tolerance for a "tom-boy" but very little for a "sissy-boy"</li>
<li><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/Wren%20Kauffman:%20A%20transgender%20boy%20shares%20his%20story">Wren Kauffman: A transgender boy shares his story</a></li>
<li>Our binary understanding for male and female gender identity causes harm. Our concept of normal needs to change.</li>
<li>Preparing children for hate and ignorance is not the same as protecting them from it or stopping it.</li>
<li><a href="http://egale.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/EgaleFinalReport-web.pdf">Homophobia is in our schools </a>and it is hurting our children.</li>
<li>Why do some people survive atrocities? Two things tend to get people through atrocity: 1. Hope that the future can be better 2. Support and love from family.</li>
<li>Diversity allows us to adapt and makes us stronger. Sameness is unsustainable and stagnant.</li>
<li>Teachers need to intervene when students say "fag" as often as they intervene when students say "fuck".</li>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-56224050938086642232015-09-20T19:19:00.003-06:002015-09-20T19:26:07.569-06:00Turning around challenging classrooms<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Every year teachers encounter a wide variety of challenges in their classrooms. Sources of these challenges might come from a new set of children with their own unique needs, a new teaching assignment or a change in administration.<br />
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As I start my 16th year of teaching, it is my experience that teachers who are <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2013/01/want-to-be-better-teacher-blog.html">highly reflective</a> and place a premium on <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/11/something-we-create-for-ourselves.html">professional development</a> stand the best chance for surviving and thriving challenging classrooms. <br />
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Here are 3 things highly reflective teachers understand:<br />
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<b><i>1. Blaming the kids will ensure that nothing changes.</i></b> Teaching would be easy if weren't for the students. It's easy to <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/02/blaming-kids.html">blame the kids</a>. It's easy because it means we don't have to<a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/09/why.html"> reflect inward</a> - rather we just have to look outward. <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2010/09/bad-pedagogy.html">Challenging one's own practices</a> can be tough, but if you stop and think about each of the statements above, both logic and research will show that these are <i>classroom</i> problems, not simply <i>student</i> problems.<br />
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<b><i>2. Question the 'how' and the 'why'. </i></b>Many professional development conferences provide teachers with opportunity to ask questions such as “How do I mark better?” or “How do I get my students to do their homework?” At first glance these look like challenging and provocative questions, but they are still questions that promote more of the same. Far more powerful questions are <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/03/heres-my-chapter-from-book-de-testing.html">“Why do I mark?” </a>or “Why do I assign homework?” Investigating the motives for our actions, rather than merely examining our methods of implementation, is a better use of our time, particularly if the subject in question is a belief or habit that we’ve come to accept as a given truth.<br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">3. If the teacher is bored or unhappy, the students are more so.</i> For too many people, the game of school sounds all too familiar. It's like the learners and teachers exchange winks that say: <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/02/here-is-what-education-hell-looks-like.html">you will pretend to teach</a> and we will pretend to learn; it won't be all that enjoyable, but it will be easy. Teaching and learning <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/09/listerine-learning.html">should not be a chore</a> that everyone can't wait to be done.</div>
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Turning around challenging classrooms and <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2013/01/changing-school.html">changing school</a> through reflection and professional development is not easy but it's worth it. Below are links to all of the rethinking and reflecting that I have done over the last 16 years:<br />
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<a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/rethink-discipline.html">Rethink Discipline</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/abolishing-grading.html">Rethink Assessment</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/abolishing-homework.html">Rethink Homework</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/rethinking-standardization.html">Rethink Standardization</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/rethink-accountability.html">Rethink Accountability</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/rethink-lesson-planning.html">Rethink Lesson Planning</a></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-71198841145383216812015-09-16T18:18:00.000-06:002015-09-16T18:18:19.327-06:00Throw away thoughts and Replacement Thoughts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m2zRA5zCA6M" width="500"></iframe><br />
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I use this video with children who find themselves having overwhelming negative thoughts through out their day. These negative thoughts lead people to be more depressed, more self-critical and less successful.<br />
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Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) outlines 3 basic steps for rethinking negative thinking:<br />
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1. Be aware of the negative thought and record it.<br />
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2. Rationalize the negative thoughts into categories. (Assuming & Mind Reading, Shoulds/Musts & Oughts, Fairy Tale Fantasy, Over Generalizing, Catastrophizing...)<br />
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3. Replace the negative thought with a more plausible and positive thought.<br />
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Drawing attention to negative thinking, naming it and replacing it is something children and adults alike can do to retrain their brains and hearts in an attempt to be happier and more successful.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-34459359320877078492015-08-19T14:43:00.000-06:002015-08-19T14:43:02.945-06:00How can parents and teachers help each other?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This post will be featured in Cathy Rubin's The Global Search for Education: Our Top 12 Teacher Blogs.<div>
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Here are 4 understandings that help parents and teachers to educate children.<br /><br /><i><b>1. Teach the whole-child. </b></i>Ask any parents what their long-term concerns and goals are for their children, and seldom will you hear about test scores and world rankings. Their concerns are compelling, existential and heartfelt. Parents want their kids to be happy, hard-working, motivated, responsible, honest, empathetic, intelligent, collaborative, creative and courageous. Of course we want our children to grow academically, but we also want them to grow emotionally, socially and physically, and this requires a well-rounded education.<br /><br /><b><i>2. Teaching and parenting is about <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/06/this-will-be-my-last-year-teaching-in.html">relationships, relationships, relationships</a>. </i></b>Parents and teachers know that children do not care what you know until they know that you care about them. Good teaching and parenting is less about <i>doing things to</i> children and more about <i>working with </i>them. Because <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/10/3-reasons-to-stop-rewarding-and.html">rewards and punishments are by definition manipulative and coercive</a>, they undermine our relationships and therefore need to be tempered or even abandoned. This means teachers would not use <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/11/killing-community-with-token-economies.html">token economies</a> or <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/11/6-reasons-to-reject-classdojo.html">classroom management schemes that treat children like pets</a> and parents wouldn't use <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/08/do-you-want-time-out.html">time-outs</a> or <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/10/3-reasons-to-stop-rewarding-and.html">bribes</a>. <div>
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">3. Good parents and teachers are not born -- they are made. </i>Parenting and teaching are the easiest jobs to get wrong and the hardest to get right. Regardless of experience and expertise, we are all human and are subject to impatience and ignorance. The best parents and teachers don't waste their limited time, effort and resources on blaming and shaming -- instead, they see every problem as an opportunity to teach and learn.</div>
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<b><i>4. Public education is not a private interest for an elite few -- it is a public good for all. </i></b>Public education, like democracy, is reserved only for those who fight for it.<i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>First time parents don't realize how important sleep is until it is taken from them -- the same is true for our public schools.</div>
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The only thing that <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/08/privatizing-public-education.html">destructive education policies</a> require to thrive is for good people to do nothing. Parents and teachers must work together as stewards for our public schools and demand that public education remain a public good for all. This requires parents and teachers to pay attention as much or more to their public schools as their favourite sports and celebrities.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-3201272242113126502015-08-16T10:25:00.000-06:002015-08-16T10:25:40.439-06:00Rethinking School Leadership<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<i>"The role of the school principal in Canada is increasingly multifaceted and complex. Beyond the foundational administrative and managerial roles they are expected to master, principals are also expected to be innovators and agents of change -- all of this in a culture that increasingly challenges traditional conceptions of leadership."</i></div>
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<a href="http://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/The%20Future%20of%20the%20Principalship%20in%20Canada.pdf">~ J-C Couture</a></div>
<br />
In June I wrote a post on <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2015/06/teacher-leadership.html">5 ways teachers can demonstrate leadership in the classroom</a>.<br />
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Here are 5 ways school administrators can exhibit and inspire leadership in their schools and school districts.<br />
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<b><i>1. Good leaders stick around. </i></b>We know that <a href="http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/examining-principal-turnover">high principal turnover</a> often leads to greater teacher turnover and initiative fatigue. Sometimes these moves are made by the choices of senior administrators from the school district, however, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Professional-Capital-Transforming-Teaching-School/dp/0807753327">Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan</a> reminds us that "regularized rotation of principals by their districts every 3-5 years has more a negative than positive effect on improvement efforts". Other times these moves are initiated by principals who <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w17243">"use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments"</a>. When leaders come and go in search of their own self-promotion, it's hard to see them as allies with the community. <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/08/03/reform_makes_broken_new_orleans_schools_worse_race_charters_testing_and_the_real_story_of_education_after_katrina/">This is no more evident than in New Orleans, a city that is 65 percent black, where the corporate education reform movement is almost entirely white led.</a> In the US, <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/social_sector/latest_thinking/worlds_most_improved_schools">average tenure for urban superintendents is just three years</a>, while education secretaries in England and France tend to turnover after only two years. Albertans have had 4 Ministers of Education since 2011, and we know that Canadian principals are, <a href="http://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/Publications/Research/The%20Future%20of%20the%20Principalship%20in%20Canada.pdf">"at risk of burnout in an increasingly ramped up culture of performativity"</a>.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T-hZtE0QwjI/Vcj1UHsCkZI/AAAAAAAACWE/21k7xH9aju0/s1600/this%2Bis%2Bour%2Bsociety.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T-hZtE0QwjI/Vcj1UHsCkZI/AAAAAAAACWE/21k7xH9aju0/s320/this%2Bis%2Bour%2Bsociety.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This shouldn't be our society or our schools.</td></tr>
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<b><i>2. Good leaders distribute leadership without stepping on others.</i></b> Most education systems, school districts and schools are built on hierarchal systems where well intentioned fidelity too often becomes code for do as you are told. <a href="https://twitter.com/hargreavesbc/status/612704042377023488">Andy Hargreaves reminds us</a> that the best leaders "uplift those they serve by <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/06/do-i-serve-you-or-are-you-to-support-me.html">uplifting those who serve them</a>". The best leaders know that they don't know everything, so they reject cultures of compliance built on <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/08/you-have-to-open-your-own-eyes.html">confirmation bias</a> and instead <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/06/seek-dissent.html">seek dissent</a> to liberate the conversation. The best leaders <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/02/costs-and-benefits-of-self.html">reject comforting lies and embrace unpleasant truths</a>. The best leaders reject the <a href="http://www.joebower.org/search/label/transfers">seductiveness of efficiency via fear</a> and <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/03/dysfunctional-plcs.html">conformity through standardization</a> and fatalism. Good leaders don't merely accumulate and exercise power while reminding their inferiors to follow along. Good leaders share power to grow leadership among all.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r-eZ7GyAJ8k/Vcg3ArQZ0BI/AAAAAAAACVI/Jt4VssHOovM/s1600/punish%2Band%2Benslave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r-eZ7GyAJ8k/Vcg3ArQZ0BI/AAAAAAAACVI/Jt4VssHOovM/s200/punish%2Band%2Benslave.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The worst leaders are Decepticons.</td></tr>
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<i><b>3. Leaders don't enslave -- they support.</b></i> Some leaders <a href="http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2009_PelletierSharp_TRE.pdf">empower and inspire teachers to work with children in ways that leave life long impressions while others create instruments of control</a> to separate the powerful from the powerless that makes <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/06/do-i-serve-you-or-are-you-to-support-me.html">compliance the gold standard</a>. Teaching is a <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2015/01/3-big-ideas-about-teacher-workload.html">highly relational and complex job </a>that <a href="http://www.joebower.org/p/rethinking-standardization.html">cannot be reduced to a one-size-fits-all standardized approach</a>. If teachers are to have any hope in accomplishing what many people admit to be an undesirable and impossible job, they require servant leadership that puts <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership">"the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible."</a><br />
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<b><i>4. School leaders are teachers.</i></b> In his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Finnish-Lessons-2-0-Educational-Finland/dp/0807755850">Finnish Lessons 2.0</a>, Pasi Sahlberg reminds us that, "Some countries allow their schools to be led by non-educators, hoping that business-style management will raise efficiency and improve performance." Most Canadians wouldn't understand how an non-teacher could possibly lead a school or school district while our American neighbours have already embraced this as common practice.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/HargreavesBC">@HargreavesBC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/joe_bower">@joe_bower</a> Also unsustainable for teachers to provide effective feedback for improvement but receive none themselves</div>
— Ruth Sutton (@ruthsutton) <a href="https://twitter.com/ruthsutton/status/612510324525244416">June 21, 2015</a></blockquote>
If you haven't taught, you can't give teachers the feedback they need to improve. If you haven't taught, you can't lead teachers. Period.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I found this written on my whiteboard<br />
on the last day of school. </td></tr>
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">5. The best leaders don't value what they measure -- they measure what they value. </i>In their book <a href="http://www.michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/JSD-Power-of-Professional-Capital.pdf">Professional Capital: Transforming teaching in every school</a>, Andy Hargreaves and Micheal Fullen layout how, "great schools are made up of three kinds of capital: human capital (the talent of individuals); social capital (the collaborative power of the group); and decisional capital (the wisdom and expertise to make sound judgements about learners that are cultivated over many years".<br />
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At the end of this school year, my grade 6 students wrote Provincial Achievement Tests. Their <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2012/05/folly-multiple-choice.html">multiple choice scantrons</a> were promptly shipped off to our provincial capital to be counted.<br />
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At the end of this school year, <a href="https://twitter.com/joe_bower/status/614521125519781889">I found this message on my whiteboard</a> that counted formally and officially for nothing -- but meant everything to me and to that student. Good leaders would care about this emotionally intelligent piece of data at least as much, if not more, than spreadsheet-friendly test scores. Albert Einstein said it all, " Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts".<br />
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Such a nuanced approach requires us to <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2014/03/heres-my-chapter-from-book-de-testing.html">temper, if not abandon, our mania for reducing learning and teaching to numbers</a>. While so many forces work to sterilize and standardize our schools, Hargreaves and Fullen lead the way to humanize education.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-49945251247575418532015-07-31T19:52:00.003-06:002015-07-31T19:52:52.787-06:00Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This was written by Yong Zhao who is the author writes and speaks about education reform. He blogs <a href="http://zhaolearning.com/category/blog/">here</a> and tweets <a href="http://www.twitter.com/yongzhaoUO">here</a>. This post was found <a href="http://zhaolearning.com/2015/07/20/outcome-versus-process-different-incarnations-of-personalization/">here</a>.<br /><br /><br />by Yong Zhao<br /><br />There are different views of personalized learning. My advocacy for personalization has been occasionally misunderstood as supporting the narrow view of personalized learning driven by big data and learning analytics with technology or online learning in general. Below is an excerpt of a chapter from a book I coauthored with a group of teachers and school leaders: <a href="http://www.corwin.com/books/Book249821?siteId=corwin-press&subject=C00&qsupld=false&productType=&q=zhao&fs=1">World Class Learners Bundle</a> to be published by Corwin. Hope it helps clarify my take on personalized learning.–Yong<br /><br />To personalize is to design or produce something to meet individual requirements. In education, personalization is often used in the forms of “personalized learning,” “personalized education,” or “personalized instruction.” The term personalization is often used interchangeably with individualization, and sometimes with customization. The general idea is to enable individual students to have an educational experience that meets their individual needs.<br /><br />Although it is has long been recognized that individual students have different needs and high-quality education cannot be “one size fits all,” personalization in education has different meanings and realizations in practice because education has many components that can be personalized, individualized, or customized. For example, personalization can happen at the pace of learning by allowing students to learn at their own speed. Personalization can also be employed to enable students to choose when and where they learn. It can also be used in ways that allow students to have a choice of work assignments in the classroom. Furthermore, personalization is a strategy that enables students to demonstrate their learning by creating a product of their own choosing.<br /><br />Generally speaking, personalization can be put into two categories: process personalization and outcome personalization. Process personalization enables students to enjoy choice in the learning process, whereas outcome personalization allows students to define the end results of their learning. Process personalization is by far the most prominent version in education today because the current education paradigm has a predetermined outcome for all students. That is, no matter how one gets there, we want everyone to get to the same place: mastery of the knowledge and skills prescribed in the authoritative curriculum or standards.<br /><br />Personalization of the Learning Process<br /><br />Although the outcome remains the same, the journey to the destination can be personalized to accommodate different needs, abilities, learning styles, and interests of students. Some of the most common aspects of individualization or personalization that have taken place (or should take place) include pace, content, product, learning environments, and assessment.<br /><br />Personalization of pace: For all sorts of reasons, students come to school with different abilities and thus will acquire the same content at different speeds. To accommodate different abilities in students, schools have been encouraged to allow students to progress at their individual pace. One of the earliest experiments for self-paced learning is programmed instruction advocated by behaviorist psychologists such as B. F. Skinner in the 1960s (Skinner, 1968). Skinner and like-minded individuals relied on technology to enable students to pace their own learning and receive feedback. With the advent of modern computer technologies, individualization of learning pace became more prominent with computer-based learning. Today, the tradition continues in the form of personalized learning with the support of Big Data and learning analytics technology. Personalization of pace can also happen in the classroom by permitting students to work at their own speed. At the school level, one form of personalization is ability grouping or tracking, which puts students into different classes that move at different paces.<br /><br />Personalization of content: Content can also be personalized to meet individual needs. Although all students in the traditional educational paradigm need to master the same content as prescribed by curriculum standards, they can be exposed to different content that best suits them. For example, following the principles of differentiated instruction (Tomlinson, 2001), students can be given different tasks based on their level of understanding of the content to be covered using Bloom’s Taxonomy. To accommodate different interests and learning styles, students can also choose different genres of content. For instance, different kinds of texts, novels, or short stories can be used to meet the needs of individual students at different reading levels. The media used to present the content can also be individualized. Some may prefer reading, others listening. Some may learn best from audio, others visual, and still others physical manipulation.<br /><br />Personalization of product: Students often need to produce some sort of product (e.g., papers, exhibits, or exams) to demonstrate their mastery of the intended content. To accommodate different levels and styles of learning, the type of products expected of students can be personalized. Some students may prefer to write a paper, others may choose to compose a song. Some may demonstrate their learning by constructing a product such as a poster, others may create a multimedia interactive book. Some students may choose to take a traditional test, while others may design a video game.<br /><br />Personalization of the learning environment: Where and how learning occurs can also be individualized. Although the same standard and content is expected of all students in the traditional paradigm, students may choose to learn in different places, from different sources, and with different arrangements. With the wide accessibility to online resources, students do not need to learn the content from the classroom alone nor do they need to learn from the teacher only. They could also learn from field trips and extended trips. Moreover, students could choose to take courses online from other institutions. In terms of how students can learn, they could learn by themselves, or in collaboration with others. In the classroom, a teacher can create different learning environments to support personalized learning. Teachers may use different grouping strategies to accommodate student working styles and preferences or they can create different physical arrangements in the classroom for different learning purposes.<br /><br />Personalization of Outcome<br /><br />Personalization of the learning process has tremendous value in improving student learning. It is undoubtedly a major improvement over the traditional one-size-fits-all teaching practices. Thus, personalization has been advocated for decades as an effective approach in the traditional education paradigm to meet the needs of individual students, especially students who have disabilities or are judged to be less ready for certain school tasks. However, it is not enough for cultivating the creative and entrepreneurial talents we need in the new world, as discussed in World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students (Zhao, 2012). A different level of personalization is needed: personalization of learning outcomes.<br /><br />Personalization of learning outcomes takes personalization to a different level by allowing students to pursue their strengths and interests. It does not accept a prescribed curriculum or set of standards as common to all students, as in the traditional paradigm. Thus, the goal of education is not to fix students’ deficits measured by external standards. Rather, this level of personalization assumes that all talents, skills, and knowledge are of equal value and thus all learning outcomes are valuable. As a result, instead of forcing or luring all students to master the same knowledge and skills, this approach asks for personalized educational experiences that support the development of individual talent. Recent developments in technology also enable students to have access to global educational resources, hence providing opportunities for students to construct a learning environment that meets their diverse needs.<br /><br />Strength-based personalization: Allowing students to personalize their outcomes is to enhance their strengths. Thus, strength-based personalization requires teachers to not focus on what the students cannot do. Instead, the teacher looks hard at what each student can do and uses that as a starting point to build an individualized pathway for the student. In other words, rather than having students follow a predetermined curriculum, schools follow students and work with them to co-create the curriculum, which is highly individualized. The curriculum emerges as student learning progresses. To do so, schools need to offer a broad range of courses or other learning activities for students to explore their strengths. In this model, the school becomes a museum of learning opportunities. Students can choose to take advantage of any of these opportunities, as museum visitors would any of the exhibits. Teachers become curators of learning opportunities and also “tour guides” for students. They do not impose but can certainly mentor, motivate, and challenge.<br /><br />Passion-driven personalization: Personalization can also be driven by students’ passions, which can be different from their strengths. That is, what a student may be good at can be different what he or she is passionate about. Students’ interests should be considered as legitimate sources of motivation; what students are passionate about has intrinsic value, although it may or may not coincide with the prescribed curriculum. To support personalization driven by students’ interests and passions, schools need to develop mechanisms to identify students’ interests. Schools must treat these interests seriously once they are identified, and schools must develop courses and learning activities accordingly.<br /><br />In summary, personalization of learning outcomes is not mutually exclusive with personalization of process. In fact, it requires all of the different strategies of process personalization. But it goes beyond process personalization by extending personalization beyond a predefined curriculum. Curriculum standards may still be valuable as a guide for specific subjects and domains, should students choose to master that subject or domain. However, students are not forced to learn what has been prescribed, particularly at a prescribed time, location, and pace.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-85445451580474930712015-06-19T12:09:00.000-06:002015-06-19T12:09:29.502-06:00The State of Inclusion in Alberta Schools<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This was written by Avis Glaze as the Forward in <a href="https://www.blogger.com/So%20often,%20as%20teachers,%20we%20reiterate%20the%20statement%20that%20%E2%80%9Call%20children%20can%20learn%20and%20achieve%20given%20time%20and%20proper%20supports.%E2%80%9D%20I%20have%20no%20doubt%20that%20we%20believe%20this%20statement.%20But%20I%20would%20like%20to%20encourage%20deep%20reflection%20on%20what%20this%20statement%20means,%20and,%20more%20importantly,%20what%20we%20will%20do%20differently%20to%20enable%20students%20to%20be%20more%20successful.%20Permit%20me%20to%20congratulate%20the%20Alberta%20Teachers%E2%80%99%20Association%20(ATA)%20for%20its%20attention%20to%20inclusive%20education%20here.%20The%20State%20of%20Inclusion%20in%20Alberta%20Schools%20is%20an%20outstanding%20study%20that%20will%20serve%20as%20a%20model%20internationally.%20I%20commend%20the%20Association%20for%20carrying%20on%20its%20rich%20tradition%20of%20excellence%20and%20leadership%20in%20education%20through%20its%20creation%20of%20the%20Blue%20Ribbon%20Panel%20on%20Inclusive%20Education%20in%20Alberta%20Schools.%20The%20Blue%20Ribbon%20Panel%E2%80%99s%20findings,%20outlined%20in%20this%20report,%20are%20very%20important%20and%20the%20focus%20on%20inclusion%20is%20timely.%20All%20across%20the%20globe,%20teachers,%20politicians,%20community%20members%20and%20parents%20are%20striving%20to%20ensure%20that%20education%20lives%20up%20to%20its%20promise%20of%20creating%20a%20more%20just%20and%20harmonious%20society.%20They%20recognize%20the%20complexities%20associated%20with%20inclusion,%20but%20want%20more%20inclusive%20practices%20to%20prevent%20their%20children%20and%20grandchildren%20from%20falling%20through%20the%20cracks.%20In%20the%20same%20vein,%20Albertans%20want%20the%20best%20for%20the%20province%E2%80%99s%20children%20and%20youth,%20but%20will%20not%20be%20able%20to%20confidently%20say%20that%20the%20education%20system%20is%20successful%20until%20the%20bar%20is%20raised%20and%20achievement%20gaps%20are%20closed.%20A%20commitment%20to%20inclusive%20practices%20will%20greatly%20enhance%20the%20quality%20of%20education%20in%20the%20province.%20Education%20is%20the%20ultimate%20tool%20of%20empowerment.%20It%20requires%20both%20will%20and%20skill%20to%20help%20students%20fulfill%20their%20potential.%20Alberta%20teachers%20fully%20realize%20this.%20They%20know%20that%20they%20must%20continue%20in%20their%20relentless%20quest%20to%20achieve%20excellence%20through%20equity.%20They%20want%20the%20best%20for%20their%20students.%20But%20there%20is%20also%20a%20broader%20goal.%20We%20live%20in%20one%20of%20the%20greatest%20countries%20in%20the%20world%E2%80%94one%20that%20promotes%20democracy,%20fairness%20and%20justice.%20We%20cannot%20afford%20to%20forget%20that%20democracy%20and%20education%20are%20inextricably%20intertwined:%20democracy%20is%20strongest%20where%20education%20is%20strongest,%20and%20publicly-funded%20education%20is%20the%20hallmark%20of%20democracy.%20To%20my%20mind,%20this%20study%E2%80%99s%20focus%20on%20inclusion%20and%20its%20findings%20represent%20a%20clarion%20call%20to%20action.%20Reaching%20the%20goals%20and%20successfully%20implementing%20the%20strategies%20outlined%20here%20require%20a%20shared%20purpose%20and%20mission.%20Alberta%20teachers%E2%80%94who%20work%20with%20students%20every%20day%20and%20are%20committed%20to%20student%20success%E2%80%94have%20the%20will,%20skills%20and%20attitude%20to%20make%20it%20happen.%20The%20children%20deserve%20no%20less.%20Avis%20Glaze%20International%20Education%20Consultant%20Edu-quest%20International%20Inc">The State of Inclusion in Alberta Schools</a> by the Alberta Teachers' Association.<br /><br />by Avis Glaze<br /><br />So often, as teachers, we reiterate the statement that “all children can learn and achieve given time and proper supports.” I have no doubt that we believe this statement. But I would like to encourage deep reflection on what this statement means, and, more importantly, what we will do differently to enable students to be more successful. <div>
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Permit me to congratulate the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) for its attention to inclusive education here. The State of Inclusion in Alberta Schools is an outstanding study that will serve as a model internationally. I commend the Association for carrying on its rich tradition of excellence and leadership in education through its creation of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Inclusive Education in Alberta Schools. The Blue Ribbon Panel’s findings, outlined in this report, are very important and the focus on inclusion is timely. </div>
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All across the globe, teachers, politicians, community members and parents are striving to ensure that education lives up to its promise of creating a more just and harmonious society. They recognize the complexities associated with inclusion, but want more inclusive practices to prevent their children and grandchildren from falling through the cracks. In the same vein, Albertans want the best for the province’s children and youth, but will not be able to confidently say that the education system is successful until the bar is raised and achievement gaps are closed. A commitment to inclusive practices will greatly enhance the quality of education in the province. </div>
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Education is the ultimate tool of empowerment. It requires both will and skill to help students fulfill their potential. Alberta teachers fully realize this. They know that they must continue in their relentless quest to achieve excellence through equity. They want the best for their students. But there is also a broader goal. We live in one of the greatest countries in the world—one that promotes democracy, fairness and justice. We cannot afford to forget that democracy and education are inextricably intertwined: democracy is strongest where education is strongest, and publicly-funded education is the hallmark of democracy. </div>
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To my mind, this study’s focus on inclusion and its findings represent a clarion call to action. Reaching the goals and successfully implementing the strategies outlined here require a shared purpose and mission. Alberta teachers—who work with students every day and are committed to student success—have the will, skills and attitude to make it happen. </div>
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The children deserve no less.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-40470811874672691022015-06-17T23:04:00.000-06:002015-06-17T23:04:34.380-06:00Teacher Leadership<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The best schools have both a strong and healthy administration and teaching staff. <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/07/best-and-worst-administrators.html">Weak administration</a> can leave even the most qualified teaching staff anemic -- and a strong administration with a weak teaching staff leaves a school with a lot of talk and no walk.<br />
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I often think about how it is a systemic flaw that teachers have to leave the classroom in order to make more money or advance their careers.<br />
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In some school districts, being a troublemaker is one of the best ways to become an outcast and get fired, while in other districts it is one of the best ways to <a href="http://www.joebower.org/2011/03/interview-with-mona-knudslien-joe-bower.html">make a difference and become influential</a>.<br />
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The best schools and school districts understand that the most innovative and inspiring teachers are first labelled as troublemakers until they become popular, then they are called leaders.<br />
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What are the best ways a teacher can demonstrate leadership in the classroom?<br />
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<b><i>1. Idealism is not a character flaw.</i></b> Teacher leaders inspire others to see students and school for what they could be and might be. They find the perfect balance between preparing students for the world the way it is, and preparing students to make the world a better place.<br />
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<b><i>2. Healthy and interesting people make the best teachers. </i></b>Teacher leaders know that the school year is a marathon not a race. Slow, steady and sustainable effort are what schools and students need -- teachers who burn out before the weekend or the summer don't do anyone any good. It is unsustainable for teachers to take better care of other people's children than their own children or themselves. Teacher leaders balance work, family and play so that their colleagues and their students are inspired to also balance work, family and play.<br />
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<b><i>3. Teachers help teachers. </i></b>Teacher leaders know that too many teachers quit and that inexperienced teachers are too often preyed upon to do too much too soon. Teacher leaders don't simply close their door and teach, nor do they use the staffroom as a complaint box. Teacher leaders make themselves available for their students and teacher colleagues alike.<br />
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<b><i>4. Reject the blame game.</i></b> Teacher leaders understand that the blame game is as seductive as it is destructive. Schools that are marinated in cultures of failure are often plagued with blame -- teacher leaders reject this culture by seeing success and failure not as time to reward and punish but as teachable moments.<br />
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<b><i>5. Education is political. </i></b>Ultimately, great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can’t do it alone – they require the support of an equitable society. Teacher leaders are active participants in our democracy and work inside and outside of their classroom for equity and equality.<div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2707703066300530859.post-71818039178567009392015-06-05T05:00:00.000-06:002015-06-05T05:00:02.924-06:00MYTH: You can do more with less<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This was written by Pasi Sahlberg who is a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of Finnish Lessons 2.0: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? This post first appeared <a href="http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA%20Magazine/Volume%2095%202014-15/Number-4/Pages/Myth-Pasi-Sahlberg.aspx">here</a>.<div>
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by Pasi Sahlberg<br /><br />Governments in Alberta and Finland are under economic pressure to reduce public spending as a result of failed national politics and unpredictable global economics. When government budgets get off track, bad news for education systems follow. The recently defeated Finnish government carried out huge cuts in education infrastructure. As a result, small schools were closed, teaching staff lost their jobs and morale among educators declined. Albertans are now facing similar threats.<br /><br />When the going gets tough in our wealthy societies, the powers-that-be often choose quick fixes. In search of a silver bullet instead of sustained systemic improvement, politicians turn their eyes on teachers, believing that asking them to do more with less can compensate for inconvenient reductions in school resources. With super teachers, some of them say, the quality of education will improve even with lesser budgets. While some might suggest leadership is doing more with less, I would counter that real political leadership is about getting the appropriate resources in place to create a vibrant society.<br /><br />“Teacher effectiveness” is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. It plays a visible role in the education policies of nations where there is a wide range of teacher qualifications and therefore uneven teacher quality. Measuring teacher effectiveness has brought different methods of evaluation to the lives of teachers in many countries. The most controversial of them include what is known as value-added models that use data from standardized tests of students as part of the overall measure of the effect that a teacher has on student achievement.<br /><br />Alberta and Finland are significantly better off than many other countries when it comes to teacher quality and teacher policies. In the United States, for example, there are nearly 2,000 different teacher preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Canada and Finland, only rigorously accredited academic teacher education programs are available for those who desire to become teachers. Likewise, neither Canada nor Finland has fast-track options into teaching (although Teach for Canada is entering the game in Alberta with 40 new recruits in 2015/2016). Teacher quality in successful education systems is a result of careful quality control at the entry stage of teacher education rather than measuring the effectiveness of in-service teachers.<br /><br />In recent years the “no excuses” argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse used to avoid insisting that all schools should reach higher standards. With this argument, the silver bullet is better teachers. In Finland, education policies have concentrated more on school improvement than on teacher effectiveness, indicating that schools are expected to improve by having everyone work together rather than teachers working individually. Lessons from the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) were identical. Effective school development is equally about system-wide social capital and developing strong individual human capital.<br /><br />THREE Fallacies<br /><br />When education budgets are questioned or cut, teachers are often asked to do more with less. Some economists have calculated how much students’ achievement could be improved by enhancing the quality of the teaching force. An efficient way to do that, they argue, is to find poorly performing teachers and get rid of them. Then, bringing young, enthusiastic talent into these classrooms will actually lead to the betterment of education at the same time when resources diminish. Within this logic lie three fallacies that, if taken as facts, will be harmful for the teaching profession and thereby for the entire education system.<br /><br />The first fallacy is to believe that the best way to elevate the teaching profession is to attract the best and the brightest to become teachers. In many countries the teaching profession has suffered from declining social respect, trust and thereby popularity among young people as prospective and admired lifelong career. Education system leaders, such as Arne Duncan in the U.S. and Michael Gove in the U.K., have suggested that recruiting academically smarter people to teach in schools would enhance the quality of teaching and improve academic outcomes in schools.<br /><br />Those who rely on the idea of “the best and the brightest” often point to Finland and Singapore as examples of education systems that have built their success on that principle. We frequently hear that the best education systems systematically recruit new student teachers from the top 10 per cent of their applicant pool. But a closer look at how students are selected into initial teacher education programs reveals that the truth is not that straightforward.<br /><br />The University of Helsinki in Finland selects 120 new students from approximately 2,000 applicants each year for its primary school teacher education program. This pool is large enough to actually pick up all 120 students from the best quintile. But that doesn’t happen.<br /><br />In 2014, as I have shown elsewhere, only one of four students selected into the teacher education program at the University of Helsinki came from the top quintile. Furthermore, one in four students had an academic record that placed her or him in the bottom half of the pool, as measured by their performance in diploma examinations. Clearly it is important that criteria beyond strictly defined academic qualifications must be considered in selecting teacher candidates.<br /><br />Singapore follows similar academic admission procedures for students who study at the National Institute of Education.<br /><br />The second fallacy is that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. This statement became known in education policies through the influential McKinsey & Company report entitled How the World’s Best Performing School Systems Come Out On Top. It has since appeared in the 2012 reports of the Programme for International Student Assessment — by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — as well as several policy reports and documents. Although these documents often take a broader view of enhancing the status of teachers through better pay and careful recruitment, this statement implies that the quality of an education system is defined by the quality of its teachers.<br /><br />Many educators, and certainly experienced teachers and school principals, perceive teaching in school as team play. The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team or musician in an orchestra: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school. Team sports and performing arts offer numerous examples of teams that have performed beyond expectations because of leadership, commitment and spirit.<br /><br />Take the U.S. ice hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics, when a team of college kids beat both the Soviets and Finland in the final round and won the gold medal. The quality of Team U.S.A certainly exceeded the quality of its players. Or take Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse. Without five-star musicians that always hit all the chords perfectly they have performed better than the quality of each player and created music enjoyed by millions for almost half a century. So can an education system.<br /><br />The third fallacy is that the most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers. This is the driving principle of former New York City public schools’ chancellor Joel Klein in his new book as well as many other education “reformers” today. If a teacher were the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school. But we have known since the mid-1960s that that isn’t so.<br /><br />Research on what explains students’ measured performance in school remains mixed. However, researchers generally agree that up to two-thirds of the variation in student achievement is explainable by individual student characteristics like family background and such variables. The American Statistical Association concluded recently that teachers account for about 1 per cent to 14 per cent of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in system-level conditions. In other words, most of what explains student achievement is beyond the control of teachers or even schools, and therefore arguing that teachers are the most important factor in improving the quality of education is simply wrong.<br /><br />This doesn’t mean that teachers would not be important or that individual teachers could not turn the course of children in school. Of course they do. But it is often a combination of powerful factors that makes the most positive impact on students. Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of good schools, equally important to powerful teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having a shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.<br /><br />HANDLE WITH CARE<br /><br />At a time of austerity, education policymakers have to be very careful in changing and also protecting current conditions that influence the teaching profession. It is tempting to suggest that, by enhancing teacher effectiveness, we can maintain current levels of teaching quality in schools. It is also far too convenient to suggest that, on top of all other duties, teachers should contribute more to struggling national economies by creating innovators, active citizens and a skilled labour force to emerging new occupations. In this respect, Alberta and Finland stand before a similar challenge. Searching for super teachers is not the right solution.<br /><br />Instead, leaders in Alberta and Finland need to be reminded that schools must have appropriate, well-researched policies supported by adequate resources to be part of the campaign to bring our economies back on track. Finnish schools are now redesigning their curricula to match the National Curriculum Framework 2016. All schools must have at least one extended study period for all students, and all the school subjects are merged into integrated, phenomenon-based teaching and learning. Municipalities and schools may choose to have more than one such study period per year, and they may also decide the duration of these periods. This renewal has the potential to become a revolutionary step forward in building the ideal future school in Finland.<br /><br />Educational reform won’t happen without sustained investments in schools, appropriate support to teachers, and changing some of the current regulations that stand in the way of planned change. Bilateral research partnerships like that between Finland and Alberta (FINAL) can play a pivotal role in making necessary changes possible. As we have learned from FINAL, it is through the internationalization of education research and evidence gathering that we can create the kinds of schools our students deserve.<br /><br />1 The entire March 2015 issue of Educational Researcher, the journal of the American Educational Research Association, was dedicated to teacher evaluations and value-added models.<br /><br />2 Sahlberg, P. 2015. “Q: What makes Finland’s teachers so special? A: It’s not brains.” The Guardian, March 31. http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/31/finnish-teachers-special-train-teach (accessed on April 24, 2015).<br /><br />3 McKinsey & Company. 2010. How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top. London: McKinsey & Company.<br /><br />4 American Statistical Association (ASA). 2014. ASAStatement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment. Alexandra, Va: ASA.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">This post appeared at www.joebower.org</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15047405950514440042noreply@blogger.com0