Editorial: Doing it with us or doing it to us?

This was written by Jonathan Teghtmeyer who is with the Alberta Teachers` Association. Jonathan tweets here. This post first appeared on the Alberta Teachers` Association website. I also wrote about Alberta's new Task Force on Teacher Excellence here.

by Jonathan Teghtmeyer

If Education Minister Jeff Johnson is serious about educational change, he could learn something from past experience—Johnson served as cochair of the Inspiring Education committee.

In 2009, then education minister Dave Hancock embarked on an ambitious project to listen to Albertans about their hopes, dreams and aspirations for public education in the 21st century. The project generated rich conversations about the goals and purposes of public education to create a vision for education, which is articulated in the Inspiring Education Steering Committee Report.

Many of us were at the table during the regional consultations—we completed the online survey and participated in open discussion boards on a variety of topics. The engagement process took time, but it was meaningful and authentic. When I read the steering committee’s report, I heard my voice in it and I heard the voices of others, some of whom I don’t necessarily agree with but the voices were there. In fact, if there’s one criticism, it’s that the report is so broadly worded that everyone can find ways to support competing ideas on where to take education.

However, it’s precisely because of careful and purposeful engagement that the process and the resulting document enjoy so much support. Minister Hancock (now Alberta’s minister of human services) is a coalition builder; he ensured that a variety of people and organizations would commit to the process and champion it. To that end, one of the first groups to guide the process was the Inspiring Education Working Committee. This group of 29 diverse people represented 13 ministries within the government and 12 education stakeholder organizations. The diversity of voices included government officials, ranging from a deputy minister to a crown prosecutor. Stakeholders, sometimes with competing interests, were brought to the table, including private schools, school boards, superintendents and teachers. These people found a way to work together on a project they all believed in.

I suspect that at the time, Minister Hancock realized that educational change could only happen if the people most responsible for implementing changes were actively engaged in the process.

The Inspiring Education Working Committee defined the processes and provided input into the tools needed, and committee members reported to their representative groups on the success of the initiative.

The open-arms invitations, collaborative spirit and clear window into process that stood as hallmarks of Inspiring Education stand in stark contrast to the approach adopted by the Task Force for Teaching Excellence.

First, information about the task force isn’t readily available. What is available is housed on the servers of a private contractor that does marketing and branding work. Second, stakeholders weren’t invited to participate in developing the project and were told about it just days before it was publicly launched. Third, information about dates and times for regional consultations were released less than a week before the first public meeting occurred. Last, the survey tools and focus group questions were developed without any input from stakeholders.

It’s puzzling why the Task Force for Teaching Excellence would exclude the voice, input and buy-in of teachers. It’s unconscionable that ATA President Ramsankar was excluded from speaking at the launch of the task force, yet the president of the Alberta School Councils’ Association was invited to bring greetings. Puzzling indeed—after all, this isn’t the Task Force for School Council Excellence.

The absence of clear and readily available information raises many questions, the first of which is, “Is the Task Force for Teaching Excellence about bringing about change with teachers or bringing in changes toteachers?”

Best. Video on Giving. Ever.

It is not good enough to merely get children to do the right thing -- we need them to do the right things for the right reasons.

Motivation matters.

And only through our relationships can we cultivate the kinds of communities that we would want to live in. Respect, honesty, trust and loyalty, the prerequisites for giving and caring, are only grown out of authentic engagement and real relationships.

Are we teaching this?

Cyber Charter Schools: a wrecking ball for public education

Albertans place a premium on public education.

This is precisely why it is important for Alberta to see the United States and their education reforms as a cautionary tale and that the border offers zero insulation from policies that undermine and privatize public education.

This is why the Parkland Institute's most recent research Delivery Matters: Cyber Charter Schools and K-12 Education in Alberta is so important. I blog almost daily about how and why school needs to be a little less like school, and I am an advocate for substantial improvements to public education, teacher quality and equity.

However, I don't want my criticisms for school to come across like I don't like public education or that I want to destroy it. Unfortunately, too much of what is sold as education reform amounts to nothing more than a wrecking ball for public education which is precisely what Cyber Charters represent.

The report states:

While research on student outcomes remains preliminary, cyber charter schools have a patchy record, including significant risk of poorer education outcomes and very high rates of withdrawal. They also fail to address what the public school system has long taught as the skills of citizenship — how to get along with others, how to reason and deliberate, how to tolerate differences. From this perspective, cyber charter schools risk leaving large gaps in the education of young people. 

The US experience with cyber charter schools makes clear that the private delivery of public education is a risky path. There is little evidence to demonstrate that corporate interests add value in training the compassionate, skilled, and technically savvy citizens of the future. Instead, the cyber charter schools model encourages profiteering and mismanagement at public expense and at significant risk to students.

Alberta Teachers' Association Mark Ramsankar agrees with the report and states, "Cyber charter schools undermine the critical role of the student-teacher relationship in child development and socialization." 

In a statement, the Alberta Teachers' Association rightfully identifies that "the Parkland report demonstrates that the vision of Inspiring Education would be compromised by introducing cyber charter schools, where students rarely hear from their teachers and only occasionally interact face-to-face."

In her best-selling book Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools, Diane Ravitch dedicates an entire chapter on busting the myth that "virtual schools will bring the promise of personalized, customised learning to every student and usher in an age of educational excellence for all." Ravitch begins her chapter by rightfully outlining, however briefly, the promise of technology, but then warns:

Yet with all its great potential, technology can never substitute for inspired teaching. Students will respond with greater enthusiasm to a gifted teacher than to a computer with the world's best software. Electronic technology has its charms, but it can't compete with the lively interchange of ideas that happens when students discuss a book they read or a math problem they wrestled with or a play they saw or an unsolved mystery in history or the most recent elections. Ultimately, it is imagination, joy, and disciplined inquiry that makes education valuable, that distinguish real education from seat time, that constitute the difference between learning and a credential. 

Closer to home, the Alberta Teachers' Association's Phil McRae wrote a profound piece on the Rebirth of the Teaching Machine through the Seduction of Data Analytics where he outlines how the move to personalize learning with "any time, any place and any pace" is anything but new. His concluding paragraph speaks volumes:

Emerging technologies and smart data certainly have a place in educational transformation, but they must be employed to enhance what research in the learning sciences continues to reinforce as the foundation of learning: the pedagogical relationships between students, teachers, parents and community. Attempts to displace this human dimension of learning with the teaching machine (whatever you imagine this to be) is a distraction to the most important support great schools can offer students each and every day – relationships, relationships, relationships.

Gary Stager on Progressive Education

This was written by Gary Stager who writes and speaks about progressive education. He is the co-author of Invent to Learn. Gary blogs here and tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Gary Stager

Principles…

• Things need not be as they seem!

• Strong progressive public schools are the bedrock of our democracy.

• Knowledge is a consequence of experience.

• Learning is not the direct causal result of having been taught.

• Young people have a remarkable capacity for intensity and it is incumbent upon teachers and parents to build upon that capacity, otherwise it manifests itself as boredom, misbehavior or just wasted potential.

• The Common Core is on the wrong side of history.

• There is no sudden epidemic of bad teachers!

• Parents and teachers should do everything possible to help kids get through high school without hating it.

• Modern knowledge construction is inseparable from computer programming and every child needs a laptop computer.

• Schools will no longer enjoy the monopoly on children’s time they currently enjoy.

• Students are competent, but we may not behave as if children are competent if we behave as if their teachers are incompetent.

• We know what to do. Those of us who know better need to do better.

• Kids need constant access to diverse expertise.

• The desire for personalization or individualization may not supplant exposure to concepts, skills and ideas that kids may not know they love.

• School policy should provide clear and convincing evidence that our society loves children.

• In education, bad ideas are timeless and good ones are incredibly fragile.

• The best thing school can do is prepare kids to solve problems that school as not even anticipated.

• What if our education policies were based on the assumption that each educator wakes up each morning and asks themselves, “How do I make this the best seven hours of a kid’s life?”

The Charter for Compassion

Making the Case for Making in Schools

Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez wrote a marvelous book Invent to Learn. If you spend time with kids, you need to read this book.

Saying we want to personalize learning and putting students first are platitudes. They are easy to say because who in their right mind would disagree.

In the video below Sylvia summarizes the problem succinctly:

There is a disconnect between what we want to have happen, what we know works and what's really happening.

Grant Wiggins tells us that "when practice becomes disconnected from purpose, rigidity sets in" and Susan Engel writes, "What we admire and what we deliberately cultivate aren't the same."

If you are interested in making school more student focused and more hands-on and minds-on, take 30 minutes and watch this video.

Making the Case for Making in Schools from Maker Faire on FORA.tv

The maker movement and project based learning does not supplement testsandgrades -- the maker movement and project based learning replaces testsandgrades.