Predecessors to Pioneers

My goodness, it's been a long time since I've posted to this blog. I have been busily working, though.

This year, I am doing my master's project, and it finally has a title: Predecessors to Pioneers. It will be a five-week multidisciplinary unit, beginning in February, on the Kingdom of Jordan, in which students will study the rich culture and history of that country and create new works inspired by the old. I will lead the project but will co-teach with the art, dance, and upper elementary teachers. As the project takes shape, I'll post more!

I was inspired for this idea by reading an article in Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/2014/10/on-learning-by-doing/), written by Harvard professor David Edwards. In the article, Edwards discusses how the future America will not look like the current one, and if we continue to teach America's youth using a curriculum based on today's world, we are setting them up for failure. 

On a related note, yesterday I was perusing a couple of last year's Nat Geo magazines, and I came across a photo study on "The Changing Face of America" in the October issue. Check out these lovely multiracial faces. 

I am so excited to move forward with the Predecessors to Pioneers project and share the resulting works my students come up with. There is this wonderful mixture: the set of infinite possibilities that can come from the kids, and the accompanying teacherly stress of the unknown coming from my coworkers. I am very hopefully optimistic. 

I look at the faces in the pictures above, and I speculate that we must come up with a matching broader range of teaching practices than what we currently lay in front of our public school children. I am sad that I must first start in Montessori, because I have a fear that I may become one of the articles I am studying, that test a method one time in one school of privileged children and never take it farther. I must resolve to not become what I study, but move beyond it. 

Purpose

A friend posted this gem on Facebook. I feel fortunate to have found my purpose. Now to set upon opening the doorway for each child to find his/hers...

My latest ah-hah is "The notion of content specificicity may be the biggest hoax of all." As promised, I am still reading the book, 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools...by Berliner & Glass. The book defines myths, hoaxes, and outright lies, and while I agree with a lot of what the authors assert, I am still troubled by their sensationalistic delivery. 

I am also baffled by their lack of insight into alternative solutions to the problems they lay out. With more and more information being discovered day by day, how can we possibly expect to teach it all to kids in 12 years of school? Wouldn't it be wiser to teach them how to find and use content, rather than cram more and more random bits into their brains? 

More on this later, but you now have something to quote me on. A Harrisism, you heard it here first: "Content specifics may be the biggest hoax of all."

Best quote ever by our friend Mr. Einstein

It's so important to keep this in mind as an educator. Too often we hear and use the word "talent." I consider it a personal mission of mine to eradicate this word from the vocabulary, or at least make it laughably obsolete. I prefer the word "ability." Everyone has abilities that they can pour effort into honing. Talent is a myth. Practice may not make perfect, but it sure does make better. 

Because we learn in a departmentalized way, children tend to grow up thinking of themselves as "math people" or "creative people" or "science people," etc. I can't tell you how many people come up to me and say, "You're so lucky. I've never been a music person."

In the arts, we tend to have teachers who specialize in just one area. So they tend to teach more strongly in that area. Imagine how unbalanced their kids become, artistically. 

What if learning was more integrated? What would our society look like after a few generations of cross-curricular learning? 

I wonder if fish could climb trees, after all...

Arts Integration: Singing a Hurricane!

Today in professional development for the Thriving Minds 2014 Dallas summer camp, which kicks off next week, I taught a model lesson to the music teachers on how to integrate music into a first grade lesson on Hurricanes.

In this video, the 44 educators were split into five groups to represent...

A: a meadow before the hurricane hit
B: the eye wall of the hurricane
C: the eye of the hurricane
D: the other side of the hurricane as it swept through
E: the meadow and the destruction left in the hurricane's wake

They were given ten minutes to work in their groups (because they were music teachers; if they were really first graders, they would be given significantly more time and teacher support/input). They were allowed 45 seconds of time to demonstrate their part of the scene. As you can see, some groups chose to sing, some chose to use props as instruments, others chose dramatic interpretation.

The lesson demonstrates how music, movement, and scientific concepts can be integrated to give children an experience so that they can relate to what otherwise may be a very abstract concept for children. If a child grows up where hurricanes don't ever occur, looking at satellite photographs of a storm may not be enough for them to grasp exactly what a hurricane is. But if they can create one in the classroom - even if it's not quite real - it gives the concept relevance for them.

As you can see, the teachers really got into it and took it way beyond the first grade level. We decided that was ok. :) Everyone got a clear view of how to scale it back or allow extra time to do it with first graders.

Note: originally we identified the form of the piece as ABCBA, because we had constructed a story, as 6-7 year olds, of a calm and peaceful meadow (section A) which then gets hit by the eye wall (section B), then the eye (section C), then the eye wall again (section B) and then when the hurricane leaves we're left back in the meadow (section A). We decided to change the form to ABCDE for artistic variety.

Public School Myths?

I plan to purchase a book today; it's called 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education, by David Berliner and Gene Glass. I'll post more once I've read more.

In the meantime, Edutopia pulled some interesting info from it already, in an article titled "8 Myths That Undermine Educational Effectiveness."

"Myth #1: Teachers are the Most Important Influence on a Child's Education
Of course teachers are extremely important. Good teachers make a significant difference in achievement. But research indicates that less than 30 percent of a student's academic success is attributable to schools and teachers. The most significant variable is socioeconomic status, followed by the neighborhood, the psychological quality of the home environment, and the support of physical health provided. There are others, but the bottom line is that teachers have far less power to improve student achievement than do varied outside factors."

Click to read more at Edutopia...

Here is my concern when it comes to this line of thinking: I agree that there are many, many factors that lead to student success. But when this gets published as Myth #1, that teachers are not the most important factor...I feel like some teachers (certainly not all, but I've met some) will throw up their hands and say, "You see? I am powerless to effect real change until these deadbeat parents value education, and the government gives us more funding, and this neighborhood gets better, and...."

Until all those other factors can somehow miraculously fall into place, we must continue to work toward developing a system to educate children who must thrive, despite imperfect conditions. I am hoping that this book gives some suggestions as to how we might do that, rather than simply listing myths.

What are your thoughts? Let's start a discussion. Leave a comment below!

"Race" for Employment

Google Releases Employee Demographics

Many of you know that Google is the impetus behind my ultimate goal to change public education (if you didn't know that, stay tuned, it'll all be revealed sooner or later). 

On Wednesday, Google released their employee demographics. Below is what the New York Times had to say. 

Of particular concern are the alarmingly low numbers of black and Hispanic employees. I personally don't think Google has underhired them on purpose. On the contrary, I don't think our public schools are preparing children for the demands of creative companies like Google. 

This is why I am doing what I'm doing. 

I've created a couple of nifty graphics, which I'll post later.

Google Releases Employee Data, Illustrating Tech’s Diversity Challenge

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

6:29 AM

Google on Wednesday released statistics on the makeup of its work force, providing numbers that offer a stark glance at how Silicon Valley remains a white man’s world. 

Thirty percent of Google’s 46,170 employees worldwide are women, the company said, and 17 percent of its technical employees are women. Comparatively, 47 percent of the total work force in the United States is women and 20 percent of software developers are women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Of its United States employees, 61 percent are white, 2 percent are black and 3 percent are Hispanic. About one-third are Asian — well above the national average — and 4 percent are of two or more races. Of Google’s technical staff, 60 percent are white, 1 percent are black, 2 percent are Hispanic, 34 percent are Asian and 3 percent are of two or more races. 

In the United States work force over all, 80 percent of employees are white, 12 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Google’s disclosures come amid an escalating debate over the lack of diversity in the tech industry. Although tech is a key driver of the economy and makes products that many Americans use ever yday, it does not come close to reflecting the demographics of the country — in terms of sex, age or race. The lopsided numbers persist among engineers, founders and boards of directors. 

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., the civil rights activist, has been pressuring tech companies to release data on the makeup of their workforces. When he appeared at Google’s shareholders meeting this month, David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, surprised people when he said the company would release the data. Other tech companies at which Mr. Jackson has appeared, including Hewlett-Packard and Facebook, have not released diversity statistics about their companies. 

“Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts,” Laszlo Bock, Google’s senior vice president for people operations, wrote in a blog post. 

Though Google did not specifically say how it planned to change the numbers, it said that it hoped releasing them would start a dialogue. The company had made changes in the past to recruit and retain women, like lengthening maternity leaves and including women on the teams that interviewed prospective employees, but the numbers reveal it has a long way to go. 

Tech companies have often blamed the lack of diverse workforces on the pipeline — they can only hire the people who apply for jobs, and those tend to be white and Asian men, they say. 

That is partly true. For instance, only 18.5 percent of high school students who took the Advanced Placement exam in computer science last year were girls. In eight states, no Hispanic students took the test and in 12 states, no black students took it. The problems start as early as childhood, when girls are discouraged by parents and teachers from pursuing technical pursuits. 

Yet some of the blame also falls on tech companies. There can be a sexist culture that turns away women, as evidenced by the high attrition rate among technical women as compared to men. And women who try to start tech companies face exclusion by a venture capital network dominated by a chummy fraternity of men. 

This is all despite the fact that the data — which in Silicon Valley usually reigns supreme — shows that diversity on groups benefits research, development, innovation and profit.