Educon is a 3 4 year old conference run by my friend Chris Lehmann. I attended last year and was motivated for months by the people I learned from, the friends I saw there, and of course, by hearing from Chris and his students.
I recently moved to Grace Church School in New York City, where I am the Dean of Faculty. Grace is a 100+ year old school, a JK-8 institution. We are now adding a high school. The high school is located in the heart of the Village, sharing a park with Cooper Union. We're creating a beautiul blend of tradition and innovation, and I see Educon as a place that shares those values. We are constantly honing the craf of teaching, yet we stay open to new innovations.
When you start a high school from scratch you can make every single decision with one question in mind:
What is best for high school students?
Everything we do looks to answer this question. One of my most important responsibilities is to help recruit a modern faculy, prepared to teach modern classes. That means fewer classes per day, for longer periods of time - this allows for depth over breadth of study. It means never having academic classes back to back. It means having advisory every day. It means fitness first period. It means an hour for lunch, which is planned and budgeted for, prepared for and cleaned up by students. It means no classes on Wednesdays, but a Lab Day, where we make learning real with community collaborations, trips, place-based learning, time for further study, and more. It means better, meaningful homework, not just more homework. Academic, athletic, art excellence, coupled with a focus on ethical and spiritual development of young people, and the adults that work with them.
I had hoped to be at Educon this year to share our work, engage interested partners, and yes, recruit a new faculty. I will be recruiting faculty for the next four years, as we add a 9th grade each year until our first 9th graders gradudate in 2016. If you're an Educon-er, or just an innovated, motivated, excellent teacher, who wants to be a part of changing the dialog around high school in New York City and beyond, I couldn't encourage you more to apply to work at our high school. We love reading cover letters where teachers share their passion for teaching and learning. Do share yours if you are looking for the next great school to teach in...
Alternatives to Food as a Reward Food is commonly used to reward students for good behavior and academic performance. It’s an easy, inexpensive and powerful tool to bring about immediate short-term behavior change. Yet, using food as reward has many negative consequences that go far beyond the short-term benefits of good behavior or performance.
Research clearly demonstrates that healthy kids learn better. To provide the best possible learning environment for children, schools must provide an environment that supports healthy behaviors. Students need to receive consistent, reliable health information and ample opportunity to use it. Finding alternatives to food rewards is an important part of providing a healthy school environment.
The number of birthdays and holidays celebrated by an average elementary school class means that sweets can become regular snacks, rather than occasional, special treats. In addition, it has become increasingly common for teachers to use candy to reward and motivate students. If food must be used as a reward, healthy choices are encouraged and it should be part of a learning experience. This flyer offers alternatives to help promote consistent messages about food and health.
Our lower school division head shared this resource from Kansas State's Johnson County branch of the Research and Extension services about alternatives to food as a reward. It is well written, easy to understand, and has great tips. Read the full post here.
What 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Isn't Allen Barra writes a critique of "To Kill a Mockingbird" in the Wall Street Journal that is wroth reading. We've been having discussions in our school on whether this 50-year old book is appropriate for 7th graders with its inclusion of viciously racist language (the "N" word) and moreover how we choose the cannon that is read at our school. It's an important conversation and a most difficult one. I think that we must recognize the value of tradition while respecting the evolving landscape of our countries, cities, and schools - finding the balance is incredibly challenging but is the real goal of these conversations.
Posted via email from arvind's posterous
 My head of school passed Rachel Simmons' blog post, What Every Parent Should Know About Formspring: The New Cyberscourge for Teens, to me. I read it, found it troubling, and had to write a response.
I had a great conversation with our 7th and 8th graders about formspring a few weeks ago, which I blogged about here. I thought that the article by Rachel Simmons was pretty poor. She starts with, “Last week, a Long Island high school senior committed suicide, and the website Formspring.me is suspected as a cause.” She links to an article which says just the opposite! See these quotes from the article she linked to: “Alexis' parents downplayed the Internet role, saying their daughter was in counseling before she ever signed up with formspring.me, a new social site, where many of the attacks appeared.” "I believe in my heart that cyberbullying wasn't the cause of Lexi's death," said her mother, Paula Pilkington. "This is a mistake." It also didn’t recognize what the site is capable of in a positive way. For instance, I purchased a new dining table that is unfinished wood, and wasn’t sure how best to treat it. So, I went to this wonderful design bloggers website and asked her a question about wood treatment via her formspring. She replied to me within an hour. Problem solved. By an expert. There is a place for every technology tool, and there’s a poor way to use all of them, too. That’s what parents and students have to negotiate. The bigger issue here is talking to students about “anonymous” behavior on the Internet, and what it entails. I gave the girls a guiding principle that anonymous places on the Internet tend to encourage bad behavior and discourage good behavior. We want them to learn that lesson because formspring will be passé tomorrow (it actually sort of already is), and they have to be able to apply the same principles to the next new thing. Rachel Simmon's gut instinct reaction and advice to parents is summed up in her point: So what to do? Here’s what I suggest. Start a conversation with your daughter about Formspring. Ask her if people at school use it (don’t start off by grilling her about what she does or she may scare and fly away). Ask her what she thinks of it. Then ask her if she uses it. If she says yes, tell her she’s banned for life from the website. Period. This completely misses the mark. If you think you can solve problems by banning use, you're in for real trouble when kids experience the same problems in new venues - they won't tell you when they stumble into a mess for fear that you'll ban them from it. Prepare them for the world they are living in. Teach them about how it works. Set family expectations and guidelines. Connecting the tragedy of a girl with serious psychological issues to a website is hyperbole, and won't get you very far in setting your kids up for success. Ms. Simmons, if you're reading, I'd love to talk to you more about this. Posted via web from arvind's posterous
"Tolerance" is surely an imperfect term, yet the English language offers no single word that embraces the broad range of skills we need to live together peacefully. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used the Greek term "agape" to describe a universal love that "discovers the neighbor in every man it meets." The various disciplines concerned with human behavior have also offered a variety of adjectives: "pro-social," "democratic," "affiliative."
In its Declaration on the Principles of Tolerance, UNESCO offers a definition of tolerance that most closely matches our philosophical use of the word:
Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. Tolerance is harmony in difference. We view tolerance as a way of thinking and feeling — but most importantly, of acting — that gives us peace in our individuality, respect for those unlike us, the wisdom to discern humane values and the courage to act upon them.
Many people don't like the word "tolerance." I really like it. People have said to me that they feel it suggests that we should "tolerate" people who are different than us. I think the Teaching Tolerance explanation of word choice is elegant and clearly deals with the potential problem of wording. Do you use "tolerance" in your diversity discussions? Should we?
side note: Teaching Tolerance is one of the best educational resources I've ever come upon. It has material on so many issues from class to race to gender to sexual orientation to gender, and many more that I'm missing.
Posted via web from arvind's posterous
The Student Press Initiative is a wonderful-looking program which trains teachers on best practices for getting students to publish their work publicly. This looks like a perfect opportunity for any teachers that work with students on writing. How does publishing to the public change the way we write? Can it make it more real for students? Can they connect to a wider audience than their teacher? I would say yes to all of these points.
Please share this program with your teachers. It will take place on July 12-15 in New York City, at Teachers College, Columbia University (my alma mater!).
Posted via web from arvind's posterous
Our 7/8th grade Dean asked me to meet with students today to discuss the website Formspring.me. We wanted to respond to student and parent concerns about how our students were using the website. If you're not familiar with it, here is how it works: a person sets up an account with a name of their choice, say "Alison Q." People can then go to Alison Q's Formspring page and ask her a question. The tricky part is they can ask the question "anonymously" if they want to. I put that in quotes because Internet anonymity is more of a myth than are reality. Then, Alison can answer the question if she wants, or delete it. All of this takes place in the very public location of Alison's Formspring page. Formspring can also be embedded onto a Facebook profile page.
Students use the site in a variety of ways including: to say things they normally wouldn't, to bully anonymously or not, to make false claims about themselves, to be silly, or just to ask age-appropriate questions.
I led a discussion on the following points:
- defining Formsping
- looking at how it technically works - Formspring server exchanges data with your computer
- how there is a search right on the front page where anyone can look for your Formspring page (see image)
- how sites like Google and Archive.org are indexing websites like Formspring - talking about how "deleting" is more of a myth than a reality
- how data posted online becomes part of students online reputation - similar to offline reputation, but indexed by Google and around "forever"
- how to delete Formspring data - looked at FAQ page on deleting which has been looked at by many thousands of users (see image). Then looked at how page can never be deleted, only disabled. Also looked at fact that any questions asked by you can never be deleted. Bad decisions in that regard cannot be rectified via the website.
- Talk about in-school expectations - reviewed middle school handbook, acceptable use policy - and how we expect our students to use the Internet in school for school purposed. We expect our students to treat each other with respect and use appropriate language.
Some observations:
- being honest about how a site technically works is important
- students want to believe they can be anonymous online - they argue to suggest that they are
- discussing transparency of the Internet is essential
- online reputation is a construct that students can relate to - they want to have a positive reputation
- 7th and 8th grade is an appropriate time to be grappling with this - don't ban the technology, help them understand the implications of their decision
- not making it disciplinary, but making it explanatory helps them recognize and make their own decisions
I'd love to hear back on suggestions or on how you are helping your students understand this new social tool.
On a side note: we thought it might be entertaining to set up teacher Formspring accounts where students could ask us questions about their work/area of study. So questions like "What is the different between aerobic and anaerobic respiration?"
  
Posted via email from arvind's posterous
I've recently been engaged in fascinating conversations about evaluating curricular resources for bias and inclusivity. These came out of a conversation on whether To Kill a Mockingbird was an appropriate text for 7th grade students. The books uses the 'n word' many times and portrays black characters are uneducated and poor (yes, I realize I'm being somewhat simplistic in my summary). The book is also a "classic" of "American" literature - I put both of those words in quotation marks because there are real questions as to whose classic and whose America. I've been looking at a number of resources to try and get at this question of whether this book should be read, and if so, how it should be read. I wanted to share those resources publicly as well as ask you all for help. - should schools read this book and books like it?
- if so, how do we prepare students for the words used in the book?
- how do we discuss the history surrounding the book?
- how do we balance the inherent bias displayed in the book?
- what other questions do we need to ask ourselves?
Here are some resources I've been using: Anything you can share to this conversation would be much appreciated. Posted via email from arvind's posterous
 THATCamp is a humanities and technology "unconference" at George Mason University near Washington, DC. It seems like a great opportunity to involve history and English teachers in. The applications, however, are due today, March 15, 2010. Even if you can't make this year's conference, keep it on your calendar for next year.
On a side note, have any of you attended before? Do you recommend it?
Posted via web from arvind's posterous
|
