To encourage dialogue and reflection about the importance of keeping our hopes and aspirations as compass points in all of our endeavors, our question for this week is: If you had unlimited time and resources, what would you choose to learn about? Starting with Aspirations (Week of 1/30/22) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
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The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
I hope that everyone was able to stay safe last weekend with the blizzard, bombogenesis, and intense wintry weather! Amongst trips outside to shovel and clean up a bit, we had a very low-key and quiet time with the kids.
In 1994, David Tyack, William Tobin, and Larry Cuban (Tyack & Cuban, 1995) coined the term “the grammar of schooling” to describe the almost invisible architecture that organizes much of what goes on in education.
I look forward to intentionally coming back to it individually and collectively as a catalyst for our work. His post is timely, as we listen to the hopes of our students (sampling of responses below) and work in concert with our mission, goals, and values as a learning community…
Possible Futures: Toward a New Grammar of Schooling
by Jal Mehta (@jal_mehta) in Phi Delta Kappan
We are at a hinge moment in the history of our schools. A 120-year-old industrial structure is radically ill-equipped for the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic, much less what has been called the triple pandemic of COVID, racism and economic inequality, and fundamental threats to our democracy. We have been trying to carry on as usual, but it isn’t working.
Our present situation calls for flexibility, relationship-building, and deep engagement with the broader world, but our school systems are bureaucratic, transactional, and insular. The problem is not the people — teachers are working heroically, and students are persevering under highly adverse circumstances. The problem is that they are working within a structure that is working against them.
There is a better way. After nearly two decades of attempts to standardize schools, education leaders across the United States are coming to recognize the limits of Newtonian command-and-control models of school reform and becoming increasingly aware of the need to embrace a more complex, humane, and diverse future.
…we now have many models that show us what new and better forms of education can look like in practice, as youth development organizations, schools, and districts adopt more forward-looking visions of teaching and learning. No doubt, progress will be patchy, more evolution than revolution. But we can already glimpse what the future of schooling might look like.
What might be the foundational pillars of a new approach? I suggest three: 1) learners whose agency is respected, whose diversity is embraced, whose selves are deeply known, whose joy is cultivated, and whose holistic growth is the paramount concern; 2) learning that is purposeful, authentic, and connected to the broader human domains of which those learners are part; 3) learning communities that enable deep relationships, cultivate democratic values and dispositions, and model the kind of society and environment we want to create.
A system with more choice, agency, and flexibility needs an assessment system to match. We may be on our way…Assessments should be grounded in the process and performance of work in particular domains and should be used primarily as a tool for inquiry rather than a single summative judgment.
Every decision we make in schools implicitly or explicitly communicates a set of values. Right now, while we talk as if schools are places where students learn to think critically, collaborate, communicate, and so forth, in practice what they are learning is that schools are places that value individual advancement through grades and tests. We need to develop different kinds of communities, organized around different values, if schools are going to become the kinds of places we need them to become.
Schools are not just where we communicate academic content; they are where we raise our young people. Our current grammar of schooling inhibits much of what we want for those young people. Why not create a new structure that is consistent with our highest aspirations?
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What hope(s) do you have for yourself as a learner over the next four weeks? Be specific.
- I would like to ask questions that I know I should ask but normally don't ask
- I want to get all threes on tests.
- I hope that I can have a new experience in Explorations with Ms. Silva.
- I want to get better at doing my math homework. And I want to learn more about math.
- I hope I can listen better and stop doodling instead of listening
- Organize my work better
- To get good grades in all classes
- Over the next four weeks I hope to learn some new classroom strategies from an educational book I just started.
- I hope I do good on my flashcards
- I hope I can grow as a student by trying my best.
- That I can do anything.
- To ask critical thinker questions
For the last three years I have shared the poem below from Harlem Renaissance leader, Langston Hughes, at the beginning of February as 2/1 marks the beginning of Black History Month and Hughes’s birthday. Dreams articulates the importance of vision, #willfulhope, culture, and aspiration - our dreams and hopes inform our beliefs and guide our practices. I am also sharing an excerpt from Amanda Gorman’s poem, New Day’s Lyric, as in her words, her intent was to "celebrate the new year and honor the hurt and the humanity of the last one” (looking back while looking forward)...
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat