To help encourage conversations and dialogue about the process of learning about your own learning, our topic/question for the week is: How do you learn best? How do you know? Learning How You Learn (Week of 4/13/20-4/17/20 (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
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
Hopefully the long weekend was one that served everyone well - providing space and perhaps an opportunity to reset or simply do something a little different. For everyone who celebrated Easter or Passover, I hope you had nice celebrations. On Friday afternoon (and Sunday!) Katie and I took Lila for a walk on the grounds of the former Medfield State Hospital - certainly made me think about our Canoe trips along the Charles with 8th graders and our cross-country teams running in the fall. With everything going on (so hard to put it all into words), it was a lovely excursion…
In an effort to step back, reflect, and practice some self-care, I have done my best this weekend to unplug. I have found that this unplugging is more important than ever, and the act of unplugging has made room for new, fresh, and renewed learning. It has also provided space for me to simply be. To help foster a shared process of reflection and increased learning for our community, I hope the words from Ted Sizer, sampling of responses from our recent Topic/Question, and posts will further our conversations and growth...
If you had one week to learn about any topic or subject of your choice, what would it be?
- I always wanted to learn photoshop, but never had the time.
- I would learn about animals and traveling.
- Sign language
- I would like to learn about the 19th century when the Newport mansions were lived in.
- Skateboarding
- I would learn about how to build a car!
- World War 2
- I would want to learn about dolphins or the RMS Titanic.
- Movie acting
- Math
- It would be the importance of PE
- Cooking
- I would love to learn about Basketball
- Astronomy
- Photography
- I have a long and running list of interests to pursue if time for them ever materializes. If I had to pick one, it would be a crash course in home maintenance (basic framing, plumbing, small engine repair)
- Art
- Sports
- I would want to learn how to fly a plane!
- Magic
Are We Educating for Life or School?
by Katie Martin (@katiemartinedu)
Although Martin wrote this post back in October, 2018 the title feels as though it could have been written today. Given what we are experiencing and witnessing today in the circles of both education and ‘the real world’, the question is one we must come back to on a frequent basis. Within her post, she shares this graphic - one that is certainly relevant and pertinent for our students in our ‘remote learning’ model. It is my sincere hope that these carry forth when we return…
In my book, Learner-Centered Innovation, I wrote that “Despite the incessant focus on sorting and ranking, good grades in school don’t always equate to the highest levels of success in life (or happiness). Shawn Achor’s research at Harvard shows college grades aren’t any more predictive of subsequent life success than rolling dice, while a study of over seven hundred American millionaires showed their average college GPA was 2.9. When we focus on the grades and scores rather than the skills we are learning and more importantly what we can do with those skills, we are missing the point in schools. While academic environments tend to be more artificial.”
“Knowing” doesn’t make you good at something on its own, which is why doing well in school doesn’t always translate to succeeding in life. In school, there are often clear rules and a narrow path that defines success. Life does not work this way. In fact, high achievers in school often struggle to make their own way in an uncertain world...When we become so focused on compliance, improving test scores, and covering it all, it can prevent us from the larger goals of developing learners to think, communicate, and generate novel ideas based on their passions and skills.
The world of work demands individuals embody skills such as complex problem solving, critical thinking, and creativity. But if our actions in schools still rely on antiquated practices, we will fail to develop learners who have the skills to be successful in our constantly changing world. As Sir Ken Robinson says, “Education is not preparation. The first 18 years of life are not a rehearsal. Young people are living their lives now.” It’s critical that we rethink why, what, and how we learn in schools for students to thrive in the information economy of today and tomorrow, not yesterday.
This Togetherness Is Temporary
by Mary Laura Philpott (@MaryLauraPh) in The New York Times
Philpott’s post is one that spoke to me as a parent - I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I have often found myself ‘wishing time away’ at different stages of parenting, and her reflective post is one that really hit a chord. It is a great reminder to be present - something hard to do right now, but again - I’m learning.
I have a tendency, when I feel trapped, to sense a false permanence. I don’t think, This is my life right now. I think, This is my life forever. I panic. I forget, although I’ve learned it countless times, that every stage of life changes, then ends.
If I could go back and tell my young-parent self one thing, I wouldn’t whip out that cliché about how the days may pass slowly, but the years go by fast, even though it’s true. I wouldn’t say, “Just enjoy it!”...What I’d tell my young self is this: Sometimes time moves quickly, and sometimes it moves slowly, but it always moves forward. This is not your life forever.
Let me tell you something, parents of babies. You know how that rush of affection for infants feels like a drug, how you sniff their heads and say things like “I could eat you up”? Loving teenagers is not so much like taking drugs as it is a constant need to be sure that they are not taking drugs, and they don’t like it when you sniff them, but loving a teenager is just as emotionally intoxicating as loving a baby. Maybe even more.
It’s emotional whiplash to go from wishing for a few more hours a week with the kids to being holed up in the house together ’round the clock. I feel guilty about loving lunchtime on weekdays with them, a little joy I didn’t think I’d ever get back. I’m so sorry they’re missing school and prom and graduations and sports and everything else. I will never forget this chapter in our lives. I hate the reason for it. All these things are true.
For now, I will let myself feel gratitude for this time with them. I won’t tell myself I have to enjoy every minute, because I know I won’t. And when the panic rises, I’ll remind myself: This isn’t forever. It never was.
The ‘arts’ (broadly defined) have been a source of comfort and centering for me over these last few weeks, and with April being National Poetry Month I will be sharing a poem each week this month (knowing I missed last week!). The poem, Rock Me to Sleep, by Elizabeth Akers Allen has always been one of my favorites and the first two lines of the first stanza (copied below) are ones I think of often...
Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!
I look forward to the work that lies ahead for all of us.
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Enjoy the week and take care.
Nat