Meet Me At The Corner is a place where children can take virtual field trips and meet fascinating people from all over the world. Check out their Big Apple Book Club filled with video book reviews by kids for kids.
Edutopia is a web site dedicated to what works in public education. There are a number of core concepts presented including Social Emotional Learning, Integrated Studies, Comprehensive Assessment, Technology Integration and Teacher Development. This web site from the George Lucas Foundation has an online community dedicated to better learning.
Affective Education Lesson Plans and Resources is dedicated to building classroom communities, social skills, friendship, kindness, self-esteem, feelings, values, and bullying prevention. Probably the most important aspects of our education system.
Children's Kindness Network is a site for preschool teachers who want help in building a culture of kindness. This is a place where we all need to start as we reform our schools!
ARTICLES OF INTEREST
As we talk about reform it is important to look beyond the growing culture of data, continuous evaluation and high stakes testing. These only add to the problems we have. I believe these are important concepts for schools, but should not be the central focus of reform. What we have are institutions whose inhabitants, children and adults, are stressed out. Part of that is caused by the importance of competition in our education system. It begins in preschool and continues right on through college. One college professor has developed a system of grading that is cooperative rather than competitive. Cathy Davidson outsources grading to her students. This method of dealing with grades puts the empasis on students working together, a real life skill!
As a librarian I was frequently thwarted by our school internet filters. Getting information to our students in schools is not always easy. That is why Do Internet Filters Undermine the Teaching of 21st Century Citizenship appealed to me. In particular the following story sounds all to familiar.
Here we were, a group of educators participating in a professional development seminar trying to discuss the role that Web 2.0 sites can play in civic education - at a presidential library, no less - and we were denied access to the information and tools we needed to have that discussion. My hosts at the library did their best to override the filters, but no one could figure out how to do it. I literally had to pantomime some of the video clips to give them a sense of what I was going to show them - and obviously, I couldn’t do any of them justice. One teacher then offered a tip to the group: if you ever get blocked, ask your students for help - they can show you a number of ways to get around the filter and access YouTube.
THOUGHTS
Education Secretary Arne Duncan had some pretty tough words for teacher colleges at a speech he gave at the Curry School of Education, in Charlottesville, Va., on Friday 10/09. One of the things he said made me realize that we are missing an important aspect of reform. Duncan said, " Generally, not enough attention is paid to what works to boost student learning—and student-teachers are not trained in how to use data to improve their instruction and drive a cycle of continuous improvement for their students. ..." I agree that we do not pay enough attention to student learning, but it is the social emotional learning that we ignore. Think back on your days in school. What do you remember? I bet if you are honest you will remember a social or emotional moment not a particular piece of information. We have a nation that has to build more prisons to house all of our offenders while we are reforming our schools to make sure all 18 years olds have had Algebra II. Something seems amiss.
Until we focus on creating a culture of kindness in our schools and teach our citizens how to interact with one another in appropriate ways, Arne Duncan's admonitions are useless. To improve teaching we need to have teachers who understand children, our culture and the need of citizens to learn to cooperate with one another.
