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Infoplease
Articles of Interest
Schools Need a Culture Shift is an article by Betty J. Sternberg who addresses motivation in schools.
What the Workforce Will Require of Students is another Education Week article by Catherine Gewertz who questions the need for all students to have college-level skills.
Technology
Here are two short videos from ConnectEd a site for educators from Walden University. They address topics that have been part of discussions with educators throughout my career.
Why We Need To Teach Technology in School
21st Century Skills: How do We Get There?
Thoughts From Yrisarri
As I listen to the discussions about educational reform I feel that a key concept is missing from the dialog. I was trained to be a middle school teacher and learned the importance of considering how children are grouped in terms of developmental progress. That was the impetus behind the middle school movement, that children have a stage between childhood and adolesence that requires a different approach to teaching than children or adolescents.
I was reminded of this while reading Scholars: Parent-School Ties Should Shift in Teen Years by Deborah Viadero in Education Week as she talked about education reform and parental involvement. She says that there is no mention of how the parental involvement requirements of No Child Left Behind should differ between age levels. I believe this is the cause of some of our problems in education. As we discuss public policy we do not recognize the different roles of each stage in the education system.
We only seem to consider that each grade is a preparation for the next grade. We do not consider that children have development stages and teachers should employ different modes of teaching to capture the interest at different stages. If the federal government is going to become the source of education policy then they should discuss educating our children not just general education beliefs.
