To choose what resonated the most for me upon reading Will Richardson’s “Why School?” was challenging as I loved so much of what he had to say but…what stands out the most for me is the following:
“I hope schools will be places where learning is fun, where it’s not so much about competing against one another as about working together to solve the really big problems we’ll face together in the years ahead.” (location 555)
I chose this particular passage as I feel that we must focus on a more skills-driven curriculum than a content-driven one and I also strongly believe that many educators in my school district, in this province and in this country are heading in this exact direction. It is imperative that we, the teachers, prove to be exemplary role models in our own learning and guide our students in their own learning paths. We need to guide them in developing the skills necessary to accomplish the tasks that lie ahead.
To assume that our students always know what their passions are is idealistic. We also need to serve as resources in order to open our students’ hearts and minds to worlds they may have never thought to explore had there not been an initial nudge on either our part or on the part of one of their classmates. The key is that the world in which we are a part of is a collaborative one and we need to embrace this reality and integrate it into our classrooms and daily lives.
In today’s group discussion that centred on an overview of Richardson’s “Why School?” we jumped to several places in the reading and voiced several valid concerns and aspirations. Many of us would love to do away with the summative assessment we are so accustomed to and focus more on formative assessment yet we fear the repercussions from parents, administrators, students and even our own colleagues. How do we prepare our students for entrance into colleges and universities that rely on us to provide a number/letter grade for these institutions to decide on the student’s academic suitability for the field of study applied to?
I will walk away with this discovery today: a TED talk recommended by Kate in my discussion group. It is awesome!
RSA Animate- Changing Education Paradigms
(A You Tube video by Ken Robinson depicting how the world has become diverse but education is not differentiating with the learning needs of our students).
The concept of a skills driven curriculum is interesting – as a way to understand learning to learn as a curricular focus. Also, we could apply this concept to teachers learning to learn ICT – and using ICT to learn to learn ICT. Woah! Getting a little circular there! I agree, we are only capable of imagining what we have encountered in some way, or has been disclosed to us. That is why teachers forming online collaborative groups, ie. ICT Communities of Practice, can be so powerful for changing educational practice. It is only through exposure to alternate ways of conceiving the field of education, the role of educators, and the practice of teaching, that educators can imagine a new role for themselves. However, these changes are not simple, nor easy. We are talking about a history of educational dispositions. Nice video embed!