In learning about schools like the Phoenix Charter Academy and Northwest Passage High School, it occurs to me that the burden for dropout prevention and recovery really shouldn’t rest solely on American high schools. If 9th grade is a pivotal year, then surely middle school is a pivotal time.
However, middle school serves high school more [...]
I am heartsick waiting for a national educational vision, leader, professional organization, and administration that can think outside the bubble and break the 8 1/2 x 11″ margins of school learning.
In response to Michelle Rhee’s new studentsfirts.org initiative, I’d like to offer the following convictions:
My mission is to defend the safety, dignity, independence, and curiosity [...]
To continue last year’s goal-setting and teamwork practice with New Super Mario Bros Wii, this year we’re going to mash up Mario Kart and cycling teams.
Last year we used a lives-lost-per-level ratio to determine which teams of players were most efficient at preserving one another’s lives. Teams with more fluent players were sometimes at an [...]
My brain itches.
I’m hitting the wall separating what I saw and what I see. I need to pull an Inception and start dreaming the wall and walking on it instead of familiar ground.
I’m looping with our school’s inaugural class for the third straight year. I feel a desperate need to get it right. I [...]
I do seem to remember a process where you people ask me questions and I give you answers, and then I ask you questions and you give me answers, and that’s the way we find out things. I think I read that in a manual somewhere.
-Dr. Heywood Floyd,
This past week I rediscovered the UVA Young Writers Workshop. I’ve been looking around for out-of-school learning opportunities that could replace parts of the traditional school day to bring more authentic work into schools without diluting the power or appeal of the programs. Too Quixotic?
Margo Figgins, an associate professor with the university’s Curry School [...]
This week three girls took up what might be the most ambitious project I’ve ever suggested to a student: create a World War II museum in LittleBigPlanet, a PlayStation 3 (PS3) game. None of us has any idea what to expect (apart from students somehow sharing the unit’s content through visualization and gameplay) – the [...]
This week we spent some time Thursday coming up with teamwork and game-play strategies for our Friday Wii collaboration contest.
Results of our strategizing were mixed with only half the groups improving from last week to this week. At this point I’m wishing I had taken a research-design course sometime in the past decade so I [...]
Our impromptu two week vacation at the beginning of February did little for our teamwork. It seems like we need to be together to practice cooperating.
Or, really, do we? If we had a social network (or better used our existing Edmodo network) or virtual day set up, couldn’t student teams compete with [...]
What’s the goal of differentiation? Mastery of a curriculum? Inquiry-based life-long learning? Relationship building?
Can we ask the question another way: what is school?
Is it 1:1 learning? Is it 1:1 curriculum? Is it 1:1 access to “the best of what’s been thought and said?” Is it the 1:1:1:1:1… replication of workers or citizens?
We have the tools [...]
Chad teaches humanities at a charter school and blogs on reforming classroom practice and democratic education.
