Classroots.org

pieces of the puzzle by mikelietz

Virginia Secretary of Education Gerard Robinson visited my school today to see it in operation and speak with division personnel, school leaders, and teachers about how we can work together to met students’ needs. I appreciated the visit, the attention to our school, and the time we spent talking as a group about how to raise up education for all students using the charter movement as one lever to do so. Secretary Robinson is well informed and experienced in education and policy. I really look forward to seeing how our school and division’s experience with Virginia charter schools and policy helps the state use charter schools as part of a tool set to reach learners at risk of complete disengagement with schooling.

Secretary Robinson speaks eloquently and directly for himself, so I won’t report out on his positions here or try to recount a play-by-play of our heartening conversation about supporting start-up schools in fulfilling students’ needs. Instead, I’d like to talk about what it’s like to work at a charter school that is entirely distinct from KIPP and the other name brands of the charter movement. I’d like to talk about what’s happening below the radar of politics. NB: The rest of this post reflects only my own opinions.

Below the radar, we are you.

• We are trying to design and implement individualized literacy interventions.
• We are trying to develop and enact an arts-infused, project-based curriculum.
• We are trying to teach students the habits of quality work and the intrinsic rewards of mastering and sharing their learning.
• We are trying to teach students personal responsibility without using a carrot or stick.
• We are trying to integrate instructional technology and applications with opportunities for authentic and social learning.
• We are trying to unlearn traditional instruction and traditional discipline.
• We are trying to pass all the tests.
• We are trying to fulfill our students’ learning needs.

Why are we necessary? For the same reasons you are. Our children need teachers dedicated to helping them connect their lives to learning. We have banded together as a small school rather than a department, team, or PLC so we can move more quickly together as a unit in finding what works for our learners thanks to the vision, mission, and flexibility our charter details. We try to act more like a classroom teacher than an entire traditional middle school in terms of knowing our students and reacting to the shifting circumstances of their lives and learning.  Not every student needs us, but we’re convinced that ours do.

I understand why educators discriminate between charter franchises and public education. Large-scale charter operations want money so they can self-replicate. The point of their programs is the perpetuation of their programs. They need customers who fit their programs for their programs to succeed. They need their programs to succeed to get “results.” They need “results” to get press. They need press to attract customers – divisions and families – to get money. They believe in what they do. They are businesses.

We are a school. We are learners. We are classroom scientists testing our hypotheses about how to rekindle the love of learning in students who have learned not to love school. The point of our endeavor is to graduate students who have connected school to authentic learning and expect that connection to continue.

We are you.

When you think of charter schools, by all means, question anyone who tells you that they have it right.

Please also think of schools like ours as we try to serve our students, our division, and public education by creating a safe place for resistant learners to unpack their incredibly complex and complicated lives in pursuit of changing, growing, and learning into the brave and generous people they want to be.

We are you. Our students are yours. Whenever we take it upon ourselves to make learning better for children, we are all of us charters.

Techno-Teenagers by Leonard John Matthews

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 and access to information about learning to differentiate school for students. We can provide 1:1 rigor, relevance, and relationships. We can go F2F, blended, hybrid, dual-enrollment, CTE, charter, magnet, specialty center - we can go anywhere we’ve made something. Can we go anywhere students want? Should we in public education customize teaching and learning? Should we student-source curriculum?

I think so. The faster the better. Why keep spending money building things and places that some students will use? Why not build an infrastructure all students can use to learn a 1:1 curriculum and produce a unique product – an app, a book, a business, a charity, a machine?

Could we save money and increase learning opportunities by adopting an inquiry-based, electronic, student-created and/or micro-transaction secondary curriculum and creating an “All-But-Graduated” (ABG) designation for students who assess out of class requirements for credits? If a 14 year old can learn to write/produce about what he or she loves and score a 5 on an AP exam, should we ask that 14 year old to take more HS classes when the AP results net college credit? Could ABG students be funneled into “primary” school volunteerism, professional CTE, entrepreneurship & service labs, community colleges, local universities, work experiences, and/or internships? Could we save money by housing

The New Curriculum Map

with 4 comments

Map Of Your Head, by Daniel Conway

I found Gary Hayes and Laurel Papworth’s  Social Media Campaign image a few days ago via Steven Anderson’s (@web20classroom) Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom.  It broadened my thinking about the curriculum map due to my head of school in September.  I work at a middle school that strives to differentiate instruction by content, process, product, and time in hopes of re-engaging struggling students with a love of learning before high school.  Any one, traditional curriculum map I create will, by necessity, be obsolete before I begin writing it.  My state standards are already written; my description of our class structure is done; our coaches and experts have been recruited (including members of the Virginia Experiment and Music Resource Center); we’ve drafted rubrics collaboratively; now we need students and time for the model to take hold.  I’ve been  struggling with writing a traditional curriculum map because I don’t know what it will add to our work.  Enter the image.

After reading Steven’s post, I started thinking about a curriculm map as a picture of a classroom’s learning system.  Thinking about virtual charter schools, authentic engagement with the global community, and the needs of our students, I put together a picture of the “how” instead of the “what.”  I’m not sure it’s “right,” but it represents how I hope our class will learn.

To move past teaching for the test, we’ll need to map past the test, as well.  Maybe one way to do that is to map systems in place of content, or to separate content (the plug-in or add-on) from the learning model (the program).

Please take the curriculum map below to pieces, question it, and help me figure out how to better articulate the model of learning.  Administrators, parents, students, and tax-payers, what else would you want to see from a teacher’s curriculum map?  Teachers, what else would you include?

A curriculum map of "how" instead of "what"