Shared item
1 shares
Effective and Progressive
via LeaderTalk by leadertalk@gmail.com (UCEA CASTLE) on March 16, 2008
(Cross posted at Educational Discourse)
This week I was asked the question “What are some characteristics of an effective and progressive high school?”
Now, being in a K - 12 school, I took some time and talked to a fewof the students in the senior grades. They were a great help, as werethe 4 people who answered my twitter call for help. Through theirsuggestions and ideas I was able to come up with 4 characteristics thatseemed to capture the essence of an effective and progressive highschool.
Relevant Curriculum
From my discussions, it was clear that students want to learn andknow that learning is important. Their biggest issue was that at timeswhat they were doing didn’t seem relevant. It wasn’t that they wantedthings to be always “today’s headlines” kind of stuff but they wantedto be able to find connections between what they were doing and whatwas going on around them. If it was detached or just some facts aboutthings, they found it hard to follow or care about. They wanted to beinvolved in things that were going on in their lives and were linked totheir world. They gave some examples like the problems in the MiddleEast - it was linked to history in many ways and they were interestedin how this came about and why so many problems. They had some ideasbut weren’t sure if what they knew was right or not.
Connections
The whole idea of being connected came through, not as one importantidea but from how they talked about being connected to other studentsand other people. This leads me to think that we need to really work onhelping students build networks with other students. This is happeningin a few cases but they are not the norm. In most cases, studentscontinue to work in classrooms limited to connecting with those in theroom. With the tools available to teachers, it seems that this shouldbe something that can be achieved without too much trouble. I think itwill require the will of teachers to stretch and try new things but,for our students, these are the things they are already doing outsideof school. Maybe it’s time we brought some of these things into theschool and examined, in more detail, how we can provide opportunitiesfor students to network.
Transitioning
This was something that the high school students were concernedabout. Although they didn’t call it this, they talked about having theskills and knowledge to move from school into the world beyond and besuccessful. They discussed more than just academic skills. Things likeliving on their own, budgeting, food and clothing, working, banking andother daily activities were tossed around whether they were thinkingabout furthering their education or going into the work force. Asthings change rapidly in our society, maybe we need to spend more timelooking at some of these aspects and discussing with students thevarious parts of living on one’s own.
Engaging
Engaging students. Whether in how the school runs or the classesthat are offered, students want to be active participants in what isgoing on. They want to be part of the process and be part of what isgoing on in the school. They want a say in how they will spend theirday and what they will be doing and, connected with the relevantcurriculum, they want to know how and why some things are the way theyare. Mostly, they weren’t looking to get rid of anything but justwanted to understand more about how things worked and ran.
We have all seen a change in the students that come into theschools. I would say that most of this change has been positive. Theyare much more aware of the surrounding world and what is going on. Theyare curious about how things work and how things happened to get towhere they are today. They are very environmentally aware and have asocial connectedness that is much greater than a few years ago. Aseducators, one of our biggest challenges is to tap that curiosity andhave students expand their knowledge and understanding and thendemonstrate what it is that they have come to understand.
The one thing that wasn’t mentioned was the physical environment.They talked about being able to connect and find information, haveaccess to information and use new technologies but they talked aboutclassrooms have wifi and internet access and being able to use thetools to do different things in the classroom setting but they didn’tseem at all to be put out by the physical design of schools. Or maybe Ijust didn’t ask the question:)
So what’s your take? What are the important points that you would consider in an effective and progressive high school?
Shared by: