Section 5
Retooling Schools
This chapter identifies five support systems that can work together to support 21st century learning, understanding and skills performance. These support systems take a look at standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction, professional development and learning environment. If we look at standards we find them set up to find out what our children should be learning. However, for the 21st century learner we need to look at what students should be able to do with the content that we teach. 21st century standards will also include levels of mastery for a standard from novice level to expert. (p.126) Today’s standards have been designed for the way we test which has made teachers focus on coverage rather than depth of understanding. Not only is this a national trend we find it to be true in a global sense as well. Despite what we are going through we need to focus on developing standards that focus on real-world problems that promote learning across all disciplines. (p.129) We also need to look at designing standards that the depth increases as students progress through the grade levels and promote looking at the big idea over long periods of time. Assessment is the second support system to look at for change. We all know that assessment is crucial to learning; it guides instruction and provides feedback. Unfortunately we are getting what we measure and finding ourselves teaching to the test. This type of teaching has often focused students on memorizing the content as well as causing stressful learning experiences. 21st century assessment is focused on the deeper understanding and applied knowledge that can come from rigorous learning projects. (p.131) A combination of summative and formative evaluation that measure content knowledge, basic skills, higher order thinking skills, and deep comprehension and understanding, is needed for educating the whole child. This third support system needed to retool schools is how we design curriculum and instruction. Basically providing a curriculum based upon using inquiry, design, and collaborative learning projects that include a blend of the learning methods is needed for the 21st century. Providing professional development for teachers in the 21st century is another key component of retooling schools. The following characteristics are needed to provide essential professional development: a) engaging teachers in designing, implementing, managing, and assessing learning activities and projects that reflect their own values and beliefs, b) incorporating teacher’s own questions, issues and challenges and the latest research c) collaborate experiences and expertise of other teachers d) connect teacher’s work with students and teacher’s curriculum e) provide ongoing support through modeling, coaching, and mentoring f) intergrading all aspects of school change, reform and transformation. (p.139) The final component of retooling schools is the learning environment. “Building 21st century “whole environments for the whole child” involves changes in the educational use of space and time, technology , and communities and leadership.” (p.139) In the future we will need to look at using our school facilities as a “learning studio” for not only students but the entire community. This chapter looked at five key components that if implemented correctly will change the focus on how we educate students in the United States.
It is difficult to not "teach to the test." There is a lot of stressed importance in standardized tests, which makes teachers nervous to fail if they don't "teach to the test." However assessment is vital to learning, and needs to be used in other ways as well, like in formative assessments. Chapter 8 states, "We need to move beyond subject mastery," and I completely agree. Being a teacher is not simple, but being able to find lessons that engage and motivate students to not only complete an activity, but to pursue more knowledge is what every teacher should strive for. If we do that, students will memorize less and in turn remember and apply more, which is really all teachers want in the end. Throughout college my professors said over and over, how important it was to create a classroom environment where all students' needs are met in order to take risks and succeed in a safe, encouraging, comfortable atmosphere. Teachers, students, and schools need to be flexible to accomodate such learners because after all, "it takes more than a village to educate a child." We need to surround these learners as role models by being teachers, parents, and members of the community who are proving that we are constantly seeking knowledge and better educating ourselves. We need to be passionate and welcome challenges, because if we don't, how can we ask our students to? After all, as they say in Singapore, "Teach Less, Learn More," this should apply to all of us.
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ReplyDeleteWhen your job depends on if the students pass the test then you do teach to the test. But society wants us to make our students be ready for the real world. So how do we master the subject for the students if we have to teach to the test? We need to be flexible to our students but remember that we need to teach to our environment. Especially to our small communities. We need to be open to our society and ask our students what they want to do. Our challenges come from our students and our lessons come from us as teachers. The teacher needs to teach to the test but need tests that are worth teaching to.