EDLD+5364+Week+4

=**My Impressions from Week Four of EDLD 5364**=


 * When?**

I met this week's readings, videos, and discussions with dual emotions - both excitement at the possibilities and frustration with the pace at which we are observing change. I was hired on as a "paradigm pioneer" in 1992 to the "REAL Initiative" in a school in Pennsylvania (Reinventing Education for Active Learning). The basic tenets of the program were: This was 17 years ago and the program actually began the year before that, so let's say it was 18 years ago. Today I am reading and hearing about how these concepts should be changing the face of public education in order to create a public that can compete in the new, "flat" world. Yet, on any given day, you will see students in classrooms, at desks, usually arranged in rows, listening to a teacher in a specific subject, working out of a textbook, and taking paper/pencil tests - often in multiple choice format. When? When will we see the major shift in the public education system that we //know// is the better answer?
 * learning should be project-based
 * learning should be technology-rich
 * the student day should not be departmentalized into "subjects" but should flow easily from one area to another while still addressing content

As for the content of this week's material, we looked at social and emotional intelligence that is necessary in collaborative learning, the importance of project learning, and the importance of harnessing our students' "digital smarts." In more than one course we have seen the necessity of teachers learning to be "co-learners" as opposed to "the one who knows." I have taken this to heart in my own classroom. I have given up being the all-knowing, all-encompassing teacher and have freed myself (and my students) to allow them to start doing a little bit more of the guiding. I liked the section of the video with the tech teacher who said she changes what happens in her classroom to fit her students' interests. This can't help but create guaranteed engagement. I also admired the statement in another video where the interviewee stated that he wanted the walls of his school to be as permeable as possible - bringing experts from outside the school in to talk to and work with students and sending student out into the community for "real world" lessons. This same video addressed the negative side of creating a "non-college-bound track" in our schools in that it was dividing students based on socio-economic factors. I had never considered this point of view but, after hearing it, I have to say it is right on the money. All of these things need to be supported through on-going "just-in-time" professional development for teachers. If we want this change to take place, we can't just talk about it one day and forget about the initiative the rest of the school year. Educators will get serious about reinventing education as soon as everyone shows they are committed to the idea.