Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Politics of Fear: The masked educational villain!

Before we view the main idea of this post let me make a few notes.

Again, this blog is not made to dis-respect or insult teachers more so it is made to challenge the educational institution. I realize post number one was very assumptive and somewhat generalized. By no means do all teachers dominate over students. A lot of teachers do not. I realize that teachers have certain "TEKS" they must teach to us. All students empowered by change wishes to do is to reform the way we teach those TEKS by shifting away from test prep and move to more project based learning. Can we not teach the TEKS without pre-prepared worksheets? I would say yes. 

Now let us get to this weeks topic: 

The Politics of Fear: The masked educational villain!

Let us start with history. 


It starts at the beginning - the time in which progressive educators wish would have never happened. The world introduces standardized tests to measure education in schools. These tests are enforced through out the educational world. The "dark side" has now taken over. The educational world is told, "if you do not teach the mandates of these tests, you shall be fired". Now, here is where the politics of fear come in. Teachers fear that if they do not teach right they will be done away with. What does this lead to? The root cause of all evil in schools: TEST PREP! TEST PREP! TEST PREP!

As Sabrina from www.failingschools.wordpress.com puts it: 

"The fear pushes administrators to crack down on those areas that are most visible to the district. If they don’t, they risk losing their own jobs in a turnaround or school closure. They pass the fear along. For teachers, there’s a difficult choice: should you teach to the Test, or to whatever your principal and district value at the moment, or teach to students’ needs, abilities, and interests? Theoretically, those things should not conflict, but when high-stakes assessments can’t be adjusted to suit different learning styles, only account for a narrow range of subjects, and produce information only after a cohort of students have left a given classroom, conflict is inevitable. The fear looms: is it best to go along with the program–”play the game”– even though it’s not real education? Is it worth it to risk a steady salary/your professional standing/your entire career to stand up for what’s right for the kids?" 

Failing schools is a marvelous blog spot, and I would encourage readers of Students Empowered by Change to read it as well.


Let us get something straight. The politics of fear is not only enforced by tests. There is a surrounding student-to-teacher Relationship that causes, "fear". The teacher has a certain educational relationship with a learner. The learner must always find the way to adapt his/her self to critically recognize the teacher and the way that teacher teaches. In the process of this, the learner begins to become silent so that they can, "follow", the regular educational system. This "following" causes the learner to continually fear speaking out in the classroom environment. The problem in this relationship is students begin to feel that not understanding a concept is only their fault. In turn, the students quit asking questions because they fear their teachers criticism. Is this a healthy student-to-teacher relationship? Absolutely not. 


How do we make these relationships better?


The answer to this question is simple.

1. Students must not be scared to rise up and tell the world we are not "OK" with our education to continue in this way. We want a progressive change! 


2. Teachers must move away from test prep materials and move to a more progressive project based learning system. The projects will eliminate fear because students are now critically thinking with their classmates and are not afraid of presenting their own ideas or questions. The best part is that the projects can teach students the materials they need to know for their tests! Teachers will be happy as well! I realize that all standardized testing is not going to go away anytime soon. One thing is for sure though, the way students are learning for these tests is evolving! 


Here is a fantastic example of project based learning in a public texas school!


May the force be with Students Everywhere! 



Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Blog Called Ignorant and Arrogant...Responses to Criticism



We Cannot Be Ignored! 

Criticism and Ridicule

In response to last weeks blog post entitled "The Student Revolution" I have received many forms of ridicule and criticism from my own teachers.   

I have been told that this movement is perceived by professional educators as being ignorant and arrogant.


To add insult to injury another teacher told me, "because students do not have have any knowledge about the real world they should have absolutely no say in their education." 


In an attempt to silence my voice, and student's voices, I have been told that because I am Ignorant and Arrogant that  people will ignore this movement.  

Over and over again I have been told by teachers that our education can not change because of Austin's requirements for TAKS & STAAR Testing. 

As an example of the entrenched paradigm that many educators are stuck in, I was told that "if you cannot take a worksheet home and learn from it, then that's your problem."

Another response I received from my initial blog post was "Your Blog is crap and any educator who reads this should realize You need help."

Respectful Responses from 

Students Empowered by change (SEC)


With full respect to educators I would like to respond politely on behalf of the Students Empowered by Change.  I do not wish my voice to be the only voice in this discussion so I encourage readers to voice their responses in the comment section on this blog. 

Teacher Comment:  Your Blog is both ignorant and arrogant

SEC Response:  

Students Empowered by Change is neither ignorant nor arrogant. As high school students we are very aware that the real world is coming at us quickly and globalized change is happening fast!  As digital citizens of the globe who are connected and possess the digital literacy to see the warp-speed changes in the world that our teachers do not seem to even notice.  This knowledge about the lightening speed of change in the world is exactly why we are trying to change the way we are educated. Was it not Ghandi who once said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Students Empowered by Change (SEC) has very specific goals. We want to enjoy learning through a proactive system of experiences and not just another mundane, drill and kill, worksheet. 

In the previous blog post we presented three ways to improve learning.   First, we want to be able to use our technology to access the knowledge base of the world.  By interacting with this knowledge we can advance our learning to real world scenarios.  The second demand to improve learning was un-schooling and moving away from the useless practice of using worksheet and knowledge based homework assignments with no real world relevance. 

SEC even presented three alternatives to the present system of learning. 

  1. Project-based learning
  2. Socratic Circle Discussions
  3. Student lead learning.
To My Educators I pose this Question:  Where are your proposals to improve the education I am receiving?

Finally, we demanded that a student leadership team be formed to improve our schools policies and practices.  We demand that this leadership team have real power to make change in our school and not just be a pawn to the present system. 

The aforementioned goals are not arrogant or ignorant at all. 

The idea of bright and responsible students having a say in their own education is not ignorant.  We are the ones doing the learning and should certainly have a say in how we accomplish the learning.  We care about our education but are being bored to death with meaningless work that has no real world relevance. 

Teacher Comment:  "People will start to ignore Students empowered by change."

SEC Response: 

People will not ignore us if we keep the movement rolling. People have viewed the initial blog post over 600times! People are looking at this movement and not ignoring it! The Education Service Center at Region 17 in Lubbock, a Texas based education service center, re-tweeted the link to the first blog post as did hundreds of others!

WE ARE BEING HEARD & WE WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE NOISE UNTIL JUSTICE IS SERVED! 


Teacher Assertion:  "We cannot change because of a standardized testing and rules and regulations imposed by the state." 

SEC Response:   


This is not true! The problem is not increased standards.  The problem is that teachers have been drinking the test prep cool-aid of way to long.  We can Change and switch to Project-based learning, Socratic circle discussions, and student lead learning and still be successful on the standardized test! In fact the research proves that we will perform even better!  Teachers just have to devise sophisticated lessons as projects, socratic circles, and student lead learning  We should not allow standardized tests to restrain our learning! 

Teacher Comment: "If you cannot take a worksheet home and learn from it, then that's your problem."

SEC Response:  

                  This is not Learning!                             
              This is not teaching! 
              This is not meaningful practice! 

Some Quick Shout Outs and Notes


First: I would like to say thank you to everyone who read the first post, re-tweeted it, and told your friends! Every view makes a difference! We had a rock solid 562 views as of November 4th! People are at least talking about the revolution and that is what is important!  My hope is that through my expression of my own struggles and beliefs as a student a new conversation can be started on the way to a new way of schooling, teaching, and learning.  

Second: I would like to point out that this movement questions the institution of learning not people or individual teachers methodologies. Students Empowered by Change wishes to focus on students having a say when it comes to how we learn and how we are taught. 

The state goal of this movement is to fundamentally change the educational paradigm and the mindset of teachers and policy makers.   

Third: I do not need the kind of help that one of the teachers above suggested.  I do not need psychological help or counseling.   I am perfectly sane! I promise! 

I do however need your help in spreading the word and continuing to force the conversation.  Please re-tweet, email, talk about, and generally promote the Blog.  This is the "help" that I need. 

THANK YOU EVERYONE! HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE POST! 








Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Student Revolution!


"Students should not be afraid of their schools, schools should be afraid of their students."

Let us, as students, start a learning revolution. 


To My Fellow Students:

We are not pawns in a game - not anymore. It is time for us as individuals to rise up and let our voices be heard. Are you tired of going to school every day exhausted from the same old thing? Walking into a school, waiting for a bell to ring, so you can go to the next class and be educated in ways that you do not enjoy? Being taught by people that supposedly have more disciplinary power then you, and that is the reason they can tell you what and how to learn?


If you have ask any of these questions, please take a moment to understand my thoughts and ideas about how we, as individuals, can bind together to not only change our school but education in the entire world.


Why do we not have power as students?

We walk into school as students who are the bottom of the power chain. Students have less power than that of a teacher. A teacher has less power than a principal. A principal has less power than a superintendent. Power is everywhere around us, but for some reason from the very day we start school we are at the bottom. We are rendered virtually powerless. Why? The answer to this question is… Oh wait, there is not an answer.

Now, I am not saying that students are belittled; more so that we have no way of changing our own education. We are told every day to stay quiet, stay still, and to stay in our "place". Why is it that we must be quiet? Why is it that we must stay still? Why is it that we have a certain “place” that we must stay in no matter what we want or what we need? I am not saying that we should completely reject all forms of being told what to do, because I find that these powers are necessary but only to a certain extent. We should have a say in how we learn

Why do students not have power to endorse change in their education? Is it not students who are learning in school? Shouldn't we have a say in how we learn or how we learn best? 

Why we should lead change in our education

As students we are told every day how to do something new in each class we go to. Information is thrown in our brains at the speed of light. Every student has that one class that they struggle with or that one teacher they struggle to understand. These are just two of many issues in traditional schooling. But what are the solutions to these many issues? It’s quite simple: WE MUST RISE UP AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Teachers are not listening to us, to what we need, to what we don’t understand. They teach in the same way every year and do not change. If they refuse to change, we have no other choice but to invoke change at a different level. We must change our own education as students. It starts with banding together, and that, my friends, is why I am writing to you - a student who wishes to change his education, begin putting in motion the wheels of an education revolution.

How can we change our education as students?

Let me interject a brief personal thought before I begin. I do not want to be the only person who presents ideas. Many of the suggestions I offer are from others that I believe would be good ideas for change for our school. If you have an idea that you would like for me to blog about that will change our education in a positive way, I encourage and urge you to comment on the bottom of the blog.
We will be covering a few main points in this first post. These are only the beginning of ways we can change and move education to be student-centered and student-led.

1. Technology in our school: The Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) Policy.
2. Un-Schooling: Why traditional education is making us “dumber” instead of smarter.
3. The Student Leadership Team: Much like the student council but different in that we have a say in what sort of policies are passed and enforced throughout our school.

Let’s start with technology in school and BYOD 

I do not see why as kids we are restricted in our access to knowledge. We are the first generation to have access to a wealth of information through the internet and many devices we own. As students, we must stand up for our generation. Most adults and most administrators do not understand how we access the information. Our generation learns more from our smart phones, iPads, Mac Books, laptops, and tablets than we do from any book. It’s just how our minds work!



One of the necessary changes that must take place in our school is allowing student owned technology devices anytime and anywhere for learning. The current policy allows student to bring electronic devices but requires that they be in the off position during the school day. We should make sweeping changes to this policy and allow kids who own their own technology to use that technology in an educational way. Students should be designing and creating the BYOD Policy. 




The National Honor Society and the Student Council should student source the BYOD policy. Once finalized, students will have anytime, anywhere access to the vast amounts of global knowledge at their fingertips through the use of laptops, smart phones, iPods, iPads, Galaxy tablets, Kindles, other devices, and devices yet invented. Rather than the school spending valuable financial resources to provide these devices, students will be allowed to bring one or more devices to school to use as their learning tools. This isn’t to say the technology is mandatory, but that technology is no longer outlawed – it’s allowed.




Here is a small video explaining the ins- and outs- of BYOD and how the imperfections people cling to about why BYOD would not work are debunked to show it will, in fact, work:






The point of BYOD policy that should be raised by students is that we feel so restricted in our learning that many of us do not enjoy going to school five days a week. So how do students start a revolution in this aspect? We as students must stand up to our school. As many individuals we can stand together and, perhaps, change the way we use technology to better our learning. This is our time!


Why we need a change to Un-Schooling

I know many of you are asking: What is Un-Schooling?

Un-Schooling is a range of educational philosophies and practices centered on allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, to include play, game play, household responsibilities, work experience, and social interaction, rather than through a more traditional school curriculum. Un-Schooling encourages exploration of activities often initiated by the children themselves and facilitated by adults. Un-Schooling differs from conventional schooling principally in the concept that standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other traditionally accepted notions of education, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child. (Source. VIA: wiki) 

According to Un-Schooling pioneer John Holt, "the anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know." Proponents of Un-schooling assert that individualized, child-led learning is more efficient and respectful of children's time, takes advantage of their interests, and allows deeper exploration of subjects than what is possible in conventional education.


What are the alternatives to traditional school that we can implement to begin Un-Schooling? Project-based learning, Socratic circle discussions, and student lead learning. I have found in my everyday school life that when a teacher gives me group discussion work or a project to do, I learn significantly more than I do completing a worksheet by myself. 



Has it ever occurred to you that you learn more from your fellow students than you do your teachers? Think about it…Yes, you do! 



Our teachers believe that they must throw worksheets at us and give us large quantities of homework. But we can change this! This is not just so we can get out of our homework. It is to expand our knowledge and to help us learn better. Mundane worksheets and irrelevant homework makes students hate school and hate learning. As students, we should love learning. 


Justine Tart is a nationally acclaimed and award winning instructional technologist. He is an instructional technologist and administrator who appears regularly on the technology conference circuit and is considered an expert in the use and development of instructional technology in the United States.  His views on homework are exceptional and appear below.    (http://www.justintarte.com/2011/08/my-thoughts-on-homework.html) 

- More times than not homework adds little value when it comes to student learning.

- There is pressure from society to continue giving homework because that is the way it has always been done.

- Assigned homework rarely has any true relevancy or purpose for students, thus completion rates are negatively affected.

- When a student receives a zero for not completing homework, he/she is NOT learning about responsibility and "the real world."

- Grading homework on completion typically inflates grades and ultimately distorts overall content mastery.

- Homework should be an extension of the learning environment that provides students the opportunity to explore and discover.

- Homework can be a valuable tool in schools, but I believe too often homework is misused and ultimately detracts from the learning environment.

- More homework does NOT equal more learning.

- Students should not spend all night every night doing homework. I don't know many people who work 8 a.m. until 10 p.m., so why should students be subjected to that?

- The natural love and curiosity of learning are destroyed by too much irrelevant and unproductive homework...
So what do we do as students???

We Un-School our school. No, not literally deconstruct our school. We have to take a stand and join together as a student community and let our school leaders know that we do not like learning in a traditional way. They must acknowledge our cries to better our education. As students, we have nothing to lose. This joint effort brings me to the third and final point of this post:



The Student Leadership Team!

The above two projects will not work without an organizing body - the Student Leadership Team. We have Student Council and National Honor society, but we do not have at our school an open group that can be joined and accessed by everyone to produce change in our school. This is why the Student Leadership Team in necessary. As individuals are voices are small, but as a team with one might voice, we can be heard. We will not make "ranks" or "representatives" that segregate our one voice. Instead, we will discuss issues and find solutions together.

The current say we have in our school policies does not currently exist. We have made petitions for things we felt should be enforced differently but to no avail The names on the piece of paper where but names on a page to our leaders.

IT IS TIME TO BAND TOGETHER AND KNOCK DOWN THE DOOR!

IT IS TIME TO LEAD OUR EDUCATION WITH STUDENT VOICES!