Thought Provoking Video...

The following video was created by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts (see their site HERE).  Whether you agree or disagree with the content of the video, it definitely gets you thinking about the many issues in education in the United States. - Enjoy

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Remembering that Our Parents' Childhoods are Today's History

With the passing of one of the greatest members of the greatest generation, it is easy to forget that the average high school student hasn't learned much about what happened in the years after World War II.  Neil Armstrong was a pioneer of the last frontier and was also a great example of humility and devotion to one's country and to personal ideals.  He is an icon that students should look up to, but one that many students have either never heard of, or only in passing.

If you're a teacher, and have been teaching since you graduated college in the 1980s then there are about 40 years that you would consider "present day" that the average student knows barely anything about.  If you've been teaching since the 90s you forget that students now have no idea what the First-Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) was, only that George W. Bush "finished what his father started." If you've been teaching since 2000, you're about to find out that students have always lived in a post-9/11 world and believe that every act of violence can be linked to terrorism. So why is this important?

History classes have to add more and more information each year as the history of the world gets longer and longer.  It is impossible, even in a high school where four years of history are required to cover this wide range of information.  In many high schools U.S. History is covered in a two-year curriculum.  The history of the United States, which typically starts with some type of understanding of the groups that lived here already, and the first European settlers in the 17th Century.  That means history teachers are being asked to cover over 400 years of information in 360 days.  (I'm not a math person, but even I can see that you have to cover more than a years worth of information per day)

Recent history is the first to get cut out, simply because by the time you get there, you've run out of time to teach it.  What we're left with is a group of students who, despite having so much information at their fingertips in this technological age, don't know some of the great figures of history that are still living among us.  Neil Armstrong is NOT the guy who rides bikes and had cancer.  (Yes, I have actually heard people make that mistake!)

While it is becoming increasingly difficult to fit the copious amounts of information into such a limited time-frame, using tools such as "This Day in History" to start your class, or finding the birthdays of major figures of the past 50 years and having a 5 minute discussion on why they are important is critical to not letting the recent past be forgotten. It is our responsibility to take the legacy of our parents' generation and turn it into the lasting history that our grandchildren will continue to study.

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In Honor of a Great American

image - lunarscience.nasa.gov

Beg, Borrow and Steal: Info Sharing Among Educators

Throughout the past 4 years of education classes, a common phrase that professors will use is "Beg, Borrow, and Steal" when referring to future educators obtaining resources to create lesson plans and the like.  When I had to complete countless hours of observation and pre-practicum hours the teachers in the schools all said the same thing and many offered their own materials as samples.  This idea of sharing information among educators makes perfect sense.  If a teacher has materials and resources that are extremely helpful to educating students, why wouldn't they want those resources used by other teachers to ensure student success across the board.

Image - businesscriticallearning.com

However, when it comes to actually finding resources to create lesson plans the one place that seems to fail everyone is the internet.  Long held as the place where you can find ANYTHING, the internet is surprisingly lacking as an teacher resource bank.  Sure, there are plenty of scholastic sites choc full of resources if you have the money to subscribe.  These are the same sites that create countless assessments used by schools, and even the creators of high school exit exams, college entrance exams, etc.




So it would appear that the last of the three rules of obtaining resources becomes a reality.  Copyright laws seem to go out the window, photocopies are made and materials are passed around from teacher to teacher, teacher to future teacher, and so on.  In a world where schools don't have enough money to pay their teachers and buy supplies for their classrooms, teachers are working two jobs because their passion for teaching outweighs their need for monetary compensation, these large educational corporations are making millions by developing the textbooks, creating the assessments, and most importantly, stocking up on all the resources so there's no where else to turn to get them.

Of course, teachers could (and should in some cases) develop and create their own resources to use with their lesson plans, however, in some situations it seems inefficient for each new teacher to re-create the wheel when they could be using that motivation and energy to improve upon what we already have and pave a new path forward.  Instead, new teachers will spend their first few years catching up to the rest of the education world, and by the time they're ready to discover something new, over half of them will be burnt out from getting where they are.

Let's change the old adage from "Beg, Borrow and Steal" and make it "Accept, Reuse, Improve"

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