Tag: stories

Final 50 Selected for Book of Learning Stories

Posted on | by Sam

Nine months ago, the Rethink Learning Now campaign launched a national storytelling initiative by asking people to reflect on their most powerful learning experiences, and/or their most effective teachers.

Since then, the campaign has received hundreds of insightful and illustrative submissions from people across the country –from students to social workers to the Secretary of Education himself. And this past month, I’ve had the difficult challenge of selecting just 50 of those stories to be collected into a book that will be released next spring.

My work has been so difficult because the stories people have submitted are all so good, and so varied. Some are about teachers who changed their students’ lives. Some describe the moment when a person first discovered how to ask the right questions, or found what they were most passionate about.  Others are about making art, or going on a challenging hike, or studying everything from Morse code to Macbeth to Kung Fu. But all of the stories in the campaign – and, ultimately, the book – are about one central thing – learning, and what it feels like to discover one’s purpose, passion, and capacity for greatness.

And so, I’m proud to officially announce the Final 50. I want to congratulate all of you who took the time to share your stories with the campaign. And I want to urge anyone that hasn’t yet done so to add your voice to our growing patchwork of learning memories. Do so today at rethinklearningnow.com.

  1. Zainab Ali – Office of the Mayor – Los Angeles, California
  2. Anonymous — Evanston, Illinois
  3. Rachel Barnes – Humanities Teacher — Chatham, Massachusetts
  4. R. Dwayne Betts – Spokesman, Campaign for Youth Justice — Suitland, Maryland
  5. Maritza Brito – World Languages Teacher — Toms River, New Jersey
  6. Cass Carland – Youth Voice Consultant, QED Foundation – Keene, New Hampshire
  7. Gary Cohen – Businessman, CO2 Partners – Wayzata, Minnesota
  8. James Comer – University Professor — New Haven, Connecticut
  9. Elijah Cummings – United States Congressman — Baltimore, Maryland
  10. Jill Davidson –Director, Coalition of Essential Schools — Providence, Rhode Island
  11. Arne Duncan – United States Secretary of Education — Washington, DC
  12. Michelle Durange – 1st & 2nd Grade Teacher — Littlestown, Pennsylvania
  13. Joel Elliott – Peace Corps Volunteer — Limpopo Province, South Africa
  14. Amy Estersohn – Afterschool Program Volunteer, Learning Unlimited — Chicago, Illinois
  15. Jamal Fields – Elementary School Principal — Livermore, California
  16. Jenna Fournel – Outreach Director, Center for Inspired Teaching — Alexandria, Virginia
  17. Jenifer Fox – Founder, Strong Planet — Franklin, Tennessee
  18. Al Franken – United States Senator — Minneapolis, Minnesota
  19. Emily Gasoi – Student — Washington, DC
  20. John Goodlad – President, Institute for Educational Inquiry — Seattle, Washington
  21. Loretta Goodwin – Senior Director, American Youth Policy Forum — Arlington, Virginia
  22. Carl Glickman – Educator and Writer — Athens, Georgia
  23. Stedman Graham – Businessman and Educator — Chicago, Illinois
  24. Patrick Ip – Student — Chicago, Illinois
  25. Gerlma A.S. Johnson – Middle School Principal — Detroit, Michigan
  26. Gloria Ladson-Billings – University Professor — Madison, Wisconsin
  27. Liz Lerman – Choreographer — Takoma Park, Maryland
  28. Sitembiso Ncube Maduma – Special Education Teacher — San Bernardino, California
  29. Andrew Margon – Special Education Teacher — Brooklyn, New York
  30. Kevin McCann – Senior Vice President, Edelman Public Relations — Washington, DC
  31. Robert McLaughlin – Administrator, New Hampshire Board of Education — Concord, New Hampshire
  32. Deborah Meier – Retired Educator – Hillsdale, New York
  33. Renee Moore – Teacher Instructor — Cleveland, Mississippi
  34. Steve Moore  — Reading Instructor — Republic, Missouri
  35. Larry Myatt  — School Leadership Consultant — Boston, Massachusetts
  36. Susan Oliver – Communications Consultant — Waterford, Virginia
  37. Margaret Owens – Student – Palo Alto, California
  38. Terry Pickeral – President, Cascade Educational Consultants — Bellingham, Washington
  39. Bruce Deitrick Price – Founder, Improve-Education.org — Virginia Beach, Virginia
  40. Jan Resseger – Minster for Public Education and Witness, United Church of Christ – Cleveland, Ohio
  41. Mark Rockeymoore – Senior Fellow, Global Policy Solutions — San Antonio, Texas
  42. Carrie Rogers — 2nd Grade Teacher — Rancho Cucamonga, California
  43. Elizabeth Rogers, Public Affairs Director, Oral Health America — Portland, Maine
  44. Ahniwake Rose – Policy Analyst, National Congress of American Indians – Washington, DC
  45. Chantale Soekhoe – Legislative Liaison, New York Civil Liberties Union —  Bronx, New York
  46. Maya Soetoro-Ng – Education Specialist, East-West Center – Honolulu, Hawaii
  47. Angela Valenzuela – University Professor — Austin, Texas
  48. Jill Vialet – Founder, Playworks — Oakland, California
  49. Stephen Vick – Director of Child Welfare, Association House — Chicago, Illinois
  50. Jenerra Williams – 2nd & 3rd Grade Teacher — Boston, Massachusetts

The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand?

Posted on | by Sam | 2 Comments on The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand?

In case you missed it, Steven Brill wrote a relatively balanced piece in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine about the national education reform landscape — and how teachers unions are truly facing a sink-or-swim moment of reinvention.

As someone who feels neither allegiance nor antipathy toward either of the increasingly polarized camps (I actually like and respect both Linda Darling-Hammond and Jon Schnur), I see the partial truths in each side’s argument. On one hand, for example, it’s clear that K-12 teachers should not be granted lifetime tenure so easily — tenure, after all, was originally designed to protect the free-expression rights of college professors, and since the First Amendment barely even applies to public employees anymore, that point is moot. So I say bring on this reform.

It’s also clear that teacher evaluation systems need to be dramatically retooled. When educators can only be scored ‘satisfactory’ or ‘unsatisfactory,’ that’s a huge problem. So again I say yes to any reform that results in a new system that creates a reciprocal flow of feedback and helps educators improve the quality of their professional practice.

However, I see one massive problem — and it’s a problem that no one, Brill included, seems interested in addressing:  Everyone wants to tie these new teacher evaluations to student performance data, but no one wants to talk publicly about the fact that we lack sufficient metrics for truly evaluating the full extent of whether or not young people are learning and achieving at high levels.

As I’ve written many times before, basic-skills tests in reading and math provide a single, useful proof point that is, in the current climate, dramatically overvalued. To help students learn to use their minds well, schools — and teachers — need to focus on not just basic- but also higher-order skills; they need to engage children in not just reading and math but also the arts and sciences; and they need to focus less on just data per se, and more on how well we’re equipping our teachers to respond to data in ways that improve the overall learning conditions (and outcomes) for kids.

A system, therefore, that incentivizes compensation and job security by using a single measure to count for as much as 50% of an evaluation will incentivize — you guessed it! — a relentless focus on basic-skills reading and math scores. But that’s not enough if we want the achievement gap to mean more than test scores. And more people need to start calling it out.

The good news is that although we may not yet have these more sophisticated metrics in place, at least we know what we should be looking for. This month, I’m finalizing the manuscript of a book that brings together 50 powerful stories about teaching and learning — selected from the many hundred that have been submitted by people across the country as part of a national campaign. The stories recount a wide range of experiences — from third grade classrooms to Outward Bound courses to church missions to prison sentences — but what they combine to make visible are the core conditions of a powerful learning environment. (See for yourself at rethinklearningnow.com.) And although they do not reveal a simple, single answer to the deeply complex question of how to improve our schools, they do clarify the question we should be asking ourselves at every turn — How do we create more challenging, engaging, supportive, relevant and experiential learning opportunities for children?

Imagine if more people started asking that question. Imagine what a new statewide teacher evaluation system would need to look like in response. And ask yourself — would you want that sort of environment for your child?

Book of Learning Stories — Deadline Nears

Posted on | by Sam

I’m spending every minute this week finalizing the manuscript that will stitch together 50 people’s stories about powerful teaching and learning (Jossey-Bass, Spring 2011 release).

Already, there are powerful voices and insights in the mix — from everyday citizens to U.S. Senators to the Secretary of Education himself. And although we already have several hundred stories to work with — and far more than 50 that are worthy of being in the book — you still have one week to share your own experience and have it be considered for publication. Just visit rethinklearningnow.com/stories/submit and tell us about your experience, and what it is that made it so worthwhile.

USE YOUR VOICE!

Rethink Learning NOW

Posted on | by Sam

This fall, as young people across the country settle back into the rhythms and requirements of a new school year, the rest of us might want to heed the words of a former U.S. president and ask ourselves an old question:

“Is our children learning?”

The answer, of course, is that we can’t know for sure, since our education system isn’t even being asked to measure whether or not young people are learning – only whether they are demonstrating progress on basic-skills standardized tests in 3rd and 8th grade reading and math.

As everyone knows, learning involves more than basic skills and regurgitating information. It requires higher-order skills and the capacity to digest, make sense of, and apply what we’ve been taught.

We can do better. We can have schools in every neighborhood that teach children both basic- and higher-order skills, that allow creativity and innovation to flourish, and that lead all children to discover how to fully and effectively participate in our economy and democracy.

Before that can happen, however, we need to start having a different conversation. We need to restore the focus of public education reform to its rightful place – on learning, and on the core conditions that best support it.

Click here to read more.