Homeschool: Onward!

Our proposal to homeschool my 10th grader for French II was formally approved today. I must admit I was shocked at how easy it was to get it set up. I don’t know if the teacher knows yet – not sure how she’ll feel. I would like to talk to her so she understands why we’re doing this.

Classroom foreign language learning relies heavily on rote memorization and detail. I’ve long known my daughter didn’t excel at these, and it was proven in her first term of French this year. Oddly, she did quite well last year, but this year was more focus on the details of grammar and spelling, as well as significantly more vocabulary words to memorize.

My daughter struggled as she watched other friends easily pickup the vocabulary, remember the accents and master the passe compose and other grammatical structures. She was so frustrated, it was no longer engaging or interesting.

In the last month, my daughter was diagnosed with moderate language learning disabilities – in English. According to the psychologist, the disabilities are strong enough that she will have serious difficulty in a classroom foreign language setting.

She does have remarkably strong auditory memory, and they psychologist felt that in an immersion setting, she’d learn aural/oral language very quickly. But that isn’t possible in a traditional high school setting.

So, instead, we’ll work at home. We’ll do a significant amount of speaking and listening, watching videos, reading children’s books together, and working through tests – together. We’ll write – together, with support for her weaknesses. While not ignoring the weaknesses, we’ll focus on her strengths. We’ll analyze music and lyrics, we’ll make videos. We’ll read children’s books (that’s how we learn language as kids, right?) and use French in everyday situations.

Now, how to we convince colleges that this is legitimate learning? And isn’t learning from French speaking cats more fun?

 

 

Another Brick in the Wall

A Facebook friend asked, ” What’s your favorite down/melancholy song?”  I knew I had to answer with Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” In my early 20s, I would blast this song/album whenever I was angry, depressed, or moody (which was frequently!) My roommate would turn around and leave if she came home and this album was playing. She was a very tolerant roommate to put up with me during those years!

Hadn’t listened to it in years. Whoa — words are pretty striking. While they obviously were about something totally different, they speak directly to the work I’m doing now:

We don’t need no education.

We don’t need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.

All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

 

 

Relating to The Lone Wolf

Ran across this blog post about The Lone Wolf by Dave Truss in the Connected Principals blog.

Read it for yourself, but in a nutshell, he’s supporting those teachers who feel like they’re tryng, trying to move along a path, but are still stuck in the same schools, traditions, processes and bureaucracy as always.

While I’m no longer teaching, I am a parent who has been advocating for this education paradigm shift. And I’m getting no where. In fact, the other day after yet another offer to do something for my child’s school was rejected (this time was to teach a parent technology class, or a teacher class) I was tempted to email and ask why they will not work with me.

I know why, though. I’m way ahead of them and they aren’t ready to go there. It’s not their priority yet. In the meantime, they’ll keep making decisions about technology without thinking it through.

7. Take Credit

Following up in my recent post about Changemakers, I have been trying to view my work and schools frustrations through that lens. It has been a game changer for me, definitely for the positive.

A quick example happened in a meeting the other day when there was discussion about using a technology tool to deliver a specific set of programs. The program manager was very excited to step into this new delivery model, and expressed it as idea his team had developed.

This concept was, in fact, an idea I’d been pushing for at least three years. I’ve brought it up in meetings and in conversations, I’ve demonstrated it by showing it used by others, and modeled the technique with unrelated content. At first I was MIFFED and wanting to jump out of my chair saying FINALLY, that was my idea!! I then thought about the Changemaker concepts and realized that we were at #7 (for this particular idea) where they take the credit. I was thrilled. It’s working. It’s slow, painful and frustrating. But maybe it’s working.

Homeschool

My daughter asked if we could homeschool for French. Long story short – we are!

I’ll be dong the second half of French 2 with her at home. In school, there was tremendous focus n memorization, spelling, and tests. I didn’t teach French that way 20 years ago when I taught and I’m not going to do it now.

Ran across a great blog from a French teacher! http://www.frenchappsforkids.blogspot.ca/

Other ideas:
– have her create an RSA Animate video
– search out more ebooks in French
– seek out more French games

I’ll keep adding ideas and I’ll write about it as we go along.

I was excited to see this blog post from Indiana Jen about online and interactive museums for two reasons:

  1.  It’s what I do with my life! I work at a museum, and my work is all about bringing the collections, content, experience of the museum to schools, teachers and students through a digital experience. Museums have a wealth of resources and the digital tools now available mean we can empower educators to use the content in ways that best serve students. Or – students can be empowered to learn on their own.
  2.  I am giving a talk at a local college about this very topic, how museums can impact K-12 education through technology and 21st century skills. This is a great reference from the teaching world. Thanks, Jen!

Museums and Education

I’m prepping for a talk at a local college about how Museums can impact the future of K-12 education. I love the title: “Museum in Your Backpack: Museums, Technology, and the Future of K-12 Education. An Interactive Presentation .” (I didn’t come up with it.)

I plan to talk about museums and the future of education in general, as well as the work we’re doing. Here are a few of the resources I’m using, either sending to have a class read  and discuss, or will reference in my talk.

Changemaker

I ran across an article that I didn’t even know I needed to read until I read it….. “On Being a Changemaker” by Karen Pryor.

It hit hard. So THIS is what I’ve been doing, and WHY it’s been so incredibly hard. I’m making things change (well, I’m trying…. not succeeding yet.) The phases of change she defines fit perfectly. The reactions from people around me are exactly as she describes. I know, however, that my reactions have not been as effective as they could be, so my goal is to take her ideas as my guide. This applies both to my work and to the advocacy I do (or try to do) with my children’s schools.

With full credit to Karen Pryor, here are her steps of what people do when faced with change:

  1. Ignore you
  2. Pretend to agree, but actually do nothing
  3. Resist, delay, obstruct
  4. Openly attack you (the dangerous phase, but also a sign that change is starting)
  5. Absorb
  6. Utilize
  7. Take credit
  8. Proselytize

Read the rest of the article for more details, but I am especially struck by her effective responses. I need to internalize them. The one I am very much looking forward to is the last:

They’re taking credit for your idea? By all means let them; your goal is the change. Credit is a low-cost reinforcer and people who want it don’t satiate. Give it away in buckets.

I can’t wait until that day. So far, I don’t see it, but I welcome it!The process of change is hard.

For my reference, here is Karen Pryor’s complete list of effective reactions:

  1. When they ignore you, find allies and persist.
  2. Don’t be misled by lip service. Find allies and persist.
  3. Meet resistance with persistence. Move around the resistance; try other avenues.
  4. The stage of open attack is a touchy time. People can get fired, for example. Keep your head down, but persist. Don’t take the attack personally, even if it is a personal attack. Attack is information; it tells you:
    a) You’re getting somewhere: change IS happening, causing extinction-induced aggression.
    b) Your attacker is frightened. Empathize.
    c) Your attacker still believes in the efficacy of aversives.
  5. Absorbing and utilizing: this stage can last a year or more. Maintain generous schedules of reinforcement.
  6. They’re taking credit for your idea? By all means let them; your goal is the change. Credit is a low-cost reinforcer and people who want it don’t satiate. Give it away in buckets.
  7. Are they pitching the change? Good. If you want to change something else, you now have new allies.

– With credit to the Minnesota Council for the Gifted & Talented, where I first saw the story, and to MinnPost, Nov. 13, 2012, for the reference to Karen Pryor’s blog.

Project Based Learning

Great post by Nicholas Provenzano (aka @thenerdyteacher), “I’ve got 99 Problems, but a Test Ain’t One”

Nick writes extensively about his experiments with project-based learning, and the huge successes he’s seen. He also writes about tech integration and the advantages, even though his school isn’t 1:1. He just has a classroom set of iPads. He’s a huge Evernote fan. (No, I’ve never met him, although I have seen him at ISTE.)

I appreciate his thoughtfulness about why he moved away from multiple choice tests: “Remembering the character’s hometown was nice, but demonstrating the importance the hometown played in the story is far more important.” He acknowledges that writing a good multiple choice test is difficult, and it was more about a reading check rather than a check for understanding.

I appreciate how his classes are set up for the benefit of the student, taking advantage of their natural inclinations,

Students are yearning to show their teachers their talent and knowledge. They are bursting at the seams to show the world what they can do. The traditional classroom of lecture and test does not allow them to do that though. The minute I started to let my students choose their projects and express their knowledge in different ways, engagement and the overall energy of the students went through the room.

 

I sit on a district curriculum committee. The focus of everything is on test scores. It’s all about bringing up the scores. There’s no room even to ask about the value of the standardized tests – it’s just taken for granted. My daughter’s grades are heavily dependent on tests, the tests get far more weight than other work that may require more thought. I’ve had a chance to look at some tests (only a few because they don’t allow the tests out of the room!!) Most of the tests are basic factual recall. Even the teachers admit that they aren’t asking many higher level questions. Why aren’t the tests allowed out of the classroom? Because kids might cheat. And they can cheat because it’s all straight factual recall. There’s very little cheating possible in a project based classroom.

Says Nick:

Somewhere along the way, education lost its way and started to focus heavily on memorization of facts and not the actual act of learning. To me, MC tests, fill in the blank exams, etc. as the only means of assessment are a symptom of that larger problem.